Creating Creations

One of the more relevant and provocative ideas presented in Bok's book on Pataphysics comes in the later pages in his chapter about the Oulipo group.  The oulipo writers, says Bok, were trying to make "creating creations" rather than "created creations" -- texts that act as "a catalyst rather than an artifact" (79).  In other words, such a text "is not a message produced by a person" but rather a "program produced by, and for, a device...designed to make its reader become a writer" (77).

Though I'm making no formal attempt to do so in my Prezi, perhaps this notion of the creating creation bears some application on the potential uses of Prezi.  Since Prezi does allow (if you keep your project public) anyone to copy and then manipulate any published Prezi, one could approach a Prezi project less in terms of classical rhetoric and more in terms of procedural rhetoric -- with the aim of creating a Prezi to act as a platform for other people write in network with one another (networked by the fact that they share your initial Prezi as a creating creation with which to generate writing).

Syzygi and Conceit

"Jarry does not borrow scientific concepts so much as scientific conceits..." (29)

"Jarry may posit this notion [ie, syzygia] within a medieval context...but such a principal of alliance does provide a pretext for postmodern philosophy about the theme of syncretism...conceits which conjoin as much as they disjoin, inverting, while equating, the values of the binary that must support them" (40-1).

In his commentary on Jarry, Bok points to the role of conceit as a 'pataphysical interface between poetry and science. Conceit, as a literary device, can be added to our list of the four rhetorical tropes -- or at least be acknowledged as a specific brand of metaphor. In particular, "The metaphysical conceit involves the use of paradox, images from arcane sources not usually drawn upon by poets, and an original and usually complex comparison between two highly dissimilar things. The originality of a metaphysical conceit often derives from ordinary or esoteric materials used in a previously unthought-of way. A single metaphysical conceit may function as the controlling image for the entire poem" (Bedford Glossary of Literary Terms).

The prezi could be approached as a 'pataphysical conceit, wherein we -- like the poets -- develop a visual conceit as the controlling image or guiding figure of our consultant's report. This visual conceit could stand as the large, establishing shot/image, which contains the smaller images that get zoomed in on throughout the path. Perhaps each zoom shows an image that somehow tropes the meaning of the controlling image when we zoom back out. The controlling image could be ordinary at first glance, then inch closer and closer to a conceit as the viewer moves through each zoom in and out, ultimately coming to see that initial controlling image in the light of the syncretism generated by each of the close-ups.