2×6

Abstract

2×6 consists of short “stanzories”—stanzas that are also stories, each one relating an encounter between two people. Appearing in English, French, Spanish, Russian, Japanese, and Polish, the stanzories are generated by a similar underlying process, even as they do not neatly correspond to one another the way a translation typically does to a source text. These sixfold verses are generated by six short computer programs, the code of which is also presented in full. These simple programs can endlessly churn out combinatorial lines that challenge readers to determine to whom “she” and “he,” and “him” and “her,” refer, as well as which is the more powerful signifier, which the underdog. As John Cayley writes, “Gender is the chief generative obstacle here—making more than two times six—distributed across the natural grammars of these micro- dramas, with their psychosocial, vocational, and hierarchical narrative vectors.” This title is a second edition of a book originally published by Les Figues Press, released as part of punctum’s Special Collections project.