a synthesis · in xiii articles
the noemic codex
in homage to noemata.net, the long-running net-art project of bjørn magnhildøen; assembled here as a small doctrinal book that sometemple carries forward.
written for the labyrinth · pinned to the entry wall
article i
on paratext
The noemic position holds that what surrounds a work — its footers, its margins, its 404s, its directories, its loading screens — is not less than the work itself. Where conventional sites direct the reader's attention to a centre, the noemic site distributes that attention into the seams: an index page becomes a poem, a directory listing becomes a catalogue of moods, an error becomes a small civic ceremony.
operative examplenoemata.net presents itself first as an unstyled directory of folder names — gallery1, gallery2, theresponser, log, txt, ascii. The directory is the work; it has no need to apologise for not being a brochure.
echoed in: directory · catalogue · 404 · atlas
article ii
on the indeterminate author
The noemic author is plural and not always nameable. The site signs itself sometimes as noemata, sometimes as bjørn magnhildøen, sometimes as maria futura, sometimes as nothing in particular — a postal address in oslo, a fragment of code, a misspelled domain. The reader is invited not to ask who wrote each piece, but to feel out the difference between hands.
operative exampleThe "ugfatiglem" entries are signed by no one in particular. They could be the keeper's notes, the visitor's letters, or text the building has written about itself overnight.
echoed in: ugfatiglem · keeper · anonymous · signatures
article iii
on codework
Codework is the practice of letting the running of the machine show itself on the surface. Variable names appear in poems. Error logs become stanzas. The view-source view is part of the reading view. The noemic position is that the underlying machinery is not embarrassed by being seen, and the reader is not insulted by being shown.
operative examplenoemata's codework files mix lisp s-expressions, perl scripts and human prose into one document. The unit of composition is the page; the page does not care whether you are a reader or a parser.
echoed in: codework · typewriter · lexicon · error
article iv
on mail art
Mail art is the slowest network. A letter — usually decorated, often defaced, sometimes barely a letter — travels through the post and is photographed on arrival. The noemic position is that the postal system is the oldest internet and the most patient.
operative examplePostcards bearing stamps of one country and postmarks of another. Letters franked twice, addressed in invented hands. The archive of responder pieces — small artworks made in reply to other small artworks.
echoed in: mail art · letters · postcards · stamps · notes
article v
on telemata
A telemata is a transmission at great distance whose recipient may not exist. The noemic position is that the value of the transmission is not contingent on confirmed reception. A letter dropped into the ocean is still posted.
operative exampleThe leap-second broadcasts: messages timed to the exact insertion of the leap-second into UTC, dispatched to no particular address, intended to be received during a moment that the calendar does not properly accommodate.
echoed in: telemata · leap second · ferry · terminus
article vi
on the scanner obscura
The scanner obscura is the camera obscura updated for the flatbed scanner: an aperture in the lid, daylight admitted in a controlled slow exposure, the scanner-head sweeping the world frame-by-frame. The image arrives bent, time-streaked, occasionally beautiful. The noemic position is that the machine, given an unusual exposure, becomes a painter.
operative exampleThe noemata scanner-obscura series — photographs that would not exist if the device had been used as intended.
echoed in: scanner obscura · camera · window
article vii
on cloud machinery
The noemic cloud is not the marketing cloud (off-site server racks). It is the original cloud — the meteorological one — treated as a piece of machinery. The cloud is read for its movements, named after its types, made operational in poems and almanacs. Clouds are machines that run on light and air.
operative exampleThe cloud-machinery sequence: a script that names each cloud as it passes overhead in oslo and assigns it a small administrative task.
echoed in: cloud machinery · clouds · sky · weather instruments
article viii
on brfxxcc
The brfxxcc principle: that an utterance need not be pronounceable to mean something. In 1991 a swedish couple attempted to register the given name "brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116", pronounced (they insisted) "Albin". The name was refused. The noemic position is that what is unpronounceable is exactly what is most worth preserving.
operative examplenoemata's brfxxcc entries gather the world's small unpronounceables: legal-document footnotes, the latin names of obscure mosses, password-strength tokens, vehicle-identification numbers.
echoed in: brfxxcc · unpronounceable · lexicon · dictionary
article ix
on the leap second
The leap second is the official, civil correction to the disagreement between the earth's rotation and the atomic clock. Once every several years, an extra second is inserted into UTC — usually at midnight on june 30th or december 31st. The noemic position is that this is the only moment when the official calendar admits, quietly, that the universe does not exactly fit its books.
operative examplenoemata maintains a small register of leap seconds, with a poem written into each one.
echoed in: leap second · midnight · calendar · time
article x
on deepfake
Long before the present anxieties around generative imagery, the noemata project treated the manipulated image as a familiar member of the household. The deepfake here is not a deception but a kind of polite supposition: this is how it might have looked, had it looked at all.
operative exampleThe noemata deepfake series: family photographs altered to include people who never lived. Each one captioned with care.
echoed in: deepfake · phantom · phantoms · paintings
article xi
on ugfatiglem
An ugfatiglem (norwegian/portmanteau) is a small piece of writing that resembles speech but addresses no one. The noemic position is that the labyrinth must contain at least some rooms that are not for guests.
operative exampleThe ugfatiglem files of noemata.net: short, indented prose passages, neither essay nor letter nor poem, accumulated like marginal notes on the building itself.
echoed in: ugfatiglem · marginalia · notes · log
article xii
on noema
The greek noema (νόημα): a thought; the content of an act of consciousness. Husserl distinguished the noesis (the act of thinking) from the noema (that which is thought). The noemic project takes its name from the second of these. A noema is a thought that need not have been thought yet.
operative exampleThe plural form noemata is therefore a collection of as-yet-unthought thoughts; the website is their public storage.
echoed in: about noemata · lexicon · threshold
article xiii
on sometemple
This labyrinth is, by name and disposition, the small successor of noemata. Where noemata gathers thoughts, sometemple gathers rooms in which those thoughts might be set down. The transformation is small but consequential: thought → place; noem- → nom- ; what is thought → what is named, where it is named, what the room around it sounds like when you walk in.
The reader will find the doctrines above instantiated, room by room, across the eleven hundred-some pages of sometemple. Where the noemic position is held softly here, that is intentional. A codex is not a curfew.
operative exampleYou are presently reading inside one of these rooms. The room is small and the door is open. The room is also, of course, a thought.
echoed in: atlas · the wings · tools · threshold
· · ·
compiled in the labyrinth · spring of an unnumbered year ·
with gratitude to bjørn magnhildøen and the noemata project, which has been
running, with quiet patience, since 1995.
noemata.net ↗
filed under · doctrines