Inventions For Radio #12. Jan Baeke and Alfred Marseille as Public Thought.
Poet Jan Baeke and media artist Alfred Marseille create digital film poems (cine-poèmes), data poems, short films and literary web productions by the name of Public Thought.
Hard figures is a new literary project about (an obsession with) orders, series of figures, instructions, number collections and prognoses. The narrative layer is about the history of the man who built this collection; a character who was inspired by the biography of Linnaeus. Parts of the project are a website, a soundscape, an e-book and a radio broadcast.
The radio broadcast is structured around sound recordings of a great many different data collections, numbers, orders, rhythms, the time, morning exercises, football results, water levels, fragments from number stations, an endless series of prime numbers, categorised film music, heartbeat, traffic calls, the golden section, pi, instructions for inspectors of post offices in Canada, 15.000 useful phrases, everything about growing walnuts, the Flora Lapponia by Linaeus, etc.
During the studio talk which forms the heart of the broadcast, the host talks with a man who, as a true archaeologist, is sorting out the collection of a deceased number man. During the talk it gradually becomes clear that both men share a bizarre history in which they have just missed out on each other for years.
For more information have a look at:
http://www.publicthought.net/harde-cijfers/index.html
http://www.hardecijfers.net
