i[ↄ]onic+ log is an exploration of the edges of language, where meaning does not settle but oscillates—charged, dispersed, and reconfigured. Federico Federici constructs a shifting landscape of asemic writing, physics, and conceptual poetics, where each fragment resists closure and yet compels the reader to engage with the text as a field of forces rather than a linear argument. Through a meticulous interplay of textual layers, footnotes, and signification-endings, the work extends beyond the page, enacting a syntax of disruptions that invites “engagement with scientific signs not primarily as tools for problem-solving, algorithmic handling, or learning processes, but as an opportunity to observe them and set them in dialogue with self-made signs" (Nils Röller), where meaning is never given but continuously re-negotiated and "the sign is the enigma of language" (Michael Betancourt). For those drawn to the interplay of literature, semiotics, and experimental writing, i[ↄ]onic+ log is not just a book—it is a space to inhabit, question, and return to.
I[c]onic Log, Nils Röller (foreword), Michael Betancourt (afterword), Calamari Archive, Ink., New York, 2025, ISBN 978-1940853413 (Paperback), 978-1940853482 (Hardcover) [Eng-Ger-It-Fr] / buy: amazon • asterism • read: archive • listen: podcast • download: [ 1 ] \ [ 2 ]
Broadly accepted: Experimental and conceptual writing, theoretical papers, asemic and concrete texts, vispo, theorems, axiom collection, quantum weirdness, reviews of books addressing these topics and the like. Texts: poetry (60 lines max. overall); prose (500-600 words max. overall). Format: Times New Roman 12; single line spacing; all in one .doc (no .docx) or .odt file. Languages: Catalan, Croatian, English, French, German, Italian, Russian, Spanish. Visual: 1-3 B&W images. Format: jpg, tiff, png, 72-300 DPI.
Silence and void are often reductively understood as negative conditions: the absence of sound in one case, the absence of matter in the other. This interpretation assigns both a derivative status, as if they were merely limiting cases or abstract containers, presumed to receive what they themselves exclude. Such a view, while intuitively appealing, is conceptually inadequate. It assumes that absence is primary and presence secondary, that what is measurable or perceptible must emerge against a neutral, inert background. A more careful analysis suggests the opposite: silence and void are not empty stages awaiting occupation, but richly structured, metrically defined conditions that are already fully actual.
Consider, first, the notion of space. In everyday reasoning, one is inclined to assert that space becomes evident only through the presence of a body. Without objects, space would seem to recede into abstraction. Yet this formulation already contains an implicit assumption: that space exists independently as a receptacle, a locus of potential occupation. This is precisely the assumption that modern physics has progressively dismantled. Space is not a passive container that becomes “filled” when matter appears; nor does it possess Continue reading “Silence and Void: Toward an Aesthetics of Metrics”→
In this issue: Michael Betancourt, Patrick Sweeney, Mark Young, Graham Medric George, Angel Dionne, Stephen Bett, Heikki Huotari, Nathan Anderson, Werner Preuß, Sean G. Meggeson, Daniel Barbare, Jim Meirose, Norbert Kovacs, Patrick Trombly, Angelo D’Amato.
Ink against ink: only pressure, only residue that condenses. Like charged particles crossing a chamber of supersaturated air, signs precipitate in a supersaturated language. Trails—sentences—appear only where a blank equilibrium has been disturbed, leaving the trace of an event. The work does not present itself; it exposes only the conditions of its own existence.
A Theoretical Reading of Contemporary Editorial Practices
Contemporary literary magazines, particularly those with significant international visibility, present themselves as sites of critical discernment, claiming to evaluate form, style, and literary value. Yet, a closer inspection of quantitative data they provide reveals a misalignment between this normative claim and the operational conditions under which textual selection occurs.
Consider a typical scenario: approximately 100,000 poems submitted annually, with around 100 ultimately appearing in the general print sections. The resulting selection ratio, roughly one in a thousand, is often interpreted as a marker of rigorous evaluation. When translated into temporal terms, it becomes evident that the magazine operates under a system of accelerated processing rather than deliberative judgment. If these submissions were distributed evenly across 250 working days, the editorial apparatus would process approximately 400 poems per day. Introducing multiple readers—for instance five sharing the load—reduces the daily requirement to 80 poems per person; ten would further reduce it to 40.
