PROJECTION

photograph documentations of a projected poetry installation i have been working on.
two projectors on opposite sides of the room projecting onto a translucent screen.
one projecting white light, the other projecting white text.
the viewer can only read the text  in their silhouette (when standing in front of the white light), or on their body (standing in front of the projector with text).

the whole text can never be all read at once and with no interaction it appears a blank screen.

sobakasukasu

Hey y'all,

Unlike my last publishing attempt (----> http://www.inviewoutoffocus.blogspot.com, if you're interested), you can actually read my poems (new 'n old) now.


sobakasukasu


'sobakasu' means freckles
'kasu' means crumbs

Freckles

*Disclaimer: I think freckles are lovely and I certainly love mine!

If freckles were lovely

If freckles were lovely, and day was night,
And measles were nice and a lie warn't a lie,
Life would be delight,--
But things couldn't go right
For in such a sad plight
I wouldn't be I.

If earth was heaven and now was hence,
And past was present, and false was true,
There might be some sense
But I'd be in suspense
For on such a pretense
You wouldn't be you.

If fear was plucky, and globes were square,
And dirt was cleanly and tears were glee
Things would seem fair,--
Yet they'd all despair,
For if here was there
We wouldn't be we.

- e.e. cummings

my favorite punctuation video

victor borge's phonetic pronunciation

Proposal for the New Humans

1

Do not

anthropomorphize

animals

nor

objects

2

Always

question

your raison d'être

do you really

need to

exist?

3

Keep emptying

to full-fill

your emptiness

4

Decountralize

in order to

destroy

our ready-made

196 countries

frontiers

militaries

wars

conflicts

tensions

...

even the great wall

of China cannot divide

the continents

as we

are all under the

same sky

5

Get rid

of the word

peace,

in order to

get rid

of the word

war

as

if there are no questions

then

there are no answers

6

Terminate your

social security numbers

official paper documents

and all the encoded

numbers

embedded in your body

7

Screw powerful utilities,

large corporations,

and all those lunatics

never stop

fighting

against their

authoritarian

tendencies

8

The infinity

that we've been

taught

only comes

from the brain

of the mathematicians

and physicians

∴

the infinity

that we know of

is a false

9

Stop following

the set of rules

the authoritarians

have assigned for us

and

start making

your own

0

Beware

the return

of the repressed

- - -

This was my new poem for today.

Let's have fun tomorrow.

!

A Statement of Poetics

I often collect words and place them in my handbag

Later, I organize my lip balms and hand lotions

Later, after I have put my lip balms and hand lotions in good order, I organize my words

I put them in an order that seems most poetical to me

I line them up and if I am very lucky they will tell me a poem

If they are feeling ill and have gone out smoking the night before, their voices will be scratchy

For the most part I do not appreciate their scratchy voices and ask them to refrain from smoking

On occasion, I will smoke as well, and then I do not so much mind the scratchiness of their voices

On occasion, I enjoy this scratchiness so much that I will ask a word to repeat itself

Sometimes, flattery is not a good idea for a word

Sometimes he will become arrogant and condescending and puff out his chest as though he has just won a horse-race

I detest horse-races

I am not sure that I detest anything else quite so much as horse-races

I am sure, however, that I do not enjoy insincerity

On occasion, a word will lie to me

I am a gentle person and react quite reasonably

I swear and curse and rage and threaten to throw it out on the streets

But, owing to my gentle nature, I will never throw it out on the streets

Instead I will inspect my handbag for crevasses and pockets

Crevasses and pockets are good places to store things you don’t want to see

If it so happens that my handbag is lacking in crevasses, I will sit on it until it is sufficiently wrinkled

If it so happens that my handbag does not have pockets, I will get a new one

Part of the process of getting a new handbag is emptying out the old one

This is a process I very much dread

There is nothing quite so bad as facing someone you have hidden away for a long period of time

They are often prone to bitterness and anger

As a gentle person, these are emotions that make me anxious

For this reason, I take much care in selecting my new handbag in the hopes that the promise of grand accommodations will somewhat reduce the bitterness and anger hidden away in my old handbag

Very often, this is exactly the case

Very often, I will find that time in solitude has made my words receptive to change and compassion

Very often, I will find that I have no need for pockets in my handbag

All the same, it is pleasant to have a new handbag after you have crushed your old one with your rear end

FOREST OF FROST.

watch FOREST OF FROST

by Rose Dickson, 4. 26. 11

THE FOUNDING AND MANIFESTO OF FUTURISM (excerpt)    

FILIPPO TOMMASO MARINETTI, 1909

We had stayed up all night, my friends and I, under hanging mosque lamps with domes of filigreed brass, domes starred like our spirits, shining like them with the prisoned radiance of electric hearts. For hours we had trampled our atavistic ennui into rich oriental rugs, arguing up to the last confines of logic and blackening many reams of paper with our frenzied scribbling.

