First of all, let me point in brief to networked_performance for Simon Biggs’ very good report on the E-poetry 2007 Festival in Paris. I agreed with him that Robert Simanowski’s close reading of “Listening Post” was probably the best of the academic papers presented during the conference. I was also a fan of Jim Carpenter’s presentation, in which he talked in a clear and pragmatic way about best practices for writing good code for epoetry, including distributing source code so that others can learn from it. Carpenter recently released a new version of his poetry engine, which will write some pretty good poems for you. There were many other papers and panel discussions as well, though this festival was primarily about the poetry. For four nights in a row, there were three to four hours of poetry readings. The E-Poetry scene is much more performance-oriented than other venues for electronic writing, and some of the performances were much more video art or performance (for example one work allegedly about the objectification of women included the performer disrobing on stage — providing the Festival with an early controversy, which all such gatherings require) than they were electronic writing as it is usually understood. That was fine with me. Overall, I appreciated my first experience of this very vibrant scene that exists between visual, conceptual, performance, computer, and writing. I also enjoyed the opportunity to meet many writers I have worked with and communicated with extensively online in person, in addition to spending time with old friends in one of the world’s great cities. Rather than a more formal report, I offer you this cellphone video extravaganza — short clips of 30 seconds to a minute of many readings from the festival. Forgive the quality — it was my phone used in dark crowded rooms filled with poets drinking in the poetry, after all.
A Brazilian epoet setting fire to her poems onstage, a la Jimi Hendrix.
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From the Samuel Beckett exhibition at the Pompidou in Paris.
The Electronic Literature Collection UK Launch event I attended Thursday night in Leicester, England went very well. About 40 people turned up for the salon, including many of the former trAce regulars, interested local people, and people who took the train up from London. I gave a short introduction to the Collection, and Kate Pullinger, Jon Ingold, and Chris Joseph, read from the work. In his introduction, John Cayley discussed the context of electronic literature with the traditional literary world and the art world, showed a bit of Translation, and asked us to think about whether this form of literary art was literature or something else entirely. Jon Ingold gave what was possibly the best short introduction I have yet heard interactive fiction, in particular the brutality of the constraints involved in writing IF, before guiding the audience through a short reading of All Roads. In her presentation of her work with Chris Joseph on Inanimate Alice and other projects, Kate Pullinger raised questions about the economic models for electronic writing, and discussed how Inanimate Alice is in part an experiment in developing a commercial model for e-lit. She also discussed iStories, a project she is working on with Chris to develop a commercial toolset of electronic literature applications that would enable authors with little design or programming experience to more easily develop works in Flash. Donna Leishman also sent in a prepared text which a De Montfort Ph.D. student, Jess Laccetti, read to the crowd while Chris demonstrated a bit of Deviant: The Possession of Christian Shaw. We had a short but spirited panel discussion afterwards, discussing the differences between teaching elit as creative writing and teaching it as literature, economic models for electronic lit, and other things. One of the encouraging things about this event was that a number of readers who had never before encountered e-lit were in the audience, were clearly actively interested in what they saw and heard. I also met a Polish Ph.D. student who is currently living in London and writing his dissertation about e-lit, and overheard a couple of people from London say that they heard about the event at Grand Text Auto ; ). It was a very good evening, and I’m grateful to the Institute for Creative Technologies, particularly Chris Joseph for putting it together. Jess has also blogged the event, and posted short videos of Kate Pullinger’s and Jon Ingold’s readings.
We’re up in the mountains this weekend visiting friends and getting some writing done, and of course taking in the fjords.
Dead Man with Cell Phone, Broken Heart
We ran across this grave in the Zentralfriedhof in Vienna. I have no idea who is buried there, or of the circumstances of his life or death, but I find the form of representation endlessly intruiging.
This weekend I made it home to Chicago for a quick visit, and got to watch the Cubs at Wrigley for their second home game. The wind chill was about 20F, but you still can’t beat fun at the old ball park. Derek Lee came up with the clutch homer. The Cubs ended up beating the Cardinals 3-2.
Last week I was in Norway, where I had the pleasure of speaking at the University of Bergen to Jill Walker and Elin Sjursen‘s students in the Web Design and Aesthetics course. Talan Memmott was also there to give a talk. Talan showed some interesting new e-lit work I hadn’t seen before, including some work that is not yet on the web. Memmott showed work from two different streams of his creative practice, “network phenomonology” works such as his well-known Lexia to Perplexia, and a different “history of art” stream that includes new media interpretations of the lives and works of artists such as René Magritte. Talan’s been working in particular lately in a combinatory vein, and many of his works include both combinatory text and music. Of the newer work he showed, my favorite was “The Hugo Ball,” a recombination of a nonsense poem of 78 unique words by the Dadaist poet. As you mouse over the face of the Hugo Ball, it recombines and speaks the 78 words to you as they flash on the screen and the face “speaks” the words in layers of visemes. It’s a fun, and vaguely creepy, piece. While he was there, Talan was also interviewed for Bergen Student Television. The interview is available online for your viewing pleasure.