Even these moderated figures do not account for the fragmented nature of editorial labour. Staff members often combine teaching, writing, curatorial work, and administrative duties. Reading tends to occur in intermittent periods, often marked by cognitive fatigue. Consequently, even in generous scenarios, the time available per poem rarely exceeds one to two minutes, falling below one minute and in some cases amounting to mere seconds. Under these conditions, evaluation cannot function as a sustained interpretive act: the poem lacks the time to reveal its internal dynamics—if any—or structural and semantic shifts.
Selection, then, operates via immediate cues such as initial gestures, tonal orientation, graphic layout, or recognizability of pre-existing practices. Judgment is shaped by operational constraints: order of reading, daily saturation, and the momentary disposition of the reader bear directly on the outcomes. Rejection hence carries little to no critical weight. It is not the result of a reasoned negative assessment, but of exclusionary necessity imposed by an overloaded system. Acceptance, symmetrically, reflects the contingent passage through this strained editorial dispositif rather than the intrinsic value of the text.
Within this regime, literary magazines continue to employ the language of criticism, yet they tend to preselect forms of legibility before any genuine aesthetic evaluation can take place. Recognition is not discovered in the act of submission; it is conferred post hoc, through institutional consecration. Submission, in other words, does not generate criticism but distributes visibility and symbolic standing.
Acknowledging this systemic disjunction does not undermine literature or its institutional apparatus. Rather, it locates the domain of critical work elsewhere: in rereading, in the time available for engagement, and in contexts that can sustain attentional and cognitive durations incompatible with the exigencies of rapid editorial screening.
This talk, given at the Cambridge Creation Lab, unfolds as a sustained inquiry into numbers, signs, and memory, approaching computation, notation, and writing as generative rather than instrumental media. Moving between algebra, asemic writing, physics, and typographic practice, Federici reframes numbers as aesthetic entities, silence as a relational medium, and writing as an experimental apparatus—where data, symbols, and material traces converge into living systems of sense.
All that remains to be done is to play with the pieces. Playing with the pieces—that is postmodern. [Jean Baudrillard, Interview: Game with Vestiges, On the Beach, no. 5 (Winter 1984): 24.]
I.
Faced with generative models, the idea of a structuring self appears increasingly inadequate. Instead, a dispersive principle emerges: the self does not retain the sign or signal to process it, but decomposes its field of possibilities.
This is not a mere loss of subjectivity, but a shift in function. The decomposition of the message acquires relational value. Writing aligns with the structures of the networks it engages with, without these assuming the role of superior instances. There is no central point absorbing and reorganizing, but a network of connections in which overall order prevails over individual identities. As in a lattice, it is the relations that determine the system’s properties.
From this perspective, the proliferation of artificial entities capable of acting beyond mere imitation may reshape power dynamics, reducing the human to a minimal but functional presence. Human and machine, still perceived as opposed terms, follow convergent trajectories.
In literature, this translates into practices of textual recomposition that do not aim to restore lost authorship but operate within a condition of dispersion. Here, practices such as found poetry and sought poetry are renewed.
In found poetry, the author explored a space in search of a potential text. The gesture resembled restoration more than production: gaps could be filled or left active as structural elements. In sought poetry, the search was mediated by an algorithm, authored or adopted by the writer, used as a selection device.
In both cases, authorship shifted toward method, operating within a framework oriented toward a probable, though not fully determined, outcome.
The use of artificial networks introduces further variables, multiplying modes of encounter with the text. The apparent organicity of inference processes conceals zones of opacity and recursion, bypassable through the controlled introduction of noise in the triggering conditions. In this space, linguistic and mathematical metrics come into relation.
Whether the author acts as filter or detection point, their position has shifted: no longer external to the work, but internal to a genuinely experimental process. Investigation thus oscillates between two poles: a possible synthesis and the detection of a minimal signal.
As Baudrillard suggests, it is in these modes of play that the conditions of writing are redefined today. In dialogue with artificial intelligences—not opposed to the human, not biological—the text ceases to be the product of an individual will and manifests as an open system.
