16.01.06 Artex, automatic contemporary art reviews.
Polygen is a generative grammar engine developed by Italian programmers that constantly update it with new and extremely funny grammars. The software generates various linguistic stereotypes, blending variables depending on syntactic rules and lexical schemes. For example the specific slang of the young people, or the remix of corporations' payoff mantra. But one of the most interesting one, in the Culture section is the 'Artex' grammar, dedicated to contemporary art exhibitions' reviews, in English, of course. It's the only one with a special layout, intellectual and Central European style, as the famous Documenta catalogues. And it does not contradict the commonplace that contemporary art is incomprehensible. Talking about the sense of the constructions, you can be astonished by the fact that the software can generate phrases that absolutely make sense, though at a basic dialectic level. It has nothing to do with the biotech prosthesis beloved by the art sensationalists and the cyber writers. At the same time this software make us think about the lack of critic approach that people demonstrate everyday. And it's also interesting how it deals with the belonging and visibility mechanisms of cultural communities, and the infiltration's strategies in the realm of commercial languages... All the Polygen applications do that in a ironic and extremely elegant way, as a costume and society's satire.
Francesca Colasante