Re-Mediate Lit Mag: Machine Witness
Re-mediate Lit Mag is a literary magazine that publishes work that is, is about, or reviews computer-assisted creative writing.
Our Issue•4 call, [MACHINEWITNESS], will close on November 1.
The question is not whether we were supposed to know so much— we do.
As a function of our machines, we see, we hear, we know. We train simulations that we might pre-witness the future. We entertain ourselves by supplying databanks with our aesthetics (DressToImpress), our environments (PokemonGo), and our preferences (SocialMedia). We train machine vision models for the purposes of, as of old, navigating, exploring, locating, exploiting.
We program machines to make scenes and simulacrum (Baudrillard, Eco). Yes, we, wittingly, for a salary or for social position, to inform our politics or to numb ourselves— we leverage [machinewitness] to our own ends, too.
Where the tendrils of empires touch you, they do not just take resources, labor, and attention (Hao)— they establish lines of communication by which information, via surveillance, subversion, or sabotage, is gathered and sent (Misa).
But, as much as [Machinewitness] threatens, captures, [Machinewitness] also records, holds accountable (WITNESS).
In this situation, from our position, how might poetry, fiction, essay, image-text, program, and demo turn our machines' visions to purposes that run skew? [Machinewitness] invites language — poetic, coded, critical, fictional, visual — that captures capture, that witnesses witness.
[Machinewitness] seeks work that overwrites, that knows it’s being wiretapped.
[Machinewitness] wants you to cook with locally-foraged language you identified with an app.
[Machinewitness] invites pieces that take care to construct, take work to chew and ingest.
[Machinewitness] knows that the image-to-text feature will scramble translations, but were you ever under the impression that a word-machine could comply perfectly 100% of the time when you and your language won't either?
[Machinewitness] calls for critical hallucinations; invites the glitch; is open to drone; seeks the scoop; needs raised consciousness.
[Machinewitness] wants you to stand your ground.
What does re•mediate publish?
Computer-Assisted [Non]Fiction & Poetry. For example:
- Writing written collaboratively with a computer program;
- Visual/Concrete/Experimental writing constructed/designed with computer software;
- Writing that interrogates, communicates, represents, deconstructs, or transcribes (etc.) digital practice and culture;
We invite prose under 4000 words, poetry under 150 lines, image-text and visually/textually experimental work, and no more than 2 interactive/multimedia works per contributor!
Criticism about Computer-Assisted Writing. For example:
- TOPICS: The relationships between computer-generated writing and its racial, posthumanist, climate, political, economic, gendered, sexual, linguistic, and ethical impacts are all of interest. Computer-assisted writing touches a variety of issues.
- APPROACHES: A topic might be explored humanistically and creatively, through data and analysis or through memoir and poetry. Wholesale approvals or disapprovals of the entire practice should be written from an informed perspective.
More Details: https://remediatelitmag.xyz/submit/
Organiser: Re-mediate Lit Mag