An immense pride was buoying us up, because we felt ourselves alone at that hour, alone, awake, and on our feet, like proud beacons or forward sentries against an army of hostile stars glaring down at us from their celestial encampments. Alone with stokers feeding the hellish fires of great ships, alone with the black spectres who grope in the red-hot bellies of locomotives launched on their crazy courses, alone with drunkards reeling like wounded birds along the city walls.

Suddenly we jumped, hearing the mighty noise of the huge double-decker trams that rumbled by outside, ablaze with colored lights, like villages on holiday suddenly struck and uprooted by the flooding Po and dragged over falls and through gourges to the sea. Then the silence deepened. But, as we listened to the old canal muttering its feeble prayers and the creaking bones of sickly palaces above their damp green beards, under the windows we suddenly heard the famished roar of automobiles.

‘Let’s go!’ I said. ‘Friends, away! Let’s go! Mythology and the Mystic Ideal are defeated at last. We’re about to see the Centaur’s birth and, soon after, the first flight of Angels!… We must shake at the gates of life, test the bolts and hinges. Let’s go! Look there, on the earth, the very first dawn!

THE CREATIVE ACT

MARCEL DUCHAMP, 1957

Let us consider two important factors, the two poles of the creation of art: the artist on the one hand, and on the other the spectator who later becomes the posterity.

To all appearances, the artist acts like a mediumistic being who, from the labyrinth beyond time and space, seeks his way out to a clearing. If we give the attributes of a medium to the artist, we must then deny him the state of consciousness on the esthetic plane about what he is doing or why he is doing it. All his decisions in the artistic execution of the work rest with pure intuition and cannot be translated into a self-analysis, spoken or written, or even thought out. T.S. Eliot, in his essay on "Tradition and Individual Talent", writes: "The more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind which creates; the more perfectly will the mind digest and transmute the passions which are its material."

Millions of artists create; only a few thousands are discussed or accepted by the spectator and many less again are consecrated by posterity. In the last analysis, the artist may shout from all the rooftops that he is a genius: he will have to wait for the verdict of the spectator in order that his declarations take a social value and that, finally, posterity includes him in the primers of Artist History.

I know that this statement will not meet with the approval of many artists who refuse this mediumistic role and insist on the validity of their awareness in the creative act – yet, art history has consistently decided upon the virtues of a work of art through considerations completely divorced from the rationalized explanations of the artist.

If the artist, as a human being, full of the best intentions toward himself and the whole world, plays no role at all in the judgment of his own work, how can one describe the phenomenon which prompts the spectator to react critically to the work of art? In other words, how does this reaction come about?

This phenomenon is comparable to a transference from the artist to the spectator in the form of an esthetic osmosis taking place through the inert matter, such as pigment, piano or marble. But before we go further, I want to clarify our understanding of the word 'art' - to be sure, without any attempt at a definition. What I have in mind is that art may be bad, good or indifferent, but, whatever adjective is used, we must call it art, and bad art is still art in the same way that a bad emotion is still an emotion.

Therefore, when I refer to 'art coefficient', it will be understood that I refer not only to great art, but I am trying to describe the subjective mechanism which produces art in the raw state – à l'état brut – bad, good or indifferent. In the creative act, the artist goes from intention to realization through a chain of totally subjective reactions.

His struggle toward the realization is a series of efforts, pains, satisfaction, refusals, decisions, which also cannot and must not be fully self-conscious, at least on the esthetic plane. The result of this struggle is a difference between the intention and its realization, a difference which the artist is not aware of. Consequently, in the chain of reactions accompanying the creative act, a link is missing.

be marginal

Hélio Oiticica, Brazil 1968

couscous@121 tonight tues april 26 8-10pm

a bedtime story

ADVPOetry Performance Poster

As far as I'm aware, Khoon and I made the posters for the event.

(These are mine btw)

We'll start putting them up tonight.

If anyone of you want the files to print,

please feel free to email us.

click to see more variations

20110424-134320

32 x 32 screen shot

of my focal monitor

while I was working

(on other stuffs)

the act of framing

creates a certain narrative

due to our natural

tendencies to construct

formal/informal relationships

with the words & images

inside the frame

of the frame

text rain

1999

Yi Sang

Yi Sang (August 20, 1910 - April 17, 1937) is considered one of the most innovative writers in modern Korean literature. Crossing and blurring the boundaries between poetry, fiction and essay, his experiments in literary form and language, as well the psychological complexity of his inquiry into passion, eroticism and the indeterminate nature of self were unprecedented in Korean literary practices of his time. (From Wikipedia)

I tried to find the best English-translated version of his poems, but with much respect, I couldn't. Therefore, I decided to post one of his less-language-oriented poem.

