in class week 13

very annoying. came to class today prepared to upload all the stuff I have done over the passed couple of weeks which I had put into one folder called something like 'to hand in' but the folder isn't on my memory stick so OBVIOUSLY I have forgotten to put in on my stick which I thought I had done the other day. So with none of my stuff here with me in class, I really don't know what to do. Either way I will have to come back on friday to upload the stuff.

notes to self:

live-wirez.gu.edu.au

!!!!

Funkhouser sent me a pdf file which is a promotional thingy for his new book of poetry called, "Prehistoric Digital Poetry - An Archeology of Form". it seems to be part of a specific series called "Modern and Contemporary Poetics", edited by Charles bernstein and Hank Klazer. Although I haven't got a copy to read, there is a picture on the leaflet thing of the book's front cover. The front cover looks like a picture of some kind of digital animation, using symbols that seem to be in a different language as underneath them it states "anapest, to strike" and "trochee, to run" however what is interesting to me is that these symbols also look to me like the lines of the Iambic Pentameter. Perhaps it is and it is being used as a way to sound out the words. In this way this picture encorperates digital animation with historical ideas of poetry (iambic pentameter) and also one of Funkhousers favourites, sound, in the way that he is possibly reffering to how the words should be sounded out. The picture also includes some kind of digital landscape which is reminiscent to me of something we could make in google sketchup.

Obviously Funkhouser has taken all this into consideration in the presentation of his book which describes itself as "A singular and major historical view of the birth of electronic poetry." therefore jamming the words 'historical' and 'electronic' together, creating somewhat of a... whatever the word is... where things are opposite and contradictory. I don't mean that these are totally opposites I just mean that in ones cognitive process one may find an interesting destinction here. I really don't know how to explain what I am trying to say. I blame that constant 'beep beep' of the door that is always happening in this class. Anyway it's great that someone has compiled a history like this, it's probably not the first time but who knows.

This is what the blurb on the promotional pdf says about the book (as I don't feel like retyping it in my own words, which would be the studious thing to do I'm sure)

"For the last five decades, poets have had a vibrant relationship with computers and
digital technology. This book is a documentary study and analytic history of digital
poetry that highlights its major practitioners and the ways that they have used technology
to foster a new aesthetic. Focusing primarily on programs and experiments
produced before the emergence of the World Wide Web in the mid-1990s, C. T.
Funkhouser analyzes numerous landmark works of digital poetry to illustrate that the
foundations of today’s most advanced works are rooted in the rudimentary generative,
visual, and interlinked productions of the genre’s prehistoric period.
Since 1959, computers have been used to produce several types of poetic output,
including randomly generated writings, graphical works (static, animated, and video
formats), and hypertext and hypermedia. Funkhouser demonstrates how hardware,
programming, and software have been used to compose a range of new digital poetic
forms. Several dozen historical examples, drawn from all of the predominant
approaches to digital poetry, are discussed, highlighting the transformational and
multi-faceted aspects of poetic composition now available to authors. This account
includes many works, in English and other languages, which have never before been
presented in an English-language publication.
In exploring pioneering works of digital poetry, Funkhouser demonstrates how technological
constraints that would seemingly limit the aesthetics of poetry have instead
extended and enriched poetic discourse. As a history of early digital poetry and a
record of an era that has passed, this study aspires both to influence poets working
today and to highlight what the future of digital poetry may hold.
“Funkhouser provides a detailed inventory of key works that led the way to the current
flowering of digital poetry. This is the first work to provide historical, descriptive, and
technical accounts of the inaugural works of computer-assisted poetry composition.
Funkhouser’s command of the history, the aesthetics, and the technology is as rare as
it is welcome.”
—Charles Bernstein, author of Girly Man and A Poetics
C. T. Funkhouser is Associate Professor of Humanities at the New Jersey Institute
of Technology and author of Technopoetry Rising: Essays and Works (forthcoming) and
Selections 2.0, an eBook."

That ebook mentioned at the bottom is possibly the one he is going to send to me :D I imagine, unless he creates heaps of them...

