Permutation — permutationeller computer-text by Timm Ulrichs, 1971

Permutation — permutationeller computer-text

Name: Ragnar Digital, LLC
Price range: $

Timm Ulrichs

1971

Prose/Poetry (Computer-Generated)

First edition of 150, signed and numbered. Leporello artists’ book dot matrix printed on 37.5 x 30 cm (14.75 x 12 in) perforated tractor feed computer paper, with the first page bound to thick white card stock covers silk screened in black. 25 + 1 pp.

Description

Published in 1971, Timm Ulrichs: Permutation—Permutationeller Computer-Text is an artist’s book from a key figure in the history of German Conceptual art.

In the 1960s Ulrichs, whose multimedia work spans from performance and films to objects, became interested in using computers to produce concrete poetry. He conceived the idea for a book in which a computer generates every possible permutation of the letters in the word “permutation” in 1963, but didn’t realize the project until nine years later, with the help of programmer Friedemann Singer.

Over 25 pages, the book lists the first 17,600 permutations calculated, 704 per page. As Ulrichs explains in an introduction, printing all 39,916,800 permutations in the same format would have produced a 56,700-page volume around five meters thick.

The book is a signed and numbered edition of 150, printed using a dot-matrix printer on perforated computer paper bound in leporello with white card covers.