cut-ups, william s burroughs, brion gysin et al

quick links for this section

the lazarus corporation text mixing desk - an online cut-up engine

click here to play with the lazarus corporation text mixing desk

the text mixing desk includes a william burroughs style cut-up engine, a transgenderiser, a rasta patois translation device and a watergate-style "expletive deleted" module, all selectable as outboard modules to the main mixing desk.

we will be releasing more outboard modules as soon as we develop them.

the php source code and relevant images are available on gnu public licence by clicking here (zip file).

if you have any queries, problems or suggestions, please feel free to contact us.

the press release

Taking their inspiration from the philosophy of sampling, William Burroughs' cut-up technique, Jeff Noon's "Cobralingus" project and too many long nights spent on music mixing desks, art-text-terrorists the Lazarus Corporation have created an online mixing desk - for writing.

The text mixing desk manipulates your writing with a succession of outboard effects - such as the "transgenderiser", which swaps the sex of any gender-specific words faster than a Thai plastic surgeon, and the Burroughs inspired "cut-up engine" which takes a pair of scissors to your work and dances gleefully on the bleeding remains of your carefully constructed sentences.

But why on earth would you want to mangle your precisely worded prose in this way? Well, the Godfather of Beat and author of "Naked Lunch", William S Burroughs, explains it best:

"The best writing seems to be done almost by accident but writers until the cut-up method was made explicit ... had no way to produce the accident of spontaneity. You cannot will spontaneity. But you can introduce the spontaneous factor with a pair of scissors."

...or in the case of the Lazarus Corporation's text mixing desk, with some sharply written lines of code. This is, after all, the 21st century.

comments on the text mixing desk

"This is terrific"
Alan Sondheim (poet, critic, and theorist who writes on and about the Internet. His books include Disorders of the Real, and the anthology Being on Line.)

"very cool - got some nice results"
www.headmap.org (informal guerilla (distributed) think tank - site no longer live)

"Thank you for the information on this exciting project, I had a lot of fun playing!"
www.noonworld.co.uk (jeff noon fansite - no longer live)

"A more entertaining cut-up generator is to be found at the Lazarus Corporation site. This lets you enter text and then optionally cut it up, change the genders and even 'rasta-ize' it."
PC Plus magazine, issue 216 - spring 2004.

Some more cut-up engines and cut-up related links:

update jan 2004: we've been searching the web for pages about the cut-up technique, cut-up scripts and engines, and other information about this type of experimental writing. we're pleased to now offer you our updated and extended list of quality links:

click here for our page of links to cut-up engines, scripts, information, techniques and other experimental text manipulation ideas.

a brief explanation of cut-up for the uninitiated

The Cut-Up technique is to writing what collage is to visual art. Its recent use was pioneered by William Burroughs and Brion Gysin, and later David Bowie used it during the 1970s. The basic method is simple - write a piece of work, cut the paper up with scissors, and rearrange the pieces to form new phrases and new meanings.

Obviously, using this method can and will produce results which you're not happy with, but the surprising thing is how many of the results are successful. Sometimes all that is needed is a quick read through of the results, adding punctuation and deleting the occasional word to produce the finished results. Purists might complain about editing the cut-up text, but this process is a tool which you can choose to use at any stage in the process of writing.