오감도 시제4호

환자의 용태에 관한 문제.

ㆍ０９８７６５４３２１

０ㆍ９８７６５４３２１

０９ㆍ８７６５４３２１

０９８ㆍ７６５４３２１

０９８７ㆍ６５４３２１

０９８７６ㆍ５４３２１

０９８７６５ㆍ４３２１

０９８７６５４ㆍ３２１

０９８７６５４３ㆍ２１

０９８７６５４３２ㆍ１

０９８７６５４３２１ㆍ

진단 0 : 1

26.10.1931

이상 책임의사 이 상

(Korean Version)

Crow's-Eye View: Poem No.4

On The Issue of a Patience's Case

ㆍ０９８７６５４３２１

０ㆍ９８７６５４３２１

０９ㆍ８７６５４３２１

０９８ㆍ７６５４３２１

０９８７ㆍ６５４３２１

０９８７６ㆍ５４３２１

０９８７６５ㆍ４３２１

０９８７６５４ㆍ３２１

０９８７６５４３ㆍ２１

０９８７６５４３２ㆍ１

０９８７６５４３２１ㆍ

Diagnosis 0 : 1

26.10.1931

Overall Responsible Physician Yi Sang

(Imperfect Englsih Version)

Unicode

This video shows all displayable characters in the unicode range 0 - 65536 (49571 characters.)

Everyone in this planet will use this palette to articulate ideas. All we are doing is rearranging the existing codes into a syntax. The sound of the video goes along with how each character sounds like.

Click here for more info. Hope you guys enjoy it.

-Sang

skin.

for a better quality version click here youtube

WORD! at BROWN

WORD! meetings are every Thursday at 9pm at the basement of RITES and REASONS THEATRE, on Angell St - 155 Angell St. Come at 9:15, because people are usually late. The meetings have a range between 8 - 30 people. I invite you guys all to go! They are always keen on having more people from RISD.

It's a very wonderful community of writers, poets, and performers, and the meetings are kind of like a hang-out session and a workshop. They give opportunities to perform your poetry at events, participate in events, host workshops, be in workshops and every year there are 5 people chosen to represent Brown at the CUPSI tournaments - the College Union Poetry Slam Invitational. Also, every semester they have a performance. Anyone is welcome to be in their Spring Show which is April 22nd, Friday at 7pm at the same place.

If you are interested in being in the Spring Show, come to this Thursday's meeting. Being in the spring show also entails coming to a week of rehearsals that are one hour long a day at 9pm, so it's a really great chance to bond with people, and become really good at performance poetry really fast.

Or you can just attend for a workshop and listen to people's poetry and make some new friends!

I also encourage you to join their listserv / mailing list which can be joined here.

IN A LANDSCAPE OF HAVING TO REPEAT

IN A LANDSCAPE OF HAVING TO REPEAT

In a landscape of having to repeat.

Noticing that she does, that he does, and so on.

The underlying cause is as absent as rain.

Yet one remembers rain even in its absence and an attendant quiet.

If illusion descends or the very word you’ve been looking for.

He remembers looking at the photograph,

green and gray squares, undefined.

How perfectly ordinary someone says looking at the same thing or

I’d like to get to the bottom of that one.

When it is raining it is raining for all time and then it isn’t

and when she looked at him, as he remembers it, the landscape moved closer

than ever and she did and now he can hardly remember what it was like.

Martha Ronk  (369)

            Martha Ronk’s poem, In a Landscape of Having to Repeat, playfully uses language as way to juxtapose presence and absence. Like a landscape, Ronk directs the reader’s awareness throughout the poem using language, tense, and repetition. With the line, “or the very word you’ve been looking for” Ronk cleverly acknowledges her own writing as a tool to represent memory. This image, simultaneously forcing the reader to become aware of the space between this poem and the memories it describes.  Her use of repetition, within lines and throughout the whole, creates a rhythm for the reader to follow and form. Successfully Ronk draws connections and distances, building layers of meaning and of space within her words, within this landscape. 

write something

http://www.writesomething.net/

web poem

you-talking-to-me.com

A SELECTION OF SPOKEN WORD

ANDREA GIBSON

Couldn't get this above poem out of my head while riding through NYC buses in and out of state. Intensity coupled with beautiful yricism is a trademark of Andrea's poetry.
Yes, Andrea Gibson is still coming to RISD, however the date has been postponed to sometime in October, next fall. Sorry if you are a senior and can't make it. HOWEVER, I'm getting Phil Kaye and Sarah Kay to perform and do a workshop the Weekend of May 7-8. Keep your eyes peeled for more details.

