The eighth poem of Cristina Irian
The tehno-poems are the result of Cristina’s 2016-2020 research into how information was displayed on her Facebook account’s wall. By tracking blocks of posts and advertisements within a specific timeframe, she transformed them into text, effectively simulating a form of machine language. Images were transcribed into plain text, resembling a computer program script. During this process, she noticed that the act of transcription imbued the information with meaning. Repeating this method seven times, she created what she called “poems”, which were later showcased at the Versopolis Poetry Expo 2024.
In 2020, following Facebook’s announcement of algorithm changes, Cristina revisited her experiment. She observed a significant shift in the flow of information: it had become highly targeted and structured in its presentation. Unlike before, the directed nature of the information constrained the experiment. She halted the process after creating a single poem, noting how the algorithm’s impact shaped the content in an entirely new way. This poem became the basis for the “eighth poem” presented here.
These developments sparked discussions with painter Mircea Bochiș, known for his collaborations with artists on projects blending images, poems, and interventions using tools like Google Translate. Their dialogue inspired the creation of two illustrated object-books, combining poetry and visual art, marking a continuation of Irian’s experimental journey.
Regarding the Facebook poems project, the artist Mircea Bochiș stated that the most challenging part was finding the form they needed to take: “Because Cristina Irian's 8 poems have no beginning or end, and you might even get the impression at some point that they weren’t created to be read. If you add the fact that they might partially be a product of Facebook, then things get extremely complicated. Cristina Irian seems to communicate to us that the experiment isn’t over [for those unaware of this] and, through her 8 poems, allows us to drift into a seemingly real world, closely watched from behind by the virtual realm of social networks.
I have not encountered poems like Cristina Irian’s before, which do not belong to the real world as we perceive it. Yet, they exist, demonstrating that experimentation can be a solution in this fluid world we live in. Cristina Irian’s poems are like a labyrinth in which, once you enter, there’s little chance of returning to where you started. I don’t know what it’s like inside this labyrinth, so I’ve preferred to remain outside for now.”
Concept, manifesto: Mircea Bochiş
Photo, text: Ana-Cristina Irian. – Craiova : Omnia Photo, 2023
The project is part of the subtheme Technopoetics - AI, Digital Media and the Future of Creativity
Author
Mircea BOCHIȘ
Mircea BOCHIȘ is a painter, sculptor, engraver, and video artist. He studied fine arts at the “Ion Andreescu” Institute of Art in Cluj-Napoca and is currently active in Baia Mare. The artist, a member of Romanian Fine Arts Union, is present on the international stage with 19 monumental marble sculptures, over 200 bronze sculptures, several thousand large-scale paintings, 43 experimental films, and 23 object books. For the artist, object books represent “a direct translation of a text or an author into a specific language. This specific language allows the text to take on another form and transform into an ineffable image, an image that can have as many shapes as you are willing to translate.”
Author
Omnia Photo
OMNIA PHOTO is a Romanian cultural association that also operates as a publishing house specializing in contemporary photography and experimental visual art albums. Its primary mission is to promote visual arts, with a particular emphasis on both contemporary and historical photography. The association's most recent photo book, “Fântânile Olteniei MMXVII / The Water Wells of Oltenia MMXVII,” received recognition at Romanian Visual Awards 2024.
Author
Cristina Irian
Cristina IRIAN is a research-based artist, visual arts researcher, and curator who works with collections, photographic archives, and multimedia materials. She studied sociology (Trento & Regensburg), visual anthropology (Bucharest & Perugia), and holds a Ph.D. in visual arts from UNARTE Bucharest.
Her artistic practice, guided by the motto “No one left behind”, focuses on objects of memory, integrating photographic material into contemporary art pieces. Cristina has participated in over 50 exhibitions in Romania and abroad and is a member of Romanian Fine Arts Union and Futures, European Photography Platform. As part of her experimental endeavours in visual research and new technologies, she published the photo book „STRATA / B” (Omnia Photo, 2020, https://omnia.photo/2022/02/23/cristina-irian-stratab-ebook/).
Subsequent experiments conducted between 2016 and 2020 resulted in two object-books - “The Seven Poems of Cristina Irian” (available on Versopolis, Poetry Expo 2024) and “The Eighth Poem of Cristina Irian” - created in collaboration with artist Mircea Bochiș.
