Crystallographic Resonances: Rewriting Novalis

In 1798/99 the poet, philosopher, geologist, and mining expert Friedrich von Hardenberg, known as Novalis, drafted The Disciples at Sais, one of many literary fragments that envision an expanded form of reading and writing that takes its cues from the book of nature. This includes the language of rocks and crystals as evolving structures or forms. In June 2023 the filmmaker and artist Juliane Henrich created Dendrites at Hardenberg‘s castle in Oberwiederstedt. The title refers to the branch-like connections between nerve cells in the brain. In artificial neural networks, this structure is imitated. Crystals also grow in dendrite form. As part of the artistic research-group Resonanzräume, Henrich creates a space of resonance between dendrites and crystals, between Novalis‘ poetry and machinic language production, between Romanticism and the re-enchanted technosphere of the present. This space of resonance is here explored in conversation between herself, media theorist and media archaeologist Siegfried Zielinski, and GPT-4. The poetic and philosophical fragments of Novalis and Henrich‘s video-installation provide the material backdrop to this conversation. It concerns the limits of the AI tool as a romantic thinker and writer, it also establishes the romantic‘s interest in a language external to ourselves.