“Tape Mark 3” is a variation of “Tape Mark 1” written by Nanni Balestrini in 1961. The original work is a generative combinatorial poem formed by solely three strophes of three different poems which are randomly and continuously rearranged by an algorithm generated by an IBM 7070 computer. Due to the progress of technology, this particular IBM system has become obsolete. For many years only the diagram for the algorithm was available.

“Tape Mark 3” is written in Perl Language and composed of the first two strophes of the following poems:

“I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” by William Wordsworth;

“Perhaps One Morning Walking” by Eugenio Montale;

“Limits” by Jorge Luis Borges;

The three poems on which “Tape Mark 3” is based are thematically different - (following the example of the original poem - and are chosen without a specific reason, except for a few similarities of the content, i.e. a lonely man absorbed in his thoughts, walking and looking at nature - wherefore all verbs are expressed in 1st person singular - and the concept of limit and margin - thus creating a common theme in all possible variations of the poem.

The verses of these poems are arranged in a different order at every click on the button placed at the end of the composition. All versions of the poem consist of 23 verses and the code had to be changed accordingly. The most important modification was made by disabling some metacharacters in regular expressions to allow the flawless regeneration of the poem.

The original code was written by Wayne Clements to create a new version of “Tape Mark 1” using the same poems as Balestrini written in English. Both the code and the poem written by Clements are available on the author’s webpage . The code of "Tape Mark 3" is available on github.com/edgedpub.

“Tape Mark 3” follows the works of Nanni Balestrini and Clements and is distinguished by the number 3 in its title, because Balestrini published a book titled “Tape Mark 2” in 1963 in which he wrote similar poems using verses written by himself.

“Tape Mark 3” is a sample work for my practice-based PhD research study on the performative aesthetics of enhanced e-books proceeding from Johanna Drucker’s book “SpecLab: Digital Aesthetics and Projects in Speculative Computing” (2009). In “Tape Mark 3”, I demonstrate the interplay between programming language and natural language and how performative aesthetics is generated in the software program. Moreover, the poem is also an example of remediation and transcoding. Latter concept is to be understood as “translation between machine-readable code and human readable text, and also between codes of different programming languages and systems” as M. Portela, S. Pold and M. Mencía describe it in their essay “Electronic Literature Translation: Translation as Process, Experience and Mediation” (2018).