Algorithmic instruction code can be found, centuries before the invention of the computer, in Latin poetry, the Kabbalah, Western composed music and several forms of experimental poetry from the 17th to the 20th century, thus forming an important, but often neglected historical pretext of contemporary computer arts. While these examples are formally simple or even primitive by contemporary standards, they are linked to a rich technological, artistic, philosophical and religious imagination. This extensive online publication tries to sketch its rich and very contradictory history from Pythagorean mathematics to contemporary digital art and culture, showing how the idea and phantasm of the word becoming flesh is both written forth and transformed from kabbalistic spells to computer viruses.

Florian Cramer is a Berlin based writer who has published in the area of code poetry, comparative studies in the literature and the arts, modernism, text theory, literature and computing. He was Research Fellow at PZI, Media Design Research Jan - April 2005

Available as a PDF, LaTeX or HTML file at:
http://pzwart.wdka.hro.nl/mdr/research/fcramer/wordsmadeflesh/

Source: http://liste.rekombinant.org/wws/subrequest/rekombinant