aisyalam

1/15

Lucio Agra sent an interesting email after yesterday’s post (which he tried to, but couldn’t for some reason, send to the blog), regarding the word travesty in Portuguese:

“It is probably funny to know that in Portuguese the word Travesty may be easily mixed up with what in English could be expressed by "transvestite". There is virtually no other meaning for the word "travesti" in Portuguese than that who sends to someone who dresses up with the clothes of the opposite sex (mainly men with female clothes). The word has a noble origin in portuguese, initially meaning the simple metamorphosis of a persona dressed up with clothes or couverture from other person or animal. In "O Lobisomem" (The Werewolf) from Decio Pignatari (40s/50s), one of his first poems, the word is used to mean a man who lost his skin and borrow one from a dog. One more thing about Travesty. The same Decio Pignatari made some experiments on this kind of "stochastic text" in a time when Max Bense was doing the same in Germany... At last they came to the conclusion that the more a text have a great information rate, the less it is interesting as a result from this kind of combination. It seems that this tool is from great use as a way to discover virtual possibilities of a text (I, myself, made an experiment with one of my poems and the results where good as a source to another text) or reveal some hidden rhetorical aspects (as it is in Constitutional Texts, probably from all countries)…”

For those of you who don’t know his work, Lucio, a poet-professor in São Paulo, is a great performance artist and percussionist who has done some marvelous work with Powerpoint (of all programs). I notice that his WWW site is down, but you can find an example at http://arteonline.arq.br/museu/poesiadigital/agra/poemc.ppt.

I’ve also been having some valuable dialog the past few days with Pedro Barbosa, one of the great pioneers of digital poetry in Portugal. Pedro authored one of the first book-length studies about cyber-literature, A Ciberliteratura: Criação Literária e Computador (1996), which has a strong focus on poetry. I learned quite a bit by reading it (unfortunately it has never been translated into English). One of the programs that Barbosa’s book pointed me towards (he discusses it quite a bit) was a funny little program called “Your Personal Poet,” which will write little occasional poems after prompting you (the user) for a few bits of information. Of course the poems are generally of the Hallmark card variety, but as Barbosa shows in his book, one can subvert the typical purposes of the program by entering unconventional data. Or, if someone’s feeling lazy and needs a poem for a valentine’s day card, it works that way too. I’ve made little funny poems for my daughter Constellation with it, and she, in turn, at age 5, made a card for Amy & my 7th wedding anniversary last summer. Pictures of those poems I have posted at the top and bottom of this entry. The program used to be available on a WWW site called Shareware Bonanza that is no longer extant, but I have posted a .zip file of it (that I’ve used in my Digital Poetry courses) at http://web.njit.edu/~funkhous/2005/403/POET.zip

Anyway, Pedro is helping me to improve the translations of poems I made with the terrific SYNTEXT program that he and Abílio Cavalheiro put together more than a decade ago. The program was initially published in an edition of the important French hypermedia journal Alire and was also included with PB and AC’s book Teoria do Homem Sentado. Now there is a version you can play with on the WWW at http://cetic.ufp.pt/sintext.htm. I also wanted to mention Barbosa’s most recent project, «Alletsator/RotaStella» which is also sounds very interesting, although I have not yet seen the DVD.

From a review by Emanuela Oliveira:

“Alletsator is an opera in hypermedia format which, for its authors, can best be
defined as a quantum opera, i.e. a game - interactive, three-dimensional - where
the real and the virtual are intertwined. Alletsator represents a hypermedia
hybrid, where the viewer is challenged (in an environment that aims to be
cosmic, magical, fantastic, onirical...) to tread the surface of a sequence
established only by him/herself. In fact, engaged in an endless journey, it is
an on-line narrative generated by an interface that allows potentially infinite
combinations. From the dramaturgy on which it is based we could foresee the
metaphor that best translates this work: a space ship of diverse routes, of
unexpected multilinear roads in potency. «Alletsator» is also a new media
artistic object, both product and agent of a cyberculture that promises to
revolutionize the world as we know it.

«Alletsator», a name that derives from the mirror projection of RotaStella
(route of the stars), shows us an intergalactic XPTO spaceship that transports
the survivors of humankind in search of a new inhabitable planet in the cosmos
(ORUTUF ORP) after the Earth has exploded. Alletsator breaks with the past. A
window that expands the real, in a global, complex, disperse perspective,
altering the orthodox form of work reception, by presenting itself as a
cybernetic technology, interactive, dynamic, hypertextual, stage of a
performance where the internaut is the protagonist, and where reality extends
itself towards the myth. Anaximandro Macromedia, a robot that paves the way to
the oracle, synthesizes the combinations of words randomly generated and
combined, thus altering the course of events. Alletsator is in the future; for
the moment, we have the promise of "Alletsator-XPTO.Kosmos.2001"", the
"original", in DVD-ROM, forthcoming in several university presses.”

see:
http://www.po-ex.net/alletsator/
http://www.po-ex.net/stella/

* * * * *

Well, a fairly quiet weekend here in the state of Selangor, but such was much needed. I did some professional work, nothing really worth reporting, enjoyed correspondence from the aforementioned folks as well as Don Byrd, Pierre Joris, and a few other friends and family. Got a chance to relax (instead of work) a few hours here in Cyberjaya, and take a trip over to Batu Caves in KL for the beginning of the Thaipusam festival (see the flix on flickr). We’ve been living here nearly four weeks now, and am compelled to say, finally, that Malaysia is a totally incredible place. The air, sky, light, people, food, birds, chameleons, technology: all wonderful! We’ve absorbed and learned so much in such a short time, a completely powerful experience in all ways. So far we’ve been lucky that our health has remained strong, and now knocking on cyber-wood that it stays that way. At least one recent case of dengue fever – a really serious affliction – on the Multimedia U campus has us all on our toes, mindful of every mosquito that buzzes by. Well, nothing to be done except to be aware, and careful, so that’s how we’re being these months…

OK, til next time, thanks for reading, CF