Cristina Moreno Sempere . Jessica Martínez Esteve . + ISARCH
In the novel ‘Life a user’s manual’, the author, Georges Perec, writes about a Parisian apartment block. The book tells the story of the building, the lives of the inhabitants and how both of them evolve throughout 100 years.
CORRIENTE OuLiPo “Ouvroir de littérature potentielle”
The author belongs to a group called OULIPO, is a loose gathering of French-speaking writers and mathematicians who seek to create works using constrained writing techniques.
The constraint imposed in this novel by the author was THE KNIGHT’S TOUR. The narrative of the book is based on the solution to the knight’s tour chosen by Perec, since million exist. Perec devises the elevation of the building as a 10×10 grid: 10 storeys, including basements and attics and 10 rooms across, including 2 for the stairwell. Each room is assigned to a chapter, and the order of the chapters is giuen by the knight’s moues on the grid. The entire block is primarily presented frozen in time, on June 23,1975, just before 8 pm.
In the drawing above it is observed the real elevation of the building. It has been drawn bearing in mind the architectural and social characteristics that were given in that time.
To continue with the current OULIPO, wehave decided to choose another solution to the knight’s tour. When changing the position of all rooms, the flats remain separated and unconnected. For what we have established a few rules of connection using the most representative elements that are described in the book.We have inventoried all the prominent objects that are described and have selected 5 of them: lamps, chimneys, paintings, humans and non-humans and with each of them we have associated a type of connection that we explain later.
If in a stay of a housing we find some of the inventoried elements, this one can connect with any other room of the same house using the method of connection associated with this element.
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