Module 03 Lava Rites

ARTIST INTERVENTION Amy Ireland was commissioned by the Barbican to create an intervention within the pages of the catalogue. Working outside of the main catalogue structure, Ireland offers three 3D poems that use artificial intelligence to redistribute the linearity of human language Amy Ireland and Raphaël Gadot Amy Ireland is an experimental writer working in the field of xenopoetics, and a member of the technofeminist collective Laboria Cuboniks, who published The Xenofeminist Manifesto: A Politics for Alienation in 2015. Ireland’s practice employs technological hacking to challenge the limitations of human representation in literary history, language, and beyond. Raphaël Gadot is a visual effects artist specialising in procedural 3D modelling and animation, known for his work on various science fiction films including The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2012), Prometheus (2012), Interstellar (2014), and Alien Covenant (2017). Three xenopoetic interventions are featured in the first pages of this catalogue. Titled Module 1, Module 2, and Module 3, these works are poems that have been deconstructed from their original forms in linear language into 3D ‘flowers’ – computer-generated objects made up of pictorial synaesthetic phonemes. Module 1 and Module 2 are photographs of the 3D poems, which were printed in black polyamide in 2013. The poems have previously been published open source, enabling the decentralisation of printing technology and what Ireland refers to as the ‘weaponisation of poetry’. 230 Module 3 is a new commission created specifically for this exhibition catalogue. Unlike Module 1 and 2 the poem exists only as a computer rendering: held in cyberspace, it has not yet been made material. By scanning the QR code, the 3D file can be downloaded and printed by readers. Ireland therefore invites us all to participate in the work’s propagation. By using the ciphers and following the potentially infinite ‘poetic line’ printed on the following pages, the poems can be decoded. However, as Ireland reminds us, once the poem has passed through the encryption process, it can never be decrypted back to a definitive, original, ‘authentic’ text. This is due to the extensive use of homophony and the sonic erasure of boundaries between the beginnings and endings of the words. Therefore, each decryption will necessarily be artificial. Modules 1-3 Amy Ireland and Raphael Gadot 2013, 2019 3D printed polyamide, 3D rendering 231