La langue, matière à machines

This article presents an interlinked series of inquiries concerning the material inscription of language. This inscription is explored in its poetic and symptomatic aspects, as well as by way of a “machined” cartography. Sound and concrete poems isolate the acoustic component of oral language and the visual dimension of writing. A figure in the domain of art brut invents alphabets to grasp the being of words. A designer seeks to apply his “onto-cartographic” method beyond an original application to industrial design objects. Integrating these three investigations into the same experimental set, we endeavoured to meta-model the way in which investment in the plastic and sonic values of language expands, and disrupts the field of signification. Our experimental method involves building a machine, based on the upcycling of a video game terminal. We describe its genesis and show how its design reflects, in turn, four “material planes” of a poem by Bernard Heidsieck, and a dual topological series of images by Francis Palanc, pertaining to the possible and impossible relations between signifiers.