“Data Lakes in the waning moon” is a visual poem and conceptual literature art that dialogues with the ode to water in James Joyce’s Ulysses.

Using a Python code that ceaselessly reshuffles the words in Joyce’s passage, the work speaks to the overabundance of text in the digital age, and invites us to read and see otherwise, to look anew at words as more than simple vessels of meaning. It is also a work of regeneration that animates the words of love about water. This movement and life creates a contrast and epilogue to the final line — the still and moribund vision of “stagnant pools in the waning moon” — by visually evoking a flowing river in the sparkling sunlight.

Part of Danae and 1703’s exhibition “La Poétique de l’eau”, running 25 April – 24 May in Paris, curated by Elisabeth Karolyi.