I'm not sure if I've mentioned it before, I possibly have because I seem to blog a lot for this thing (this is my 23rd post) but the other week in class I did some work on the swishmax project. I played around with the word 'shoulder' but I didn't like any of the outcomes. They looked alright as they were but I knew that putting it into the kind of interface that I usually make in Flash wouldn't work as it'd just look too different and out of place. Can you imagine the word 'shouder' jumping around happily on one of my pages?? (not that you've seen them yet as I didn't have them on my stick to hand in today grrr.)

eurika! (not that I can spell it)

yay i have a fourth idea!! It's a very simple piece, and i call it 'iflyaway'. in this piece i make birds out of "i" bodys and "(" wings and using simple frame by frame animation they fly across the screen. At first I wanted all the little wings to flap but I couldn't get it right and it was taking forever so I quit with that idea but they still look alright being static. As they are black they sort of look more like bats... maybe I should add some other colours? The background is blue for sky and the words "i fly away" are written all over the sky in a very similar blue which i find hard to see on my computer screen but that is good - that is how I want it. There is also music over the top so be sure to have your sound on. Yes it is me humming. I considered adding land into the blue but then thought against it as my drawing might not be so great. I like it's simplicity, and slight melancholy. I take inspiration from Ana Marie uribe for this piece, as I did her for part of my essay and she likes to work with single letters giving them different meaning. however, if i did make all the i's colourful it would remind me just a little too much of Uribe's work and I'd rather it appeared to be something else so maybe I will leave them black, it doesn't matter if they are seen as bats anyway as long as they are seen as flying things. Bats fly just as well as birds do!

but for a 5th piece... hmmmm... still stuck on that one...

OH MY GOD STOP THE PRESS HOLY SHIT FUCK ME SILLY READ THIS!!!

ok so i was just looking through my entire blog wondering why i had no comments on any of my entries (not that I had ever checked before) and way back in August on the entry where I first spoke about chris funkhouser THE MAN HIMSELF HAD WRITTEN A REPLY that's right go and check in archives if you think it's fake. Damn it why didn't I see that before I wrote the essay, it could have been useful. I was also just reading kerrie's blog about how she got in touch with her artist and i was thinking "yeah well mine were just not easy to get in touch with" you know, the usual excuses, and then I found the note from Chris. My assignment FOUND ME!! It's insane. So i emailed him about this eBook he was talking about which will be awesome if he remembers me. Wow. Don't you love it when things fall into your lap from the sky like really really really good bird poo... well it makes sense in my head... I'm just excited is all. Of all the people who could leave me some love on my blog :D Can't wait to get to class on wednesday and rub it in everyones faces LIKE BIRD POO that's right...

I really have birds on the brain today don't I...

oh anyway also, I wrote a couple of little poems about the beach for another class but I suddenly feel the need to include them here. They are not the best by a long way and I am not totally proud of them but it is that thing of using the one word and coming up with something from it. In this class I had to go to the beach and just examine the place really thouroughly (can't spell???) and just had to see what I came up with (amongst other, far more complex criteria of course), so similar to The Broadwater poem. But I also had to pay particular attention to how my body reacted with the space and what sort of borders the space had... things like that.. you know... a class run by jondi... i rest my case... but yeah here are the small poems I came up with... maybe I could make a beachy interface for them??? hmmm maybe too silly... don't know...


I am told that sand,
Heated to a certain degree,
Creates glass.
This is why the beach
glistens.
I watch their brightness
On lover’s legs.
Tiny shards of glass
Like calves are earth
Hairs are highways
And cars are crashing.

Adding to your prickliness.




Where do you go to?
Do you reside up high
In the hot heat of the dunes?
Do you announce a ‘place’,
Does it remind you of home?
Does your blanket keep you safe from sand?
Perhaps you prefer to be closer to water
Where the tire tracks mar the sand,
And you feel them against your back,
Halving the sand
Halving you.
Torso deep across the borderline.




You were always scared of the big waves, so you brought your favourite teddy to the beach each time. His name was ‘Ted’ but sometimes it was ‘Best Boy’, because he was. You tried not to get him too sandy but sometimes he did and you couldn’t help it, could you. Ted was always smiling no matter what. Sometimes he even got a little wet when you couldn’t bare to go into the water without him, but he didn’t mind. Poor Ted, look at that sun burn, he couldn’t help it. You rubbed antiseptic cream between his legs. Good for those rashes, you thought, good for those rashes.



Her fingers
curl around the edges of
stiff worn fabric.
Bright sun like
several close encounters
beams back across her body.
Sand like
rough
plastered
walls
hangs from loose
limbs like tiny
rock climbers.

She reconsiders
her feet.

Stiff towel’s edge torn disturbing
Precious 90°




I hear the world
as interrupted by my heartbeat.
It is this reminder of life,
That keeps me
from fully perceiving
the world.