II.
Authorship no longer coincides with the production of sign or signal, but with the definition of a principle of triggering and selection. AI generates a linguistic continuum in which units of sense overlap and interfere; the author intervenes by setting operational thresholds.
Reading functions as a process of discrimination. Machine-generated material points to a plurality of interpretations, which the author filters, intensifies, or attenuates through indirect interventions that do not integrate directly into the work, but guide its emergence. Variants do not constitute narrative alternatives, but modulations.
Selective textual perception takes shape through the interplay between what can be said and what is read. AI provides a diffuse, unstable linguistic output, within which the author focuses on elements that tend to differentiate without stabilizing.
In terms of signal theory, AI can be understood as a generator of structured noise, where the noise itself conveys information. Analysing this output allows dominant components and deviations to be distinguished, establishing the contours of the work. Meaning does not precede the operation: it is its outcome.
Authorship thus defines itself as spectral reduction: a provisional arrest of dispersion that renders, for a given time, a single frequency legible among many.
The relationship between author and AI does not take the form of antagonism, but of operational interaction. AI expands the domain of the possible; the author delimits the present. The emergent work is not transmission, but a pattern of refracted-recompositions within the network.
Traduzioni in lingua catalana a cura di Marta Vilardaga e Josep Porcar.
Voce: Marta Vilardaga
prendere parte al tempo nel corpo, sentirsi addosso crescere le ossa, tirare via la pelle, ridursi a una misura: una falange un mese, un’unghia un’ora o poco più sul guscio una fessura, sul cranio lacero al pensiero
perdere le parti esposte al vuoto, deporre i pesi ripudiati, di polvere, di petali, di pollini posati sui capelli, restare poi senza memorie al mondo, gettare l’ombra propria a quei fondali di luce e cose a farsi schermo, non corpo
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formar part del temps al cos, sentir dessobre créixer els ossos, treure la pell, reduir-se a una mesura: una falange un mes, una ungla una hora o una mica més a la closca un clivell, al crani esquinç del pensament
perdre les parts exposades al buit, deixar anar els pesos repudiats, de pols, de pètals, de pòl·lens posats als cabells, restar després sense records al món, abocar l’ombra pròpia a aquells fondals de llums i coses per fer-se cuirassa, no cos
Profilo minore, a cura di Andrea Cortellessa, Nino Aragno, Torino 2021 / Bologna in Lettere Prize (Finalist, 2022), L’Aquila-BPER Prize (Finalist, 2022) / new edition 2026: hardcover• paperback • read: archive • listen: podcast • watch: YouTube
Traduzioni in lingua catalana a cura di Marta Vilardaga e Josep Porcar.
Voce: Marta Vilardaga
adagio ritmare, rimare la pietra, prima che faccia argine al fosso, rotolata sulla riga scura d’acqua che ricopre i solchi, tutta arsura di licheni e frammista ai pieni, ai vuoti, vacui motivi della gravità, dove peso avrà e radici l’erba scossa secca
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adagio ritmar, rimar la pedra, abans que faci marge al rec, rodolant sobre la línia obscura d’aigua que cobreix els solcs, tota brusent de líquens i amalgamada als relleus, als buits, vacus motius de la gravetat, on tindrà pes i arrels l’herba sacsada seca
Profilo minore, a cura di Andrea Cortellessa, Nino Aragno, Torino 2021 / Bologna in Lettere Prize (Finalist, 2022), L’Aquila-BPER Prize (Finalist, 2022) / new edition 2026: hardcover• paperback • read: archive • listen: podcast • watch: YouTube
not-quite-archive of errata | signal loss | unwritten | data
co/ordinates : misreading asemic writing as kitsch: scientific forms and structural depth; ten olivetti tables; first study about farfalla; first study across silence; warten auf god; rooks, knights (and other probabilities); negotiating authorship in the age of AI; [ controlled ] generative drift; two letter excerpts (and a recast); cracking the algorithm; being an event; authorship as spectral reduction; stanzas I-III; consciousness as a state of language; hypothesis on a practice of operative writing; short abstract in computational algebra; instructions without a manual; translanguaging in asemic writing: a metric space approach
WEISSES WERK 