Also new from Norway, by way of New York City, is Hanna-Lovise Skartveit’s Take the F-Train, a fun and innovative online documentary about the F-Train in NYC, and by extension, about the population of the great melting pot itself. The piece includes a mixture of drawn characters, video of the train’s interior, and interviews with riders of the F-Train, many of whom are immigrants living in New York. The documentary captures the cosmopolitan nature of America’s largest city. The project is part of a larger Digital Storytelling project funded by Norwegian Radio/TV NRK.
After prolonged negotiations with Ambassador Trollheim, I agreed to move to Norway in May to teach at the University of Bergen in the department of Humanistic Informatics, on the condition that my title will be “Informatic Humanist” rather than “Humanist Informaticist.”
I’ve just returned from a great journey to Western Australia. I already miss the beach, the parrots, and the Aussies. I’ve posted a slideshow on flickr.
After turning in my grades, the reality has finally sunk in. A week from now, I’ll be in Western Australia with my love and her family, and it will be summer. I’ve never gone this far before. Jill tells me that if I were to dig a hole through the planet from my home in Brigantine, I’d end up just off the coast of Perth. So I’m pretty much going directly down under my feet. I’ve just finished Bill Bryson’s In a Sunburned Country, which prepared me for many of the lethal creatures I might encounter. I know the difference between freshies and salties, and that I should pet neither lest the croccie eat me. Box jellyfish (boxies?) are to be avoided while swimming. There are apparently some non-lethal spiders, but the majority of them are poisonous and to be avoided. I’m looking forward to encountering kookaburras, kangaroos, and quokkas. Although I’ve studied the menu carefully at the Outback Steakhouse, I’m told that kookaburra wings are not actually consumed in Perth. One amazing thing about globalization: I had Australian steak this week, not because I was getting prepared, but because it was on sale and considerably cheaper than Nebraska steak at the local Shoprite. It baffles the mind to think that two tender Aussie strip steaks can be flown around the world and end up on my plate for a grand total of $3.50. Anyway, I’m looking forward to my week in Perth and day in Sydney, preceded by Christmas in Chicago, where I’ll finally get to see the new Harry Potter movie with my niece. I’d imagine I’ll be lighting up the Flickr account with Aussie vistas. Can’t wait to have brekkie in Rottnest with Jill’s rellies. I’ve figured out, btw, the seccie to spekkie Aussie. Drop that last syllable or two and add ie, and you got a fair dinkum aproxie of Oz.
The top of the mountain above Gudvangnen, on the way to Voss, at Stalheim hotel.
Cathedral Rock in Advancing Sunset
As the sun set, the oranges and reds of Cathedral Rock changed.
I visited my brother Eric in Charlottesville, Virginia, this weekend, and we spent a wonderful afternoon at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s estate, which a foundation now maintains not only as a house, but also a well-developed garden and plantation (all volunteers and employees now, though, no more slaves).
When Jill and I were in Paris, we visited a hammam, a turkish steambath. Jill had visited one in Copenhagen and insisted it must be a part of the minivacation. I was a little reluctant: most of my associations with bathhouses have to do with Foucault and the spread of AIDS. I had never actually set foot in one. The bathhouse we visited in Paris has different options on different days of the week: two nights a week, nude men only, two nights a week, nude women only, two nights a week mixed men and women in bathing suits, one night a week, mixed nude. We went on the bathing suit night. Thankfully, I think. As we entered we were given a towel, a terrycloth robe, and flip-flops. There was only one changing room and this caused us a few moments of awkwardness: we weren't quite sure of the convention. Another couple had arrived at roughly the same time, they didn't seem quite sure of the convention either. If the idea was that men and women changed in the same room out in the open, well then so be it, but I didn't just want to drop trough and offend a group of french women I didn't know and I feared that my french would frankly be inadequate to apologize properly. Jill finally elected to run off to a toilet to put on her bathing suit; I followed suit. I think everyone else managed changing in the room. The hammam itself had showers, two steamrooms, a sauna and a cold bath. I was hoping for a hot-tub, I guess that's an American thing. The hot steambath was, well, hot, and filled with steam. When we first got in, it was difficult to tell how large the room was, and there was a strange moment of uncertainty as to what the figures moving around toward the back of the room were actually doing. Once my eyesight adjusted, it was actually quite relaxing, kicking back in a very hot steamy room scented with eucalyptus. We cycled from the hot steambath to the showers to the less hot steam bath to the cold bath to the sauna, which was turned up pretty hot, like a microwave, and not very pleasant really. Then we kicked back in the chill-out room and drank some mint tea while reclining in beach chairs and reading the french equivalent of People magazine. Afterwards, in the changing room, it seemed that everyone was just changing, casually, so we just changed casually along with everyone else. After we had been thoroughly steamed, we didn't feel as hung up on our modesty. I think I'd do the hammam thing again — it was kind of like going to work out at a health club, but without any exercise. I did feel refreshed afterward. I'm still not sure I'd get into the Finnish sauna type of experience, where everyone sits naked in a sauna and then runs off to plunge into a hole cut into a frozen lake before heading back to the sauna. That seems a bit extreme, the type of behavior which could inspire a heart attack. And I think I'll stick to the mixed night, avec maillot. I don't even want to think about the conventions that would be necessary to decipher the other nights of the week.
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