And I am lying
In your heavy footprint.
My shoulder slumped back
Into the curve of your toes.





Footprints like
Concave clams.
The wind creates lines of flight
Through the sand
That ends at my things.
Shoulders under pressure
Of heavy head.
Beach poetry is a bore,
I’m distracted
By tumble weeds
And soccer balls
And thoughts of many dreams.

slide of stuff

Get Your Own! | View Slideshow

hrmmm

hmm I don't know why that slideshow below isn't working... but it is REALLY pissing me off because there is no reason why is should be acting up. It has also deleted some of the pictures I put on it (not that it matters because I CURRENTLY CAN'T SEE ANY OF THEM) stupid thing. Just spent ages print screening stuff and turning them into small files so that I could upload them easily to the slide thing only for it to begin stuffing up when I was trying to put in the descriptions and now look at it. Grrr what a waste. I am currently replacing the pics it has deleted and trying one more time but yeah I dunno if it is going to work... It's acting as though I don't have the right programs to view it with (eg. flash) but I do, and I can see the other slider in my archives of this blog.

related to post below...

Get Your Own! | View Slideshow

COMPLAINING

So I'm just having a whinge about how I hate flash...

I am having some troubles with my third piece. I had planned in my timetable to have it finished by yesterday and now it is today and it is STILL not finished even though I started it about a week ago, or maybe a little less. It's not that I don't know what to do, it's just that I'm doing sooo much frame by frame animation with this one and it just takes forever. I get one lines of text done and I feel I need a break, unfortunately the frame by frame stuff is just boring to do. The fun part I suppose is working with the fonts and even confusing myself thinking 'hmmm I wonder what that letter could be' which is cool, but also reminds me what a sad life I must have if I am so excited by wingdings and wingdings 2 and wingdings 3 oh and 'vacations' aren't they cute.

I have been planning to make some more 'sliders' for this blog of my pieces and how they have been coming along but usually I wait for the weekend so that I can be on a faster internet connection so that I can upload the pictures efficiently but it seems time is running a bit fine so I may have to do it today and just let it take a while or make sure the pictures are as small as possible (which may defeat the purpose).

My third piece uses the poem that I made at the start of the semester using the methods we were taught in class about taking a word and having lines streaming off it or however you describe it. One of my words was Broadwater and I liked the poem that I got out of it because I realised that not only did it sound kind of nice, it was very personal and came from real events instead of projecting my events into another character's life as one may usually do when writing prose or poetry, if that makes sense. I was able to get out feelings that I knew I had in me for quite some time but was unable to see how to fit them together in a text. But by putting them under the label of Broadwater I was able to realise that it was the location that bound them together more than anything, and shows that it also may be useful to consider writing poetry using things such as who what when where and why as key notes, for example my broadwater piece used 'where', but completely dismissed 'when' as each line happened at a different time, but all within the last couple of years i suppose. hmm so that is Alinta's poetry writing lesson for today... yes it was pretty lame... I also advise not to give this 'who what whatever' thing to poets just starting out, as it may turn out some horrendous work.

Just to procrastinate even more, I'd like to tease out the lines of this poem and the instances that go along with them...

I wish I had some letters I could scratch into a bench.

obviously this refers to people who scratch loved ones initials into things. I suppose it's a rather adolescent thing to do, and I see it on benches down at the broadwater, and think of how those people are probably not still together anyway because that is how optimistic I am about teenagers. Psychologically, it makes me think about how I never did things like that as a teenager and that I feel I missed out on a fun part of my life and perhaps now I'm trying to make up for my teenage years, and wishing I could do teenage things without people thinking I was immature.

The stranger tells me of how his baby died. Says she had a name like mine.

This happened a couple of years ago when an annoying young man, a couple of years older than me perhaps, came down to the broadwater and stared at me while I was swimming. He sat on the only stairs I could take to leave so that I had to step over him to get away. After about an hour os being looked at I decided I really had to leave, and as I was stepping over him he started to talk of course, and started to tell me how his daughter had an aboriginal name like mine, and that she had died as an infant. I saw him again a couple of hours later crossing the road and again I had to stop and talk. I'm glad I haven't seen him since.

Wonder what the fishermen know about the full moon.

I like to walk along the broadwater at night or just as the sun is going down and the moon is coming up. When the full moon is coming up over the broadwater it looks very beautiful, and there is often fishermen down there watching it as well.

I almost slipped taking photos of the burning boat.

