Prosthesis is a book of print/sound poems. Infused with the syntax of source code and the cadences of machinic speech, the project is concerned with the question of where the apparatus ends and the body begins. The book's text, partially generated with custom software, combines human and computer languages. It functions both as poetry on the page and as a set of scores for live sound poetry performances.
Prosthesis poems on SoundCloud ↗
"Flooded with voices not its own, with flows of information and code both seductive and alienating, the multitudinous "I" speaking from within Prosthesis addresses us tenderly, beseechingly, grappling with felt loss, with immersive gain, both of which overwhelm as wave after wave of irreversible feedback expand the entrapping and enabling network, itself a prosthesis for us all."
— Stephanie Strickland
"Everyday our language is being transfigured by processes and devices — enjoined to us and running in our bodies, minds, and memories. Hatcher knows, feels, and makes these processes his writing. They may present and celebrate themselves as glitched symbolic images, yet they are true impressions of what we are already and of what we may become."
— John Cayley
"No one has explored our current language as signal and processing in quite the same way as Ian Hatcher. In Prosthesis, test pattern / text pattern works perform their constructions / deconstructions of the communicative structures of contemporary poetic practice in acts of (un)making that are sensually rich and intellectually provocative."
— Johanna Drucker
Publications:
Published by Poor Claudia (2016)
Audio versions are included in the Electronic Literature Collection, vol. 3
Press:
Review of Prosthesis, Publishers Weekly
Heather McAdams, Book Review: Prosthesis, Coal Hill Review
Eunice Gonçalves Duarte, Performing Words, Electronic Literature Directory
Steven Wingate, Multiplicity: An Interview with Ian Hatcher, Rain Taxi
See also:
