The Quote Generator Manifesto

The Quote Generator is a product of its people and culture. The Quote Generator lets their hot and cold and banal shit out of its mouth. The Quote Generator pays homage to the people who it notices have gone before and said what it is/was thinking, wants to think, begins to think about and speaks about/with/for. The Quote Generator is an attempt at a continual historical mapping of influences within speech. The Quote Generator is absorption of unoriginality. The Quote Generator resurrects, when we want to forget, our heavily parasitic nature, our suffering from cryptomnesia, our unconscious plagiarism. The Quote Generator is a regurgitation library to live by. The Quote Generator is a frustrating constant acknowledgement of ever-present, inescapable mimesis. Language is stolen; we quote all the time. The Quote Generator steals some of the best and worst, offensive, polite, prosaic, practical and pointless lines; whatever it deems worthy to steal for use of its own voice. The Quote Generator is the researcher/reader/audience/listener /viewer/composer/editor/speaker but never claims authorship. The Quote Generator is not an actor spouting lines on a stage. The Quote Generator assimilates others lines into everyday social life. The Quote Generator was cultivated from the revulsion of small talk = predetermined conversational appetizers. The Quote Generator engages with the points in your life where you have a strange feeling as though you are in a B grade film. The Quote Generator says what it honestly feels at the time within the limits of its ability. The Quote Generator, tries to find its own voice, an understanding through throbbing collations of others, constantly gluttonously referencing. Much academic writing quotes/references ravenously. New things cannot be said without constant referral, acknowledgement to what has been already, the intricate detective work in the barking of the academic dog. The Quote Generator is also played with appreciation, homage and warmth as a cheesy cover band. The Quote Generator is a foreigner fumbling desperately, constantly trying to learn the new mode of speech. The Quote Generator is an artificial intelligence. The Quote Generator is a Borg creature, it assimilates and it is a collective voice as we all are. You are through many of the ones that made you. They live in you with every word you utter and action you inscribe. How far back can we see? Never far enough. Who are you? Who constructed you? Who can we blame? Let us acknowledge them. Let us acknowledge them inside you. What have you been brought up by? You are always being "brought up." Your speech is the reaction against and for many and the habit and vomit of many. The Quote Generator is vomit until you are what you eat, the advertisements you see, the books you read, the music you listen to, the films you watch, the people you talk to.

Danielle Freakley - written 2006, updated 2009