At the start of the year there was a little boat that had been tied up at the broadwater and someone has set it on fire. I didn't actually see it on fire but I saw the aftermath. It looked really cool - a half sunked and burnt out thing sitting in the shallows so I got my camera and walked out on some of those slippery mossy big round things to get close enough to take some pictures of it and could have easily fallen on my arse into the water getting my camera wet.

Cars bright like neon flash past like signs.

Marine Parade, Labrador in general I suppose.

I look like I haven't been kissed in a long time.

A couple of years ago I sat parked in a car by the water and someone said something similar to this to me.

Stingrays ticklish under my hand.

My dad has told me that while kayaking in the broadwater you can reach out and play with the stingrays and that they are cute like dogs and like to play games and be stroked. Of course we have a different kind of respect for them since THAT THING happened....... lol

The stranger mumbles broken language.

One night going for a walk along the water there was a strange old man who was talking to people are he was very hard to understand, not sure if he was speaking english or not. Then he strode out across the road still talking to himself. He was with the fishermen I think.

I wish I had some letters I could scratch into a bench.
Flashy flash flash.
Broken language kiss.
A name like mine in a burning boat.
Scratch into a bench.
A long
long
time.

This is just shifting and rearrangement of the prior lines, quite obviously. Just to see what else could be come up with when moving it around. Like moving things around in speaksonia maybe? And a good way to sum up the poem, by reffering back and making the reader remember all the lines again. And 'a long long time' is important there on the end... not even sure why... but it really is.

The official coolest noise to make with speaksonia is…

“derderder”

Derderder would like to thank the panel of judges who consisted of… Alinta.

After hearing about Kerrie’s final 5 projects in class yesterday (among other things) and hearing about how all five tied in together, I realise I hadn't fashioned any sort of clever tie like this in my own works. However so far I have made two (ok ok 1 and a half) and they both include a central image which is made of a video of me doing strange bodily movements. Thus far this would be the tie between them (I know I don’t haaave to make them tie in together but still). So the tie is something of the corporeal. Both pieces so far look at the way in which the body moves as totally independent from any other kind of theoretical thought (the corporeal differentiated from the ‘identity’ or the ‘person’). So far one looks at the elbow, and this next one I am working on focuses intently on the shoulders. Not only is the video of the shoulders seen from behind but the overlayed sound is make in speaksonia out of the word ‘shoulder’ (and THIS is where I found out the ever so lovely sound ‘derderder’) however I can’t think of a clever way to include the text ‘shoulder’ without it getting boring. I also want to make it look a bit different from the elbow one because it seems to be heading in a very similar direction. Is this such a bad thing? I don’t know. I was thinking of making a cool thing out of ‘shoulder’ in that swish program but yesterday I couldn’t find anything that I thought would suit my shoulder page. I’m thinking of having the word and little phrases flashing up on the screen, non-interactively (unlike the interactive poem in the elbow piece which I believe is entitled arm1.html? or something with arm in it.) This way I can govern exactly when each line can be read, and I want them to flash on and off the screen rather rapidly so people have to stay on the page longer to get a better look. However as it is, without even any words on it yet, I enjoy watching it for a long time as there are already some entertaining elements for the viewer. I’d have to say the thing that keeps me the longest is the sounds. I’ve made it overlap towards the end but if you listen closely you can still hear the ending of the sound clip which is my favourite part (however I still chose to overlap the looping because it sounds better with a bit of build up of sound) this is the same with the video clip which is also fun to look at as I have put it over itself a few times so it too overlaps and looks like my shoulders are crazy! There are also swirling whirlwinds on either side of the picture that overlap the videoclip nicely. They were very hard to make seeing as my mouse on this computer doesn’t work. I guess there is a theme running though this of things overlapping and more importantly – going around in circles as the shoulders are doing in the clip. In this way all the technicalities echo the corporeal movement.

The creepiest part is… that the speaksonia voice is meant to be FEMALE!!

I have also made smaller ‘derderder’ sounds that I plan to use for buttons… but it make have to be for a different page as it would conflict with the main sound running over the top. I really like these button sounds as it sounds like the speaksonia “lady” is singing a song – it’s some of the closest stuff I’ve got to actually making it sing (as I was trying to do at the start with putting the laurie anderson and other’s songs into it). So look out for derderder buttons in the future (perhaps in the other three works I have yet to make).

Well it’s not that I have fully yet to make them. I already have basic layouts for at least two other pieces. When I say basic layout I mean I took all the body footage at the same time so I already have that and I have used windows movie maker on some of them to make some creepy effects. I have also already imported some onto blank flash pages but I don’t know if I will use them yet – dunno if I like them enough. So far I think I have already used my two favourites.

So now that I think about it, there is actually a lot that can tie them all in together... so in the process of writing this blog I have basically come to realise that this blog is rather pointless...

I have been bringing the Gerty Stein book to class now to give back for the past two weeks and I KEEP FORGETTING so this is a not to self that I must remember to give it back. That will be one less book in my bag.

last night's expeditions

Well it is the morning before class. seems like ages since we last had class so I’m not quite sure what to expect, will we be doing speeches etc. if we are, I plan to be unplanned anyway. if we do end up doing oral presentations of our essays I want to challenge myself to get up there and talk without a script as I have NEVER done that before, but in this case I am hoping that I have enough to say and have learnt enough to talk without a script, however it's been a couple of weeks since I last looked at my essay so I’ve forgotten all the names of the artists I studied and everything... hah... hmmm...

Moving right along, last night I made a little flash poem and I would like to explain my process here. First I started with making a small movie clip of me with my webcam. I wanted the clip to concentrate on the body and look like I was isolating the arm, so I was swinging my arm around and trying to keep the rest of me as neutral and still as possible (by neutral I mean to almost disappear into the background). I then imported it to flash and turned the alpha down really low to in the 20's. I then strapped myself up with the earpiece off the webcam and turned on windows sound recorder (the only recording device that I have). Getting inspiration from the moving arm, I began to just talk a stream of slow audio, stopping the recorder after every time to give me a second to think of the next one. In this way, it was very very unplanned and 'natural' I suppose. I started to talk about art and digital culture and wondered how my body related to this. I intended for it to sound like a poem in an almost narrator'ish voice (the computer narrator that is). I then imported this over the flash piece, and as expected the audio was a bit longer than the movie clip and I did not want it to start to loop over itself, but it did, and I noticed that it was actually a lot cooler that way, and there is even a part where, because I say the word 'fruit' twice in the audio, a part where the word practically overlaps itself. The timing is just really good and the overlap sounds really nice and fitting and now I couldn't imagine it being any other way.

I wanted to have a text element on the page but wasn't sure how to do it. With the overlapping of the audio I realised I needed to have the words somewhere else on the page so if it wasn't totally understandable in the audio, it could be read. So as the audio is quite slow, I put the lines of the text in at a kind of corresponding level of words per line equal to words that I way before I take a break, if that makes sense... Having these small bunches of words all separate to each other (not on separate layers but a different green box would appear around them... ARGH I can't explain myself properly) this meant I could fiddle with them all individually. So I turned them all into buttons and removed the over states so you cannot see them. I then changed the colours of them all to either red or a variation between white and dark grey. Look out for the one that is both grey AND red ooh! so when you move your mouse around the outsides of the film clip (I was a bit waring of sticking stuff over the clip as I’m sure doing that has completely stuffed up things that I have done in the past - I am not that expert yet, but I might dabble with something like this soon) you will pick up on fractions of the poem.

I then realised it at least needed some other element because it looked rather blaa when you weren't looking for the poem, so I made some tiny little film clips where I just made a mark with the brush then moved it around for a few keyframes so that they looked like they were jiggling around. Some of them turned out looking really interesting, and I only wanted colour in one of them so I switched it from grey to red very briefly to just add a shock of colour. I think they make the page look a lot better than how it was standard.

This page has no links to other pages, I thought about it then realised I wanted it to just stand alone. I might make other poems and link them to this one at a later date... think I should???

I had initially wanted to use this awesome mined file that I had which would have allowed the viewer to control the film clip of my arm with a toggle bar, and be able to move it backwards and forwards, however I have the swf file for it but seem to have delete the fla file for it NOOOOOOOOO beyond that, if I go and find it and download it again I will never figure out how to work it again because the fla file had already been put into one of my own files for me so that I could figure out how to use it. Argh it would have made this piece look so cool :(

This turned out to be quite a big file due to the film clip and long audio elements. The swf is 194kbs, and I don't want to put a preloader on it because I don't want to stuff it up as I have done in the past with preloaders. BASICALLY I am very much a beginner at flash so I know how CRAZY it is of me to intend to use it as my main medium for everything for this class but hey at least I am challenging myself all over the shop. I plan to upload it to the server when I get to class today.