TMS is a routine, non-invasive procedure used in cognitive and clinical neuroscience. Pulses of magnetic energy emanating from a wire coil positioned strategically outside the head are used to induce an electrical current in a nearby cortical brain area. This current effectively shuts down neural processing in that specific area, producing a temporary “lesion," knocking out whatever cognitive or behavioral function is enabled by the structure. Knock out a language area: can't speak. Knock out a motor area: can't move arm. This method has been extremely useful in mapping cortical-area functions in basic and clinical research.
The Transcranial Poetics Project (an offshoot of the Transcranial Aesthetics Project and the New York Crew) aims to open up the use of TMS technologies to experimentalists outside clinical scientific research, in this case literary experimentalists. The idea is that we will facilitate collaborations between poetic experimentalists and neuroscientists with the aim of exploring, among other things, the phenomenology and neurocomputational mechanisms of language comprehension, production and poetic experience. As an example, we imagine a Christian Bök type or Ron Silliman, say, doing their best to read from a Harry Potter novel while their syntax or phonology areas are temporarily lesioned with TMS, resulting in a strange sounding Dada sound poetry. This may sound like a joke, but it is not. The possibilities are endless here. Why not push experimental poetics into the brain?
Contemporary poetry is in trouble. Flarf is dead—and gay. Conceptualism is as boring as Kenny G promises. Language Poets are busy in their Priuses. The time to radicalize and rigorize avant-garde poetics is now. It is too often assumed that the so-called "cognitive revolution" in the arts and aesthetics must ultimately serve culturally conservative ends. As a result, much of the contemporary "avant garde" in poetry and poetics fails to meaningfully engage these important intellectual trends. It is hoped that the Transcranial Poetics Project might go some way towards demonstrating that neuroscientific understanding and technology can be critically exploited by contemporary poets.
Initial Critical Praise:
"...darkly funny...right on the money." -Charles Bernstein
"...interesting to see how this challenges masculine notions of authorship." -Vanessa Place
"...sounds cool." -Mathew Timmons
"...interesting area of engagement...pressing the right buttons." -Oron Catts, SymbioticA
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Please send ideas, comments and questions to: ghoststarbie at yahoo dot com
Contemporary poetry is in trouble. Flarf is dead—and gay. Conceptualism is as boring as Kenny G promises. Language Poets are busy in their Priuses. The time to radicalize and rigorize avant-garde poetics is now. It is too often assumed that the so-called "cognitive revolution" in the arts and aesthetics must ultimately serve culturally conservative ends. As a result, much of the contemporary "avant garde" in poetry and poetics fails to meaningfully engage these important intellectual trends. It is hoped that the Transcranial Poetics Project might go some way towards demonstrating that neuroscientific understanding and technology can be critically exploited by contemporary poets.
Initial Critical Praise:
"...darkly funny...right on the money." -Charles Bernstein
"...interesting to see how this challenges masculine notions of authorship." -Vanessa Place
"...sounds cool." -Mathew Timmons
"...interesting area of engagement...pressing the right buttons." -Oron Catts, SymbioticA
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Please send ideas, comments and questions to: ghoststarbie at yahoo dot com