Katherine N. Hayles writes in Writing Machines, "Zampanò suggests this chapter should be called "The Labyrinth", a title that makes explicit what is already implicit in typgraphy, that house of leaves mirrors the House on Ashtree Lane, both of which are figured as a labyrinth, a motif already embossed in black-on-black on the cover" (p. 122).

Shapes resembling "windows" from the house repeatedly come up in the book. On the left page, an object - seemingly a flower pot, is removed from the page.

On the literature stack exchange, Zyerah answers a question about whether House of Leaves would function well as an e-book by providing a number of examples of the importance of the book's physical presence, although they mention that prior knowledge of how the book is supposed to work may allow it to be read in e-book form later on.

One example that Zyerah brings up is visible on this page - the text often moves in different directions, which is very difficult to read on a computer screen. In this case, the text is read-able, but makes itself very difficult to read.

Several pages in House of Leaves, as shown in the video uploaded by Zyerah, mirror the same image on both sides of a printed page. N. Katherine Hayles writes "The box calls into question an assumption so commonplace we are not normally aware of it - that book pages are opaque, a property that defines one page as separate from another" (p. 123).

Zyerah's forum response, is itself hypertextual and heavily annotated, which the author is well aware of. Zyerah writes: "Footnote 310 has footnotes of its own. Those footnotes take you to other places in the book, and now you need five bookmarks. And look, honestly, I didn't want this example to be 450 words long, but that's kind of the point, isn't it?"

It seems that any mention of the book that isn't hypertextual (N. Katherine Hayle's relatively short chapter in Writing Machines as one such example) is an exception.

Curiously, the original user who asked the question, BESW writes: "This is an awesome answer to a question very adjacent to the one I've asked …" where Zyerah responds: "@BESW Apologies for addressing an adjacent point! I… may have gotten a little carried away… ". This exchange highlights the compulsion that the book brings out to annotate, explain, discover hidden footnotes - and show these footnotes to people who haven't found them yet.

Zyerah writes: "I've uploaded a video of me simply flipping through a tunnel in the book. With the application of a little kinesthetic thought, there's a physical sense given to the reader that this tunnel is actually inside the book. If you look at the pages as they're stacked together, you look at the wall you reach at the end of the tunnel, and you look back, and it's supposed to feel like you can look through the book.

This isn't something that's going to be very easy to pick up on using an ebook. Ebooks make it difficult to look at past pages and think about them being a stack of pages."

The converging text on the right hand side is initially readable but then slowly merges to a point where it is unable to be fully decoded.

Collecting objects, here in an act of boredom, removes them from their function.

Craig Dworkin wrotes Arcades in Zero Kerning: "What is decisive in collecting is that the object is detached from all its original functions in order to enter into the closest conceivable relation to things of the same kind. The relation is the diametric opposite of any utility, and falls into the peculiar category of completeness."

The act of collecting has the potential to transform objects into a function outside of everyday utility and monotony, and fulfill a spiritual need of completeness.

Foster Wallace contrasts the boy's work here with working at the IRS. While both are impossible to complete, the boy's repetitive actions are working towards a spiritual goal: loosening the body's grip on itself.

This arrangement allows patterns to emerge organically. We use a similar concept in our visual gallery http://forboredom.com/gallery/

2:30 The background sounds of the party are also not mean to be fully decoded.

Vime writes: "Visit Lot49 and read the text for yourself. As well, take the time to read the comments on Mr. Claburn's blog about user 23187425. There is a great deal of conjecture, and perhaps the beginning of an outline of who or what made these wonderfully enigmatic searches. The voice of Vicki may be more appropriate than we initially imagined." Perhaps the voice of Vicki, a robotic computer default, may be especially appropriate in reading this text due to the methodical nature of the entires (approximately every 30 seconds) or, as a commentator from Search-ID: Psychic analysis of AOL users and their search logs writes, "I think something else is going on here, though I'd have no idea how and why…". Perhaps something in the search-engine backend holds clues about this user's search history.

