Workshop of Pot*ntial Blogging – Avoiding using “E”

It is sad to think on how long ago MUW last had a post, but it is 2014 now, and activity will start again. Writing sank down a priority list in 2013, but is now kicking off with inspiration from a Franco-artistic group of authors, known as Oulipo. For this post, I will avoid all utilisation of that most common of all symbols in our vocabulary, “E” (apart from just now!). In illustrations using a book, film or author’s call-sign, a * will stand in for that infuriating symbol.

A graphic of the word lipogram surrounded by the letters E
A lipogram is a block of writing avoiding a particular symbol

From its foundation on 24 Nov 1960, Oulipo was a group that brought works of writing to our world with strict canons Continue reading “Workshop of Pot*ntial Blogging – Avoiding using “E””

The One, The Few, The Many – Social network bridges

No man is an island, entire of itself;
every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.
– John Donne, Meditations XVII

In Georges Perec’s novel “Life: A User’s Manual“, the author describes a sect that one of the book’s characters is involved in. This fictional group, named “The Three Free Men” and formed in 1960, began with three members. In the following three years from the group’s formation, each of the three members recruited three more members, making twelve by 1963. The nine new members initiated a further three members each (twenty-seven members) in the following three years, and so on until 1975, when there were seven hundred and twenty-nine members. Continue reading “The One, The Few, The Many – Social network bridges”