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35-529: The cut-up technique (or découpé in French) is an aleatory narrative technique in which a written text is cut up and rearranged to create a new text. The concept can be traced to the Dadaists of the 1920s, but it was developed and popularized in the 1950s and early 1960s, especially by writer William Burroughs . It has since been used in a wide variety of contexts. The cut-up and the closely associated fold-in are

70-483: A 30-second commercial for Kit-E-Kat. In the early part of the 1960s he lived briefly in France working as a location scout and subtitler of French films for their British releases. In Paris , Balch became friendly with radical artists such as William Burroughs and Kenneth Anger . Burroughs and Balch met at Madame Rachou's Beat Hotel , and the two quickly became collaborators. In Barry Miles ’ biography of Burroughs, Balch

105-484: A Dadaist rally in the 1920s in which Tristan Tzara offered to create a poem on the spot by pulling words at random from a hat. Collage , which was popularized roughly contemporaneously with the Surrealist movement, sometimes incorporated texts such as newspapers or brochures. Prior to this event, the technique had been published in an issue of 391 in the poem by Tzara, dada manifesto on feeble love and bitter love under

140-532: A collaboration film, The Cut-Ups that opened in London in 1967. This was part of an abandoned project called Guerrilla Conditions meant as a documentary on Burroughs and filmed throughout 1961–1965. Inspired by Burroughs' and Gysin's technique of cutting up text and rearranging it in random order, Balch had an editor cut his footage for the documentary into little pieces and impose no control over its reassembly. The film opened at Oxford Street 's Cinephone cinema and had

175-523: A combination of newspaper cut-ups that were edited and choreographed for a troupe of non-professional street actors. Kathy Acker , a literary and intermedia artist, sampled external sources and reconfigured them into the creation of shifting versions of her own constructed identity. In her late 1970s novel Blood and Guts in High School , Acker explored literary cut-up and appropriation as an integral part of her method. Antony Balch and Burroughs created

210-475: A cut-up technique known as vocabularyclept poetry , in which a poem is formed by taking all the words of an existing poem and rearranging them, often preserving the metre and stanza lengths. A drama scripted for five voices by performance poet Hedwig Gorski in 1977 originated the idea of creating poetry only for performance instead of for print publication. The "neo-verse drama" titled Booby, Mama! written for "guerilla theater" performances in public places used

245-473: A disturbing reaction. Many audience members claimed the film made them ill, others demanded their money back, while some just stumbled out of the cinema ranting "it's disgusting". Other cut-up films include Ghost at n°9 (Paris) (1963–1972), a posthumously released short film compiled from reels found at Balch's office after his death, and William Buys a Parrott (1982), Bill and Tony (1972), Towers Open Fire (1963) and The Junky's Christmas (1966). In 1962,

280-468: A disturbing reaction. Many audience members claimed the film made them ill, others demanded their money back, while some just stumbled out of the cinema ranting "its disgusting". Included in The Cut-Ups are shots of Burroughs acting out scenes from his book Naked Lunch . The idea of bringing Naked Lunch to the big-screen was Balch's dream project. First developed in 1964, a script with musical numbers

315-460: A more committed investor for his plans to make feature films in producer Richard Gordon . Gordon had a long history in horror cinema, and had been partly responsible for the stage version of Dracula that had allowed Balch to meet Lugosi. Their first film together was shot from a script never fully completed. With Balch using his own money to fund half of the budget what emerged was the deceptively titled Secrets of Sex (1970). Balch's feature debut

350-525: A perfume inventor. Horror Hospital was the most successful of all of Balch's films. While other projects were discussed, including a comedy called The Sex Life of Adolf Hitler and a horror film co-written by Christopher Wicking , Balch never made another feature film. Speaking to the critic Kim Newman in Shock Xpress magazine (vol.2, no.5, 1988), Wicking recalled "I had a crazy meeting with him, when he wanted to do some picture or other. He spent most of

385-826: A showing of the 1930s horror film, Freaks and decided to become a distributor in order to open the film in London . Freaks had been banned in Britain since 1932, but, with the help of Anger, Balch bought the British rights to the film. He released Freaks and Towers Open Fire as part of a triple-bill. Balch was next hired to run two movie theatres in London—The Jacey in Piccadilly Circus and The Times in Baker Street . Balch did everything from choosing what films played, to organizing

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420-411: A strong reference to Burroughs and Gysin." Another industrial music pioneer, Al Jourgensen of Ministry , named Burroughs and his cut-up technique as the most important influence on how he approached the use of samples. Many Elephant 6 bands used decoupe as well, one prominent example of this is seen in " Pree-Sisters Swallowing A Donkey's Eye " by Neutral Milk Hotel . Aleatory The term