Notably, this reading by Dr. Stanley Lombardo was not intended to be used when reading 'Men in Aida', but rather when reading 'Illiad'. By writing 'Men in Aida' without providing an auditory component, Melnick opens up any reading of the Illiad as corresponding to this text.

An interview with Kenneth Goldsmith touching on general themes in Against Expression: https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/against-expression-kenneth-goldsmith-conversation

A common theme across multiple objects is the communication of something other than meaning, such as in works where words are not meant to be fully decoded and instead become visual objects.

Perelman writes in The Marginalization of Poetry: Language Writing and Literary History: "Like Hegel, for whom the spiritual value of the classical languages was manifest even down to their grammatical elements, and like Arnold, for whom Homer represented a natural fact and a primary literary touchstone, Melnick is taking the words of Homer as a sacred given, valuing the actual sound of the greek above the meaning."

Boredom - as mediated through texting - is associated with a lack of memory, an inability to retain specific memories.

Texting indicators of boredom. It's unclear whether texting relieves the boredom of waiting, or whether texting is itself compounding that boredom.

Ticinovic (2000) describes the real in Underworld as sensory and human activity versus the "selective realities of capital's media - TV, video, movies, newspapers, etc." (p. 24, Master's Thesis). In this, as in many other texts, one interpretation of the real as 'god' or as 'spiritual' is a hyper-focus on the sensory rather than the mediated. This is especially notable in The Gospel According to David Foster Wallace.

The text is composed of historical and cultural debris, although it is not drawn directly from a real-world referent (such as Day by Kenneth Goldsmith). This type of text occupies an imaginative space in between the type of conceptual work like Day and a fully fictional work. How do we categorise this kind of work? It shares features with other works that include both real and imagined information (The Dust, House of Leaves).

Ticinovic (2000, Master's thesis) suggests that the fragmentation in Underworld is "not an ahistorical postmodern pastiche of fragments, but instead represents a turn in Delillo's work towards a new spirituality or humanism, one which preserves a postmodern aesthetic of plurality and reaches beyond the sometimes banal issues of regionalism."

Underworld challenges the assumption that books are composed of one unit of cohesive information.

Coupland's work, in contrast to that of Jorindge Voigt and Joseph Kosuth, is physically legible.

information about information

Gottlieb's objects are both extremely specific (e.g. make, size, type) and universal in that they include brands familiar to many readers. The poem draws attention to the number of possible descriptors for each of our objects, even without information on a specific object's time course (i.e. from production to stocking to purchase). By contrast, Gottlieb doesn't include any additional information in the name listings.

In Gottlieb's poem, all written text is treated as objects.

Blending the real and the imagined. Similar to the use of both real and imagined sources in House of Leaves. As noted in an annotation on House of Leaves: "Interweaving real and made up authors could be another form of haunting. Mark Taylor describes "the real" and "god" as synonymous in Rewiring the Real. Sparsely including the real may be a way to draw attention to it."In this case, imaginative speculation can be especially ghostly - what does it mean to make up a name in this list? What does it mean to make up an object?

Photo from a 2005 reading at the TARPAULIN SKY / FREQUENCY SERIES:

Curiously, it was difficult to find relevant information on The Dust online because of it's literary success. Since Gottlieb frequently mentions The Dust in biography statements, I had to sift through many other works by Gottlieb.

The Dust has been staged several times, such as in this 2011 version directed by Fiona Templeton. I was unable to find photographs or videos of the performances, and am curious as to how a list was transformed for the stage.

Even once Gottlieb transitions to people's names, he still interweaves people's names with objects.

One critical difference between Day and The Dust is the Day takes a mundane, everyday issue of the New York Times as it's material, while The Dust considers an emotionally loaded event. While similar in form, The Dust utilises the mundane to withhold affect and Day reprints the mundane for readers to attend to.

Interestingly, Goldsmith later published The Day, which took a newspaper from September 11th as it's material.

Perhaps an object of Gottlieb's imaginative speculation - a receipt?

