Oulipo | vs | Recombinant Poetics

This paper compares and contrasts approaches to combinatorics in OULIPO and Recombinant Poetics. OULIPO, also known as Ouvroir de Litérature Potentielle, is a literary and artistic association founded in the 1960s whose combinatoric methods and experimental concepts continue to be generative and relevant to this day. Recombinant Poetics is a term that I coined in 1995 in order to define a particular approach to emergent meaning that is used in generative virtual environments and other computer-based combinatoric media forms. Combinatoric works enable the exploration of sets of media elements in different orders and combinations. The meaning of such work is derived through dynamic interaction. Another group exploring combinatorics uses digital audio techniques. The abbreviation “VS” (“versus”) is often used in techno-audio remix culture to designate the remix of one group's music by another, often having only an oblique relation to the original.