aisyalam

Our first visit if the day was to the National Economic Action Council in Putrajaya, a formal session with Secretariat K. Govindan, where we learned about Malaysia’s economic planning and plans. A lot of facts and figures, and some sobering ones too. For instance, the average income here is less than $4000 a year; to put things in perspective, by 2020, the country hopes to be where Switzerland was in 1980. The big hope is that tourism dollars increase, and let me be the first to suggest to anyone a trip over here! Malaysia will tomorrow launch their new economic plan (the “9th plan”) which promises to be quite profound we were told (without details). We then headed off to Petaling Jaya to meet with the Sisters of Islam (http://www.sistersinislam.org.my), a great women’s advocacy group. In large part their work is to advise women who are victims of domestic abuse, but they also do other sorts of advocacy, circulate publications, and hold workshops. In this session we learned about the groups monogamy campaign, as well as some historical facts like that women didn’t start wearing hijab (the head scarf) here until the 1980s (which was a real shocker to me, since it is now so ubiquitous). I got the names of some “Islamic feminists,” who I look forward to reading at some point. A lot of complex issues at play in this culture, that’s for sure. We went to a really amazing Indian joint called Raju for lunch, then headed back to Putrajaya. Our afternoon meeting was a real high point, as the Minister of Foreign Affairs (Malaysia’s equivalent to Condelezza Rice), Datuk Seri Panglima Syed Hamid Albar, was able to meet with us, and spoke frankly and honestly about hot issues now faced by the country and ASEAN region (Myanmar mostly, but also some tussle with Singapore over the causeway). Because of the delicate nature of some of these issues, we were instructed not to report on what he said, a request I will honor. I will say that it was another extremely instructive session, a discussion of the type of things us visitors wanted to know.

The program is now nearly over. We will have one session at ISIS in the morning, and then the group will be shuttled off to Langkawi for a weekend of R&R. I don’t know whether or not I’ll have much to report before returning to my regular life on Monday. It has been a real treat to spend time with such great minds learning about some of the country’s infrastructure, and today I was able to write a couple of little poems, finally, which also brought satisfaction. More soon!

Doing a lot of things I never would have done otherwise, which must be good. Today we headed down to Bangi, for a visit to the Malaysian Palm Oil Board. I see the signs for Bangi all the time but have never been there. MPOB has a large campus, where they do much of their research and development. After arriving we were led to a big auditorium, where we saw the groups PR video, then had a Q & A session with Dr. Chan Kook Weng, who is seriously committed to promoting palm oil on a global level—a true believer. He was intent on proving the crop’s value, and dispelling some of the negative press the industry has gotten from reports that have said they are destroying jungles to build plantations. We then walked through their museum, which further reviewed the process of making and all the products made from palm oil. What I was most impressed by is that all of the plant is used for something; there is no waste. We ate a simple lunch in the MPOB cafeteria (I ate with Eric Jones and Jerrod Shobe and talked about computer music and other unrelated topics). We had a bunch of time to kill before our next session, which was at the MSC (Multimedia Supercorridor) Innovation Center (in our hometown, Cyberjaya), so we took the scenic route around and through Putrajaya, the high point of which was ascending the hill up to the convention center, a view I’d never seen before. The visit to the MSCIC was good—I drive by this building everyday and had never been in it. We arrived early and waited in the center for progressive health where there were a lot of terminals in a stylish space although nothing was on so we could have been anywhere! Our host at the Innovation Center was Suhaimi Nordin of the Multimedia Development Corp. (http://www.mdc.com.my), who introduced the initiatives of the project, showed us a video history and took our questions, most of which had to do with “e-government.” This project is about to enter its second of three major phases, and seems to have had some success, I think some of my colleagues were skeptical about Malaysia pulling off their goal of attracting international companies to the MSC, but I’m still a believer (I better be, as I’m planning to give a lecture at MDC in the near future). We each rec’d a nice coffee-table book (Metamorphosis: A Day in the Evolutionary Life of Malaysians) and a wooden pen, then we had a little tea party there during a thunderstorm and then headed back to the hotel. Though not as taxing as yesterday, the sum of these days thus far has been a lot of output, a lot of running around and talking—which is pretty exhausting. I’m glad to be doing it, although I miss my normal routine a bit (& remind myself I’ll be back to it soon enough).

Five social/professional gatherings, something interesting in each of them, and by day’s end very exhausted. In brief, we visited Bank Negara, the central bank of Malaysia, which was a lot more interesting than I expected because much of the discussion revolved around the introduction of Islamic banking, a concept I knew nothing about. 6-7% of Malaysia’s GDP is cash based (and apparently this is high). The bank had a terrific art collection, is building their own art museum, and offers support to artists. They also have a coin museum, which displays all of the currency ever used here. 200 years ago, little metal sculptures were used as currency! We had lunch with various media figures (editors, writers, etc.) in Petaling Jaya, then went to Police Headquarters and met with the Commisioner and a gang of his cronies. Most of the presentation had to do with their fight against terrorists and drug trafficking and abuse. From there over to Suhakam, the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia, a group that mostly addresses complaints against the police and prison guards (pretty ironic!). While aware of global issues, they focus only on domestic matters, and in many ways are in a tough position because they have little power of their own. Dinner with “New Generation Leaders,” which included technology consultants, a legislator from Melaka, a fellow who does some speech writing for the PM, and someone who works with the Minister of Higher Education. It was a relaxed affair at a nice restaurant in a mall (Starhill) that I probably never would have gone to otherwise. I have more details and stories to tell but so busy running around that they will have to wait. Trying to translate all of the information poetically too, but that it seems too will be a process. So, more to say, but not now. To be in the company of such profound scholars is terrific: words, words, words!

