Author(s):
Abraham Avnisan

Collocations is a work of experimental writing that explores the disruptive implications of
quantum mechanics for science, philosophy and literature. Designed for tablet computers,
Collocations employs strategies of erasure, visual poetry, and algorithmically defined
systems to produce a work of innumerable poetic texts. Interaction with the work transforms
the user into an experimenter, whose observation and physical manipulation of the device
determines the materialization of unique textual configurations in a dynamic, non-linear and
kinesthetic reading experience.
Collocations appropriates two key texts from Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein’s historic
debates about the complementary relationship between position and momentum on the one
hand, and determinacy and indeterminacy on the other. In quantum mechanics, that
relationship is mediated by an experimental apparatus through which the experimenter
observes the phenomenon in question; in Collocations, the tablet computer is that
experimental apparatus, and the user’s choice to manipulate either its position or momentum
allows certain poetic texts to become determinate at the expense of others. As the user
manipulates the device in space, certain words from within Bohr and Einstein’s original texts
begin to vibrate, becoming highlighted and forming poetic subtexts. Striking a delicate
balance between completely predetermined and randomly generated texts, these poems
embody the fundamental indeterminacy of matter without sacrificing poetic agency. At the
intersection of science, art, language and code, Collocations posits a new quantum poetics
that disrupts classical notions of textuality and offers new possibilities for reading.

Modality of presentation: iPad

URL to work: http://abrahamavnisan.com/collocations/