Having never interacted with AOL on the internet, I repeatedly confused it with IM software, like MSN and ICQ, when reading this description.

Artist Rob Lycett also created two works using the search queries of User 23187425. The first, AOL 23187425 24.07.2015, is a visual representation of the search queries in google images: http://www.breakingthings.info/?/draw/AOLgoogle/

The second, 23187425 {1000 Haiku} is a poetic representation of the queries in a printed book format. http://www.breakingthings.info/?/text/haiku/

Artist Rob Lycett also created two works using the search queries of User 23187425. The first, AOL 23187425 24.07.2015, is a visual representation of the search queries in google images: http://www.breakingthings.info/?/draw/AOLgoogle/

The second, 23187425 {1000 Haiku} is a poetic representation of the queries in a printed book format. http://www.breakingthings.info/?/text/haiku/

The Museum for Viral Memory (http://www.vime.org/previous/user_23187425.html) recorded a number of User 23187425's search queries as sound recordings. On their website, they write: "Downloading and reading these search queries we were instantly reminded of writings by people in manic states. It was like revisiting writings we have received from friends and family suffering from the psychotic highs of manic depression. It also reminded us of the authors that we at the MVM continually rework - Samuel Beckett, Antonin Artaud and William S. Burroughs." I found it fascinating that my search into User 123187425 had led back to Beckett, who is referenced in a number of other Objects on this site.

The Museum of Viral Memory has a UDV project which seeks to record all of Beckett's work. On their website, they describe why they chose Beckett in particular: "We chose to make my first foray into the voice the works of Beckett because hearing them is the closest thing to hearing music we have ever encountered in the spoken language. His words and the diction they demand are closer to plainchant or shape note than speech. They are also the closest thing to a transcription of the inner dialogue as we have ever encountered."

Notably, 'plainchant' and 'shape note' are both congregational singing practices.

The Museum for Viral Memory (http://www.vime.org/previous/user_23187425.html) recorded a number of User 23187425's search queries as sound recordings. On their website, they write: "Downloading and reading these search queries we were instantly reminded of writings by people in manic states. It was like revisiting writings we have received from friends and family suffering from the psychotic highs of manic depression. It also reminded us of the authors that we at the MVM continually rework - Samuel Beckett, Antonin Artaud and William S. Burroughs." I found it fascinating that my search into User 123187425 had led back to Beckett, who is referenced in a number of other Objects on this site.

The Museum of Viral Memory has a UDV project which seeks to record all of Beckett's work. On their website, they describe why they chose Beckett in particular: "We chose to make my first foray into the voice the works of Beckett because hearing them is the closest thing to hearing music we have ever encountered in the spoken language. His words and the diction they demand are closer to plainchant or shape note than speech. They are also the closest thing to a transcription of the inner dialogue as we have ever encountered."

Notably, 'plainchant' and 'shape note' are both congregational singing practices.

On the website Search-ID: Psychic analysis of AOL users and their search logs, many people speculate on this user's personality and reasons for searching for 'nothing' on AOL. The tone of messages feels closer to a one-sided Instant-Messaging conversation, and the user never actually clicks on any links that come up from the search queries. One commenter, Choronzon's Girl suggests that this user "seems to be talking both to self and to some other entity (God, the Internet, the AOL Robot Therapist?)" Another commenter suggests that AOL search is a covert channel to log a conversation, particularly because the search queries "are entered methodically every 30 seconds or so, give or take, for continuous stretches lasting several hours." Another commenter writes "I think something else is going on here, though I'd have no idea how and why..."

This particular user is distinct from other AOL users, whose search queries are much more typical. For instance, AOL user #11496059 searched for "clearance prom dresses", "prom hair styles", "prom hair styles for medium length hair", "cute prom hairstyles", "updo hairstyles", etc.

