The parallels between the internet and a biological system are many. Growth and decay, circulation and disease are symptoms of these living systems. In our bodies, cells, neurons, bacteria and on-line, words, memes and code-structures are vital elements of ordered, yet chaotic process. For the month of November -empyre- delights in presenting Neural Skeins and Digital Skins: code, writing, and the net as a central nervous system, with four prominent artists and theorists. *** In a pastiche of imagery and French and English text, Tamara Lai (Belgium) spins her intimate, visceral cyber-poems from her base in Liege. Lai's oeuvre includes exploration of performance, ephemerality and virtual relations. Alan Sondheim (US), New York based net artist and poet, conducts a continuous meditation on cyberspace, emphasizing issues of interiority, subjectivity, body, and language. http://www.asondheim.org/ Alessandro Ludovico (IT) publishes the critical journal neural.it in Italian and English online. <http://www.neural.it> and <http://www.neural.it/english> Florian Cramer (Germany), is a theorist on comparative net aesthetics and literature, and lectures at the Free University Berlin. *** As Alan writes, We collude between death and sex, to the limits of distortion - space-time burns around configurations of terror and the body. The skin is always a skein of communication. Words are performative only to the extent they can persuade physical reality beyond the sememe - propaganda or persuasion of language. How, as Florian asks, does 'codework' fit notions of text that were crafted without digital code - most importantly: machine-executable digital code - in mind, and vice versa. Is it a coincidence that, in their poetical appropriation of low-level Internet codes, codeworks ended up aesthetically resembling concrete poetry? And, apart from aesthetic resemblances, how do computer programs relate to literature? Join us in discussion to examine these questions and more on -empyre-. Subscribe at: http://www.subtle.net/empyre -------------