man.A.machine.txt
Proposal Type
Performance
Location
Algorithms & Imaginaries
Start Date
July 2026
End Date
July 2026
Abstract
man.A.machine.txt is an audiovisual composition generated in real time through a real-time multimedia system that remediates the words of Julien Offray de La Mettrie’s Man a Machine, a foundational text of eighteenth-century materialist philosophy. The system produces cut-up poetry and a particle cloud, transforming the original text into a shifting field of language and data. In Man a Machine, La Mettrie argues that body and soul are inseparable, proposing sleep as the moment in which their unity becomes undeniable. By remediating this text, I seek to reactivate its materialist concerns within our present technological condition—one increasingly defined by black-boxed systems whose internal logics, mechanisms, and codes are concealed, particularly in artificial intelligence. Ultimately, the work invites viewers to question the ambiguity, materiality, and source of digital text.
The piece unfolds through discrete, shifting states defined by distinct textual modes. Gold text is generated via Markov chains trained on the source material. Blue text highlights keywords extracted from the original work. White text presents the full corpus of Man a Machine. Each particle in the on-screen cloud is generated from data derived from these three states, with color indicating its source. As the composition progresses, the particle field is displaced and modulated according to textual data, transforming language into motion. Visually, the work employs dithering, chromatic aberration, and Perlin noise to evoke the tactile materiality of early digital images.
The sound design combines recorded readings of La Mettrie’s text, resampled new-age sleep meditations, and synthesized electronic tones. These voices are gradually processed and abstracted until they become unrecognizable, at which point the visual text begins to complete their fragmented utterances. The piece culminates in a final, unprocessed reading as the particle cloud coheres into the form of a waterfall—language resolving into flow.
man.A.machine.txt was created using TouchDesigner, Ableton, and a custom WebSocket server that communicates with the RiTa.js API for text processing. No artificial intelligence systems were used in the making of this project; all generative processes are rule-based and transparent in their construction. The work was originally composed for the Meyer NADIA multichannel sound system and conceived with minimal human intervention once activated. The full duration is approximately eleven minutes and will be presented in a format adapted to the Zoom-based structure of this exhibition.
man.A.machine.txt
Algorithms & Imaginaries
man.A.machine.txt is an audiovisual composition generated in real time through a real-time multimedia system that remediates the words of Julien Offray de La Mettrie’s Man a Machine, a foundational text of eighteenth-century materialist philosophy. The system produces cut-up poetry and a particle cloud, transforming the original text into a shifting field of language and data. In Man a Machine, La Mettrie argues that body and soul are inseparable, proposing sleep as the moment in which their unity becomes undeniable. By remediating this text, I seek to reactivate its materialist concerns within our present technological condition—one increasingly defined by black-boxed systems whose internal logics, mechanisms, and codes are concealed, particularly in artificial intelligence. Ultimately, the work invites viewers to question the ambiguity, materiality, and source of digital text.
The piece unfolds through discrete, shifting states defined by distinct textual modes. Gold text is generated via Markov chains trained on the source material. Blue text highlights keywords extracted from the original work. White text presents the full corpus of Man a Machine. Each particle in the on-screen cloud is generated from data derived from these three states, with color indicating its source. As the composition progresses, the particle field is displaced and modulated according to textual data, transforming language into motion. Visually, the work employs dithering, chromatic aberration, and Perlin noise to evoke the tactile materiality of early digital images.
The sound design combines recorded readings of La Mettrie’s text, resampled new-age sleep meditations, and synthesized electronic tones. These voices are gradually processed and abstracted until they become unrecognizable, at which point the visual text begins to complete their fragmented utterances. The piece culminates in a final, unprocessed reading as the particle cloud coheres into the form of a waterfall—language resolving into flow.
man.A.machine.txt was created using TouchDesigner, Ableton, and a custom WebSocket server that communicates with the RiTa.js API for text processing. No artificial intelligence systems were used in the making of this project; all generative processes are rule-based and transparent in their construction. The work was originally composed for the Meyer NADIA multichannel sound system and conceived with minimal human intervention once activated. The full duration is approximately eleven minutes and will be presented in a format adapted to the Zoom-based structure of this exhibition.
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/elo2026/algorithmsandimaginaries/schedule/31
Bio
James Pardue is a Buffalo-based media artist and MFA candidate in the Department of Media Study at the University at Buffalo, SUNY. His interdisciplinary practice integrates video art, electroacoustic music, and interactive design to develop performable electronic instruments and audiovisual compositions. Working with data-driven multimedia systems, purpose-built electronics, and synthesized sounds, his projects explore themes of opacity, feedback, and technological mediation.