Sau Bin reports that “the malay word for foreigner is pendatang & businessman is pendagang. diff of the t and g on the 6th letter. datang means come, dagang means trade. not sure if they share the same origins though. to come is to trade?”

Not a whole lot to report, except that I’m having an interesting time visiting the other side of the spectrum (eating fancy dinners, staying in one of KL’s nicest hotels, getting shuttled around in Mercedes vans) with a group that includes nine Fulbright and about the same number of journalists who have come in from Hong Kong, Pakistan, London, and Thailand. Yesterday we went about halfway up the Petronas Towers for a pep talk about Petronas (the national oil company), which was informative (although I was slightly disappointed to learn that they are all about “harnessing energy” they aren’t much interested in developing solar power etc.). The Prime Minister, as I pretty much expected, was too busy to see us (maybe later in the week), so we had the afternoon off so Amy, Alea, and I went to Bangsar to visit the organic market (not so different from the health food store at home, actually) before meeting Stella’s bus on Taman Seputeh. The only work related stuff I did involved writing out the specs for the eBook for Khong, so I can get one of the FCM’s ISBN for the project. By the end of the day I was quite tired and felt strange to have a Monday without working but enjoyed many fascinating conversations and learned quite a bit, so let’s call that a different type of work. We ate dinner on top of the KL Tower at a revolving restaurant. I’d never been in a revolving restaurant (or building) as far as I know, which at a certain point became very disorienting, as I wasn’t quick to realize that the whole platform wasn’t spinning, just the ring around the circumference where the tables were was. Very strange to get confused and lost in such a small space; perhaps some kind of metaphor there…

Glad to report the week ended on a positive, progressive note. To begin the day I surprised myself by launching into writing the final MMU lecture, “Professional Possibilities for Poetic Texts.” At the start I’ll quote a Lionel Kearns poem that quotes Olson, which brings Projective Verse into the mix – maybe the only time PV is used to educate those being trained to produce marketable products! What’ll be most challenging is to find examples of texts to illustrate the points I’m developing (which involve expansive rather than insular textuality). We’ll see how it goes.

Then I had to go and do some work for the Prehistoric book: copying all the permission leteters into a single file and sending to the Alabama editor so that project can move into production.

Ate lunch with Donald McCloud, the head of MACEE (Malaysian American Council on Educational Exchange), who came down to Cyberjaya to check in and see how I was doing. We had a very interesting, informative, easygoing conversation, and he reminded me about some ($) resources that I have and had forgotten about (always a plus). One of the many things he informed me about over the course of the conversation was that the Malay word for foreigner and businessman were one and the same…

In the afternoon a couple of graduate students came to the office (one from Kenya, one from Iran), both interested in digging more deeply (intellectually and creatively) into digital poetry. Mohammed is still processing my lecture from 2 weeks ago, and had drawn out an elaborate outline of his understanding of the genre, which was good. Since he realizes DP is expansive, I’m trying to get him to think more expansively about it (he tends to think binaristically). The other fellow is determined to help me fix the missing lines in the Australia flash movie, and I appreciate the unexpected help and camaraderie.

To finish the day, met with John Hii, an FCM colleague, who has signed on to be the graphic designer for the eBook and will also help out with some of the (minimal) interface animation. The concept for it is largely is in place, but I’m really glad to have some fresh blood & a sharp artful mind in on it at this point—it’ll only help improve whatever quality is there. He has offered some interesting views already, and I’m looking forward to working with him during the next 2-3 weeks. Sau Bin was also on campus, toting around the project he has been working on the past 3 months, a virtual map of Kuala Lumpur’s art galleries he has built using Google Earth. It is being evaluated tomorrow for possible inclusion in the Havana biennial, and he was reviewing it. I was glad to have a look, and was impressed with both what he has done and all of the tools that are built into the program that I had no idea existed.

