— a small tribute · after noemata.net —
thirty-five years ago, a directory began on the open web. it is still there. noemata.net is an apache directory listing of names that look like words, words that look like passwords, passwords that look like prayers. you click into it and the listing keeps unfolding.
the artist behind it, bjørn magnhildøen, has spent the better part of a working life making mail art, net art, e-poetry, codework — small pieces that refuse to behave like products. the archive is austere and generous. the file names alone could be read as a long, slow poem.
sometemple takes its first syllable from there. it tries to learn: that a list can be a form. that obscurity does not require gimmickry. that the long durational practice is itself the work. that the web can remain, in small corners, a place rather than a feed.
what follows is a small tribute wing — fourteen pages, walked from one to the next, each pointing back to a different facet of the original. nothing is claimed. only acknowledged. read them slowly, or do not read them.
a separate synthesis was compiled later, drawing the thirteen articles of the noemic project into a single small book — see the noemic codex.
adjacent: our own directory, the colophon, glossolalia, ascii, the library. the original lives, still, at noemata.net.