455-425: A technique could be used to discover the true meaning of a given text. Burroughs also suggested cut-ups may be effective as a form of divination saying, "When you cut into the present the future leaks out." Burroughs also further developed the "fold-in" technique. In 1977, Burroughs and Gysin published The Third Mind , a collection of cut-up writings and essays on the form. Jeff Nuttall 's publication My Own Mag

490-495: Is "determined in general but depends on chance in detail". When his article was published in English, the translator mistakenly rendered his German noun Aleatorik as an adjective, and so inadvertently created a new English word, "aleatoric". Pierre Boulez applied the term "aleatory" in this sense to his own pieces to distinguish them from the indeterminate music of John Cage . While Boulez purposefully composed his pieces to allow

525-528: Is described as "gay, well dressed with dark hair and an eager smile. After a few drinks he could be quite camp: 'The trouble with fish is that they are so fisheee!’ he once shrieked in a restaurant". Balch gets a "special thanks" credit in Burroughs' novel The Ticket That Exploded and directed the Burroughs-influenced experimental film, Towers Open Fire among other short works. In 1963, Balch attended

560-462: Is in fact a multi-genre anthology film which blends slapstick comedy, spy spoof, bloody horror movie and softcore sex film under the pretext of being a comment on the battle of the sexes. Secrets of Sex was a sensation, running for six months at the Piccadilly Jacey. Encouraged by the film's British success, Balch and Gordon set about a second collaboration called Horror Hospital (1973). In

595-458: The 1960s and for the 1970s horror film, Horror Hospital . Balch's fixation for horror and exploitation movies began early in life, culminating in a school-aged Balch meeting his idol Bela Lugosi in Brighton, England in the early 1950s. Lugosi was touring in a stage version of Dracula at the time. Working his way into the British film industry, Balch directed adverts for Camay soap, and

630-402: The band rehearsed the songs. Perhaps indicative of Thom Yorke's influences, instructions for "How to make a Dada poem" appeared on Radiohead's website at this time. Stephen Mallinder of Cabaret Voltaire reported to Inpress magazine's Andrez Bergen that "I do think the manipulation of sound in our early days – the physical act of cutting up tapes, creating tape loops and all that – has

665-417: The classic exploitation film tradition, the title was invented before the plot. Balch then spent his time locked in a hotel room with co-writer Alan Watson until the script was complete. Horror Hospital featured Michael Gough as the very Lugosi-like Dr. Storm. When Gough asked Balch what he wanted bringing to the role Balch screened him The Devil Bat , a Lugosi classic about a mad scientist masquerading as

700-458: The early 1970s, David Bowie used cut-ups to create some of his lyrics. In 1995, he worked with Ty Roberts to develop a program called Verbasizer for his Apple PowerBook that could automatically rearrange multiple sentences written into it. Thom Yorke applied a similar method in Radiohead 's Kid A (2000) album, writing single lines, putting them into a hat, and drawing them out at random while

735-628: The films tongue-in-cheek English titles and eye catching campaigns like "No photographs permitted of this controversial X Film" (from When Girls Undress ). Balch worked out of an office in Golden Square, Soho and lived in Dalmeney Court on Duke Street. Dalmeney Court's other occupants included Burroughs and artist Brion Gysin plus the occasional celebrity passing through such as The Animals ’ Eric Burdon . A second Balch/Burroughs collaboration film, The Cut-Ups opened in London in 1967. This

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770-644: The first time in his electronic composition Gesang der Jünglinge (1955–56), in the form of statistically structured, massed "complexes" of sounds. Aleatoric techniques are sometimes used in contemporary film music, e.g., in John Williams 's film scores and Mark Snow 's music for X-Files: Fight the Future . Antony Balch Antony Balch (10 September 1937 – 6 April 1980) was an English film director and distributor, best known for his screen collaborations with Beat Generation author William S. Burroughs in

805-599: The front-of-house displays, to keeping an eye on projectionists and janitorial staff. Whereas The Times was more rep oriented, The Jacey specialized in playing exploitation films like Nudist Paradise and the Japanese horror/art-house hit Onibaba . Meanwhile, Balch carried on his career as a distributor, eventually releasing films such as The Corpse Grinders , Kenneth Anger 's Invocation of My Demon Brother , Paul Bowles in Morocco , and Russ Meyer 's Supervixens . Balch

840-556: The performer certain liberties with regard to the sequencing and repetition of parts, Cage often composed through the application of chance operations without allowing the performer liberties. Another composer of aleatory music was the German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen , who had attended Meyer-Eppler's seminars in phonetics, acoustics, and information theory at the University of Bonn from 1954 to 1956, and put these ideas into practice for