Comments from: http://explicit-id.com/user/23187425-homeless_joe

On the website Search-ID: Psychic analysis of AOL users and their search logs, many people speculate on this user's personality and reasons for searching for 'nothing' on AOL. The tone of messages feels closer to a one-sided Instant-Messaging conversation, and the user never actually clicks on any links that come up from the search queries. One commenter, Choronzon's Girl suggests that this user "seems to be talking both to self and to some other entity (God, the Internet, the AOL Robot Therapist?)" Another commenter suggests that AOL search is a covert channel to log a conversation, particularly because the search queries "are entered methodically every 30 seconds or so, give or take, for continuous stretches lasting several hours." Another commenter writes "I think something else is going on here, though I'd have no idea how and why..."

This particular user is distinct from other AOL users, whose search queries are much more typical. For instance, AOL user #11496059 searched for "clearance prom dresses", "prom hair styles", "prom hair styles for medium length hair", "cute prom hairstyles", "updo hairstyles", etc.

Comments from: http://explicit-id.com/user/23187425-homeless_joe

Having never interacted with AOL on the internet, I repeatedly confused it with IM software, like MSN and ICQ, when reading this description.

The search queries seem to follow a kind of narrative sequence where subsequent entries reference the content of previous ones. This is puzzling, because the first query has to be erased from the search bar for the second one to be typed in, so the only way the search terms would show up as a sequence are perhaps in this user's browser history. User 23187425 was slowly typing one thought at a time in methodical intervals. The act of typing these search queries, slowly, and one at a time, is similar to the slow methodical typing that Kenneth Goldsmith does of the New York Times issue for Day.

This experience is further mediated as Thomas Claburn methodically typed User 231187425's queries.

Interweaving real and made up authors could be another form of haunting. Mark Taylor describes "the real" and "god" as synonymous in Rewiring the Real. Sparsely including the real may be a way to draw attention to it.

Similar to the annotations in Foster Wallace's writing (footnotes on footnotes) and Jorinde Voigt's writing. The compulsion to annotate and explain is so strong, that it overwhelms the original text.

House of Leaves is often described as ergodic literature, meaning that "nontrivial effort is required to allow the reader to traverse the text" (Aarseth, 1997, p. 2). Aarseth writes, "… hypertexts, adventure games, and so forth are not texts the way the average literary work is a text. In what way, then, are they texts? They produce verbal structures, for aesthetic effect. This makes them similar to other literary phenomena. But they are also something more, and it is this added paraverbal dimension that is so hard to see."

In Re-writing Freud by Simon Morris, words are randomly selected from Interpretation of Dreams, although "flashes of meaning persist, haunting the text."

Zyerah writes about using bookmarks in the physical book: "The sheer quantity of bookmarks - and their positions in the books - is part of the significance of the text. This is hard to reconstruct, but as you read the text, you'll quickly find that one bookmark isn't enough. Then, two. Then, three. At one point, I required seven bookmarks in order to trace my path through the text. Where are the bookmarks? The bookmarks are where you get caught, snagged on some thorn in the book's side. It's a physical indicator that confounds your perception of your own progress."

As seen from these photographs and the gif at the bottom, House of Leaves is hard to photograph or video. Many of its elements are specific to print, such as an object on one side which is mirrored on the other side of the same page.

Zyerah's forum response, is itself hypertextual and heavily annotated, which the author is well aware of. Zyerah writes: "Footnote 310 has footnotes of its own. Those footnotes take you to other places in the book, and now you need five bookmarks. And look, honestly, I didn't want this example to be 450 words long, but that's kind of the point, isn't it?"

It seems that any mention of the book that isn't hypertextual (N. Katherine Hayle's relatively short chapter in Writing Machines as one such example) is an exception.

Curiously, the original user who asked the question, BESW writes: "This is an awesome answer to a question very adjacent to the one I've asked ..." where Zyerah responds: "@BESW Apologies for addressing an adjacent point! I... may have gotten a little carried away... ". This exchange highlights the compulsion that the book brings out to annotate, explain, discover hidden footnotes - and show these footnotes to people who haven't found them yet.