KATE TEMPEST

Kate Tempest is a spoken word poet from the UK. She still is pretty underground but her performances go hard.

PHIL KAYE & SARAH KAY (they aren't related or married, funny yes?)




Who said all spoken word poetry had to be screaming and indignant? Sarah and Phil are the co-founders of Project Voice where they teach spoken word workshops to schools and universities as well as perform and tour nationally. They both graduated from Brown in 2010. Sarah did a tedtalk that John Maeda was at a while back, that garnered two standing ovations.

They're coming to RISD this may!

BUDDY WAKEFIELD


I don't know Buddy enough to give an accurate description of his poetry but I know he is one of the more well known spoken word artists and this was the first video that popped up on youtube. He toured with Andrea a while last year.

FRANNY CHOI

Better go see this girl perform at Brown's WORD! (the spoken word club) showcases, and local providence poetry slams while you still can. She goes to Brown and is graduating this year. I went to see her at The Spot Underground on elbow st last Monday and she blew me away. Unfortunately you can't find a lot of her stuff on the internet, but that should change soon.

SAUL WILLIAMS



Saul's poetry puts you through one hell of a spiritual, radical, psychedelic ride. He's also a genius. He also raps to his poetry now, and has a couple of albums out. He also starred in SLAM, a narrative documentary about spoken word.

If you like this, check out "Said the Shot Gun to the Head" and "S/he" two long poems that he wrote in book form.

"We are unraveling our navels so that we may ingest the sun.
We are not afraid of the darkness.
We trust that the moon shall guide us.
We are determining the future at this very moment.
We know that the heart is the philosopher's stone.
Our music is our alchemy."
— Saul Williams


BROWN'S SHOWCASE SPRING SHOW IS FRIDAY, APRIL 22nd at RITES AND REASONS THEATRE. GO.

Manifestos regarding Art + Business

These were found a few days ago from the site The 99 Percent

1. The Architect: Frank Lloyd Wright
Via Gretchen Rubin, we discovered this manifesto from architect Frank Lloyd Wright, written as a series of “fellowship assets” meant to guide the apprentices who worked with him at his school, Taliesin. I particularly love number 10, the idea that working with others should come naturally.

1. An honest ego in a healthy body.

2. An eye to see nature.


3. A heart to feel nature.


4. Courage to follow nature.


5. The sense of proportion (humor).


6. Appreciation of work as idea and idea as work.


7. Fertility of imagination.

8. Capacity for faith and rebellion.


9. Disregard for commonplace (inorganic) elegance.

10. Instinctive cooperation.


2. The Marketer: Seth Godin
The always insightful Seth Godin shared his “Unforgivable Manifesto” with artist Hugh MacLeod a few years ago. His observation about the short-run vs the long-run in point 5 is particularly incisive, as is the notion that we’re all marketers in point 7 – it's just that some of us don’t own it.

1. The greatest innovations appear to come from those that are self-reliant. Individuals who go right to the edge and do something worth talking about. Not solo, of course, but as instigators of a team. In two words: don’t settle.

2. The greatest marketers do two things: they treat customers with respect and they measure.

3. The greatest salespeople understand that people resist change and that ‘no’ is the single easiest way to do that.

4. The greatest bloggers blog for their readers, not for themselves.

5. There really isn’t much a of ‘short run’. It quickly becomes yesterday. The long run, on the other hand, sticks around for quite a while.

6. The internet doesn’t forget. And sooner or later, the internet finds out.

7. Everyone is a marketer, even people and organizations that don’t market. They’re just marketers who are doing it poorly.

8. Amazing organizations and people receive rewards that more than make up for the effort required to be that good.

9. There is no number 9.

10. Mass taste is rarely good taste.


3. The Designer: John Maeda
RISD president John Maeda’s slim book, The Laws of Simplicity, is one of my all-time favorites, with broad-reaching insights that apply as easily to arranging your living room as to designing a visionary product. In 100 pages, Maeda elaborates on 10 laws for business, design, and life:

1. Reduce: The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction.

2. Organize: Organization makes a system of many appear fewer.

3. Time: Savings in time feel like simplicity.

4. Learn. Knowledge makes everything simpler.

5. Differences: Simplicity and complexity need each other.

6. Context: What lies in the periphery of simplicity is definitely not peripheral.

7. Emotion: More emotions are better than less.

8. Trust: In simplicity we trust.

9. Failure: Some things can never be made simple.

10. The One: Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious, and adding the meaningful.


4. The Writer: Leo Tolstoy
While they betray a bit of the self-hating introvert, Tolstoy’s “rules for life,” originally written when he was 18 years old, do contain some useful gems. In particular, the notion of managing your energy and prioritizing based on goals (no. 5), and of managing your finances wisely by always keeping a low overhead (no. 9 & 10).

1. Get up early (five o'clock).

2. Go to bed early (nine to ten o'clock).

3. Eat little and avoid sweets.

4. Try to do everything by yourself.

5. Have a goal for your whole life, a goal for one section of your life, a goal for a shorter period and a goal for the year; a goal for every month, a goal for every week, a goal for every day, a goal for every hour and for every minute, and sacrifice the lesser goal to the greater.

6. Keep away from women.

7. Kill desire by work.

8. Be good, but try to let no one know it.

9. Always live less expensively than you might.

10. Change nothing in your style of living even if you become ten times richer.


5. The Company: Apple
When Steve Jobs went on medical leave in 2009 and financial analysts were making dire predictions, Apple COO Tim Cook boiled the company’s culture down to what was essentially an 8-point manifesto. I love that saying no is one of the key points. It's so hard!

1. We believe that we're on the face of the earth to make great products.

2. We're constantly focusing on innovating.

3. We believe in the simple, not the complex.

4. We believe we need to own and control the primary technologies behind the products that we make and participate only in markets where we can make a significant contribution.

5. We believe in saying no to thousands of projects so that we can focus on the few that are meaningful to us.

6.We believe in deep collaboration and cross pollination in order to innovate in a way others cannot.

7. We don't settle for anything other than excellence in any group in the company.

8. We have the self-honesty to admit when we're wrong and the courage to change.

--

Samantha Gorman

Since Mairead mentioned Samantha in class today, I thought I'd post this great video of Asimina Chremos improvising with one of Samanta's writing pieces in Brown's Cave.

Canticle from Samantha Gorman on Vimeo.

Twitter poems

There was an article in the NY times this weekend about twitter's potential as a space for creative writing.

They also asked four poets to write "twitter poems."

John Baldessari sings Sol Lewitt

couscous on tuesday!

couscous@local121

tues 3/22/11

poetry 10-11pm —stephanie barber (films)—murphy chang + rachel jendrzejewski--samantha gorman—adam robinson—ric royer

local 121

RISE & FALL

This is a low quality .gif version of the video component of my poem for workshop this week. 

I am having some issues figuring out how to post the high quality version with sound, so I will show that one in class tomorrow as a projection. 

[this may just look like a picture file, but wait 20 seconds.]

Gary Snyder, "What You Should Know to Be a Poet"

Synchronous objects

I love Synchronous objects! Thanks for posting. William Forsythe is one of my favorite choreographers. He often uses technology and language in his work in a really interesting and innovative way. Here's a link to an except from his piece "Kammer/kammer."

Also, to embed video click the "embed" buttom below a video (on youtube--not sure about embedding from other sources) and copy and paste the code into the "edit html" window on the blog.

synchronous objects

I watched this during lecture today in my visual systems class. i think this is very informing about what choreography is about. And it's very poetic. I don't know how to embed it in the post, but you can go to the link below to watch the videos. They are great.

http://synchronousobjects.osu.edu

From a Book of Hours

     Beside a stream a man is reading.  He sits against a tree, 

one knee drawn up as a support for his book. Next to him a 

long slender pole is propped; a line dangles into the water.  

     The open pages of the book show an illustrated, gilded 

scene: a tiny figure by a stream, fields giving on to a town 

beyond.  In the fields, men and women bend over curved 

bundles of wheat.  Their scythes make dark punctuations of 

the harvest. 

     The man smiles, as if pleased with what he sees.  Then 

he yawns and looks over at the pole.  He shifts his gaze a bit 

and considers the prospect of the town in the distance: the 

familiar spires and gables.  He surveys the fields, before re-

turning to the book. 

     A shadowiness comes over the surrounding landscape, 

as if a cloud were passing in front of the sun.  It is the man's 

hand, about to turn the page.

Barry Yourgrau

Mark Leidner's video poems

I really enjoy these video poems by Mark Leidner (a friend of a friend who's getting his MFA at UMass Amherst). Apparently he started creating them as a way to hear the poems read because he wanted his writing to be very conversational. However, I think that the dry animated voice works well with his humor and that encountering the poems in such an unexpected form increases their overall effectiveness. He's done a bunch but the two embedded here are my favorites:

a library at night