Couple Machine is an infinite combinatorial system that creates literature by pulling from Balzac’s novel two homographs belonging to both the French and English language (real and false friends).

This generative literature machine extends infinite potentialities and a proliferation of meaning, each one embedded in a language, a culture, and an individual’s experience. The literariness of each output is determined by the reader’s role as meaning-making agents within the literary exchange.

Between French and English, between partners in a marital union, between two fictional brides with opposing values, between reader and writer, between human and machine, between literature and art — the duet being played out on these multiple registers gives way to connection, dissonance, breakdowns in communication. This miscommunication is instantiated in the typo in the book’s title, which alters the meaning from “Letters of two brides” to “Memories of two newlyweds”, giving a personal dimension to a work by two artists, each from different cultural-linguistic backgrounds, who are married to each other.

Kalen Iwamoto x Julien Silvano (Wen New Atelier), Couple Machine, 2024. Wood, mirror, book, cables and Raspberry Pi, 25 x 17 cm.