Several pages in House of Leaves, as shown in the video uploaded by Zyerah, mirror the same image on both sides of a printed page. N. Katherine Hayles writes "The box calls into question an assumption so commonplace we are not normally aware of it - that book pages are opaque, a property that defines one page as separate from another" (p. 123).

Zyerah writes about using bookmarks in the physical book: "The sheer quantity of bookmarks - and their positions in the books - is part of the significance of the text. This is hard to reconstruct, but as you read the text, you'll quickly find that one bookmark isn't enough. Then, two. Then, three. At one point, I required seven bookmarks in order to trace my path through the text. Where are the bookmarks? The bookmarks are where you get caught, snagged on some thorn in the book's side. It's a physical indicator that confounds your perception of your own progress."

Zyerah writes: "I've uploaded a video of me simply flipping through a tunnel in the book. With the application of a little kinesthetic thought, there's a physical sense given to the reader that this tunnel is actually inside the book. If you look at the pages as they're stacked together, you look at the wall you reach at the end of the tunnel, and you look back, and it's supposed to feel like you can look through the book.

This isn't something that's going to be very easy to pick up on using an ebook. Ebooks make it difficult to look at past pages and think about them being a stack of pages."

Katherine N. Hayles writes in Writing Machines, "Zampanò suggests this chapter should be called "The Labyrinth", a title that makes explicit what is already implicit in typgraphy, that house of leaves mirrors the House on Ashtree Lane, both of which are figured as a labyrinth, a motif already embossed in black-on-black on the cover" (p. 122).

Shapes resembling "windows" from the house repeatedly come up in the book. On the left page, an object - seemingly a flower pot, is removed from the page.

On the literature stack exchange, Zyerah answers a question about whether House of Leaves would function well as an e-book by providing a number of examples of the importance of the book's physical presence, although they mention that prior knowledge of how the book is supposed to work may allow it to be read in e-book form later on.

One example that Zyerah brings up is visible on this page - the text often moves in different directions, which is very difficult to read on a computer screen. In this case, the text is read-able, but makes itself very difficult to read.

As seen from these photographs and the gif at the bottom, House of Leaves is hard to photograph or video. Many of its elements are specific to print, such as an object on one side which is mirrored on the other side of the same page.

The converging text on the right hand side is initially readable but then slowly merges to a point where it is unable to be fully decoded.

House of Leaves is often described as ergodic literature, meaning that "nontrivial effort is required to allow the reader to traverse the text" (Aarseth, 1997, p. 2). Aarseth writes, "... hypertexts, adventure games, and so forth are not texts the way the average literary work is a text. In what way, then, are they texts? They produce verbal structures, for aesthetic effect. This makes them similar to other literary phenomena. But they are also something more, and it is this added paraverbal dimension that is so hard to see."

The search queries seem to follow a kind of narrative sequence where subsequent entries reference the content of previous ones. This is puzzling, because the first query has to be erased from the search bar for the second one to be typed in, so the only way the search terms would show up as a sequence are perhaps in this user's browser history. User 23187425 was slowly typing one thought at a time in methodical intervals. The act of typing these search queries, slowly, and one at a time, is similar to the slow methodical typing that Kenneth Goldsmith does of the New York Times issue for Day.

This experience is further mediated as Thomas Claburn methodically typed User 231187425's queries.

Both Sophie LeFragga and Joseph Kosuth reference Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett in their works. Waiting for Godot has been interpreted as allegory for various religious and political messages, with the name 'Godot' often interpreted as 'God'. However, Beckett himself stated that "If by Godot I had meant God I would have said God, and not Godot" (Brater, 2003). He has also said, "It means what it says" (Croall, 2005), suggesting a pushback to more 'meaningful' interpretations. At the end of his novel Watt (1953), Beckett writes "no symbols where none intended."

Beckett seems primarily concerned with existential meaning, the lack of possible meaning, and 'nothingness', rather than religiously constructed meaning. This may be a similar division to that between religious and spiritual modes of inquiry.

