Congratulations! The Audience’s Prize of the competition „Literatur.digital 2003“ goes to „The Famous Sound of Absolute Wreaders“ by German net artist and poet Johannes Auer. The text had been aired as a radio version by ORF Kunstradio in September 2003. It consists of a playful and humorous, however, profound and meaningful language texture, based on the net based literary works of six reknown authors. What is an “Absolute Wreader”?Reinhard Doehl, Sylvia Egger, Oliver Gassner, Martina Kieninger, Beat Suter and René Bauer generated one individual text each about the webprojects of the other participants. Two speakers (Christiane Maschajecki and Peter Gorges) performed these texts for radio: as a collage, remix, dialogue and as noise.

„what is an „absolute wreader“? via the author idensen i find niels werber and then philosopher norbert bolz who in reverse finds idensen … references in circles … that’s the web. quotations quote themselves, the writing process is ongoing permanently. sometimes the text co-writes the text. the author becomes a surprised reader, while the reader becomes an author, co-author or at least a co-worker on the text.“
(Beat Suter)

The radio version of „The Famous Sound of Absolute Wreaders“ consists of four parts. Every part represents a method in its own, defining in which way the collaboratively created text will growand develop. The single parts stand for different degrees, qualities and strategies of human or technological control

„Part 1 is a version collaged „by hand“, based on the whole fundus of the participants’ texts. It is controlled by human measures. For part 2 the collage’s text elements were re-composed by the computer (randomly generated text) – human control was given up. In part 3 the radio speakers comment on the computer generated collage, and regain control by this (however, the authorship remains still undermined). During part 4 the radio speakers themselves are losing control under the influence of wine…“

Johannes Auer has formulated a quite abstract concept for his piece and had been producing its sonic realization with formal strictness. Despite that, while it is performed by the speakers, the text opens its playful, entertaining and ironic qualities. It becomes clear, how the different prerequisites for the text production and collaging process determine the development of content and consistency. Also, the audience can experience, how the different strategies of control stimulate the listener to cultivate different strategies of interpretation.

In brief: It’s great fun to listen how the radio speakers are producing over and over again text and meaning, and to follow accordingly the different strategies of control applied.

Project’s webpage „The Famous Sound of Absolute Wreaders“ by Johannes Auer:

http://kunstradio.cyberfiction.ch/

Listen to the project:

http://www.kunstradio.at/2003B/07_09_03.html

More about the competition „Literatur.digital 2003“:

http://www2.onunterhaltung.t-online.de/dyn/c/15/02/44/1502444.html

Interview with Johannes Auer:

http://www.swr.de/swr2/audiohyperspace/engl_version/interview/auer.html