875-505: The satirical comedy group Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band , got their name after using the cut-up technique, resulting in "Bonzo Dog Dada": "Bonzo Dog", after the cartoon Bonzo the Dog , and "Dada" after the Dada avant-garde art movement. The group's eventual frontman, Vivian Stanshall , would quote about wanting to form a band with that name. The "Dada" in the phrase was eventually changed to "Doo-Dah". From

910-910: The sub-title, TO MAKE A DADAIST POEM . In the 1950s, painter and writer Brion Gysin more fully developed the cut-up method after accidentally rediscovering it. He had placed layers of newspapers as a mat to protect a tabletop from being scratched while he cut papers with a razor blade . Upon cutting through the newspapers, Gysin noticed that the sliced layers offered interesting juxtapositions of text and image. He began deliberately cutting newspaper articles into sections, which he randomly rearranged. The book Minutes to Go resulted from his initial cut-up experiment: unedited and unchanged cut-ups which emerged as coherent and meaningful prose. South African poet Sinclair Beiles also used this technique and co-authored Minutes To Go . Argentine writer Julio Cortázar used cut ups in his 1963 novel Hopscotch . In 1969, poets Howard W. Bergerson and J. A. Lindon developed

945-404: The term aleatory architecture to describe "a new approach that explicitly includes stochastic (re-) configuration of individual structural elements — that is to say 'chance.'" Charles Hartman discusses several methods of automatic generation of poetry in his book The Virtual Muse . The term aleatory was first coined by Werner Meyer-Eppler in 1955 to describe a course of sound events that

980-526: The term has had varying meanings as it was applied by various composers, and so a single, clear definition for aleatory music is defied. The term was popularised by the musical composer Pierre Boulez , but also Witold Lutosławski and Franco Evangelisti . Its etymology derives from alea , Latin for " dice ", and it is the noun associated with the adjectival aleatory and aleatoric . Aleatory should not be confused with either indeterminacy , or improvisation . Sean Keller and Heinrich Jaeger coined

1015-481: The time walking across the furniture. Languorously, he would walk across three or four chairs. He went into another little world. He was a sad figure in a way, because he was well before his time". In 1978, Balch was diagnosed with stomach cancer , and died on 6 April 1980 aged 42. In 2014, the first book about Antony Balch's life and career, Guerilla Conditions, la folle épopée cinématographique d'Antony Balch avec William Burroughs, Richard Gordon et tous les autres

1050-505: The two main techniques: William Burroughs cited T. S. Eliot 's 1922 poem, The Waste Land , and John Dos Passos ' U.S.A. trilogy , which incorporated newspaper clippings, as early examples of the cut ups he popularized. Gysin introduced Burroughs to the technique at the Beat Hotel . The pair later applied the technique to printed media and audio recordings in an effort to decode the material's implicit content, hypothesizing that such

1085-400: Was another important outlet for the then-radical technique. In an interview, Alan Burns noted that for Europe After The Rain (1965) and subsequent novels he used a version of cut-ups: "I did not actually use scissors, but I folded pages, read across columns, and so on, discovering for myself many of the techniques Burroughs and Gysin describe". A precedent of the technique occurred during

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1120-471: Was completed in the early 1970s, and the project announced to the press in March 1971. Personal differences between Balch and the film's would-be leading man Mick Jagger however caused the project's collapse. According to Literary Outlaw, Ted Morgan's 1988 biography of Burroughs, Jagger "thought Balch was coming on to him sexually, and in any case didn’t have a reputation as a director in the industry". Balch found

1155-630: Was first used "in the context of electro-acoustics and information theory" to describe "a course of sound events that is determined in its framework and flexible in detail", by Belgian-German physicist, acoustician, and information theorist Werner Meyer-Eppler . In practical application, in compositions by Mozart and Kirnberger , for instance, the order of the measures of a musical piece were left to be determined by throwing dice, and in performances of music by Pousseur (e.g., Répons pour sept musiciens , 1960), musicians threw dice "for sheets of music and cues". However, more generally in musical contexts,

1190-554: Was one of the first people to embrace art, horror and exploitation films with equal enthusiasm, a view that was hardly shared by many film critics of the time. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s his special niche was releasing foreign sex films. Most of the sex films Balch released in the UK had been purchased at the Cannes or Venice film festivals; with no stars or name directors they cost next to nothing. Balch then added his own personal touch, giving

1225-412: Was part of an abandoned project called Guerrilla Conditions meant as a documentary on Burroughs and filmed throughout 1961-1965. Inspired by Burroughs' and Gysin's technique of cutting up text and rearranging it in random order, Balch had an editor cut his footage for the documentary into little pieces and impose no control over its reassembly. The film opened at Oxford Street 's Cinephone cinema and had

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