Freud, similarly to Beckett, seems to be popular reference text for many conceptual artists. In Beckett and Freud by Raymond Riva (1970), Riva connects the works of Beckett and Freud, writing "We will see that their very basic ideas concerning men, and occasionally, even their word choice is a particular situation, is strikingly similar." (p. 120)

"Beckett seems to be communicating in an essentially symbolic language, one which is quite capable of communication while seeming to say nothing and going nowhere. A language, moreover, which all of us learned and (more of less) have forgotten. It is, in Freudian terms, the language of our repressed and sublimated selves ... "

This distinction seems to be a central theme across the objects on For Boredom. The Pale King clearly deals with the absence of meaning, while House of Leaves, with its fake footnotes and citations, deals primarily with the production of meaning. What does it mean for Kosuth to investigate the production of meaning by citing a work that deals with the absence of meaning?

Language or text mimics meaning.

Words are no meant to be wholly decoded - connection to Jorinde Voigt's work:

If translation is to refrain from communicating something, then is it communicating nothing?

Words as objects

As with many other objects, Goldsmith uses a reference text to reshape and reformat the text's original meanings.

Moving information into different containers and changing their spacing occurs across a number of the objects discussed in For Boredom as a way to communicate something other than meaning.

Kibbins invents text that imitates the tone of a textbook or learning materials, suggesting the presence of meaning.

Words are rearranged into nonsense sentences and paired with nonsense images.

The text is obscured and not meant to be fully decoded, as in Jorinde Voigt's and Joseph Kosuth's works.

Visual similarity to Texts (Waiting for—) for Nothing; Samuel Beckett, in play, where neon text was 'cancelled' by being dipped into black paint - reducing legibility. Here, legibility is reduced by shading and the speed and quantity of text moving through the screen.

Mimicking content/ information

Boredom associated with a lack of memory

Texting indications of boredom

Listing and collecting items to put them back into their original function rather than remove them from their original function.

The text is about nothing.

Interweaving of real with imagined. Similar to Underworld's use of real and imaged sources.

The text is used to communicate nothing.

Words are not meant to be wholly decoded. Connection to Jorinde Voigt's annotations.

Flashes of meaning persist despite an attempt to eliminate meaning. Perhaps this suggests that meaning is impossible to eradicate?

Connection to Underworld, "hope of finding patterns where there seems to be nothing but noise".

Similar and opposite to Adam S. Miller's statement about Foster Wallace's work in The Gospel According to David Foster Wallace: "The real is full of noise, and more, it’s full of patterns that look like noise."

Interweaving real and made up authors could be another form of haunting. Mark Taylor describes "the real" and "god" as synonymous in Rewiring the Real. Sparsely including the real may be a way to draw attention to it.

Similar to the annotations in Foster Wallace's writing (footnotes on footnotes) and Jorinde Voigt's writing. The compulsion to annotate and explain is so strong, that it overwhelms the original text.

In Re-writing Freud by Simon Morris, words are randomly selected from Interpretation of Dreams, although "flashes of meaning persist, haunting the text."

Foster Wallace contrasts the boy's work here with working at the IRS. While both are impossible to complete, the boy's repetitive actions are working towards a spiritual goal: loosening the body's grip on itself.

Collecting objects, here in an act of boredom, removes them from their function.

Craig Dworkin wrotes Arcades in Zero Kerning: "What is decisive in collecting is that the object is detached from all its original functions in order to enter into the closest conceivable relation to things of the same kind. The relation is the diametric opposite of any utility, and falls into the peculiar category of completeness."

The act of collecting has the potential to transform objects into a function outside of everyday utility and monotony, and fulfill a spiritual need of completeness.

patterns that look like noise or noise that we read as patterns?

Link to Zero Kerning by Craig Dworkin - collecting objects removes them from their function.

List of objects: connection to The Pale King and Zero Kerning by Craig Dworkin

Similar goal? Collecting to detach from original function?

Connection to Underworld, "hope of finding patterns where there seems to be nothing but noise."

Similar to multiple interweaving plots in Underworld