A lot of input and learning this week, even a bit of output; plenty to think about over the next week while I’m away from campus. We’ll see how the blogging goes. On Monday I’m scheduled to meet with the Prime Minister of Malaysia, Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, as part of the program I will be participating in. Seems kind of unbelievable, and certainly the first time (and possibly the last) I’ll have ever been in the presence of a head-of-state. No doubt that the days ahead are going to be an interesting experience. If I’m able to get online I will definitely file reports…

The piece for Stella’s class is done (“Australia =,” below), and a nearly complete Flash version (including the Aussie National Anthem) is up too (http://web.njit.edu/~funkhous/2006/australia):

australia thunders at more than just kangaroos and cricket
australia presses free
australia never speaks to closing its doors
australia burns unique
australia strives for helping
australia lurks in wonderful
australia is ringed by one big outback
australia is unshaven by part of our world
australia peeps out from maroochydore
australia is falling down into engineering better trees
australia freshens no island
australia confirms mooloolaba
australia is wrought with a safe place for backpackers
australia remembers caboolture
australia the world's biggest island yet it has a population of less than 19 million people
australia displays the sixth largest country in the world
australia speaks to commonly known as the oldest continent
australia waits for invited
australia plucks out home
australia hides behind kawana waters
australia mixes a party
australia asks for the only country which occupies a whole continent
australia rushes out into located in the southern hemisphere
australia is shored against a big loser from climate change
australia fiddles in the southern hemisphere
australia has been in the governing body for the sport of surfing
australia buries maroochydore
australia is unheard of in outlawing fun
australia pursues about aboriginal
australia is gilded with a country to work
australia stirs maleny
australia takes gympie
australia encounters refugees' goal
australia follows no island
australia dries noosa
australia walks among one big outback
australia spreads free
australia is touched by as wild as our tamed world gets
australia makes oneself into such a tough nut to crack
australia is musing upon montville
australia leans out into bundaberg
australia stays in toowoomba queensland australia
australia sighs in maryborough queensland australia
australia reflects upon a country where one feels at ease
australia draws more than just kangaroos and cricket
australia counts unity
australia powders commonly
australia is stirred by being flooded with refugees
australia is rattled by part of our world
australia comes from a health and
australia sinks into one
australia swells on pleased to announce
australia foresuffers the enemy
australia tumbles at buderim
australia is drowning in one of the major attractions for students going to study there
australia clears stable and showcases the best businesses
australia is touched by australian culture
australia is unheard of in kawana waters
australia powders caloundra
australia clutches doing
australia holds on to a major exporter of agricultural products
australia dries engineering better trees
australia promises home

Praise be to the Google Poetry Generator!

Made more headway than I expected on the next lecture, “Contents of Multimedia Literature” (April 5), where I want to highlight as much work as possible that I haven’t shown yet so reviewed a lot of online pieces I haven’t seen in a long time. Interesting to revisit quite a few cyber-nuggets, even if a little bit exhausting. Also started to think about what I should say in my final MMU lecture (April 6), which is supposed to address the professional possibilities for creative texts. An challenging topic, especially since poetry in all forms typically holds little commercial potential!

Didn’t make much progress on the Flash indexes, hopefully tomorrow. Moving forward, always, trying not to sweat the small stuff or fret the big stuff.

Good news today: the two proposals I sent in to the Thailand Media Arts Festival (http://culturebase.org/home/thailand/MAF06/), one for a talk on Digital Poetry, one for a collaborative text/music performance with Eric Curkendall, are apparently going to be included on the program. Should be fun, and an interesting process to organize the gig with Eric across the wires...

Morning was spent reading and copyediting, and a long afternoon testing my newfound Acrobat skills, and all (links, formatting, etc.) turned out right. I put the .pdf file up (temporarily) in a temp file at http://web.njit.edu/~funkhous/temp/Technopo.pdf, and if anyone out there would like to proofread or otherwise send in feedback I’d be mighty grateful.

The only other creative thing going on at the moment is that it is poetry week at Stella’s school, and I’m making an Australia Flash poem (“Australia is…”) for her and her class. I used (of course) the Google Poetry Generator to make the text, although this time I removed quite a bit of nonsense, and Amy is going to further trim it down so that it is suitable for the first grade audience. When it is ready, I’ll post it & the URL.

Tomorrow hope to deal with interface machinations (main and media files sections), and if all goes well perhaps complete that aspect of the project by week’s end. I haven’t mentioned it in awhile, but next week I’ll be participating in the Malaysia International Visitor’s Programme and won’t be on campus (or even in my apartment) all week. Since my last two lectures are scheduled for the following week it is in my best interest to work on them a bit too. Too much to do!

I should have mentioned yesterday that after the lecture some excellent advice came from students as to how to improve the durian piece (adding sounds—which I was planning to do—and suggestions regarding other kinds of images they thought would work well). All good, and I will certainly be working on the piece some more during the next few weeks.

I spent most of the day working on the eBook (apparently that’s how the form is usually referred to). I’m trying to get a lot of things done at pretty much the same time, and since it will be mass produced, it all needs to be “right,” as changes can’t be made once it goes to press (which makes me a little nervous). Well, I’ve got about three weeks to make it all work, and taking one step at a time. Today was spent editing and re-formatting essays and poems from Technopoetry Rising that will appear in .pdf form on the CD-ROM. If all goes well, tomorrow I’ll create and set up the links in this material from the table of contents. In some ways I am so tired of working with these old materials, and can’t wait to move onto new stuff. But decided to do this project, which will be a fulfilling and positive experience and product in the long run, so plugging away…

Today’s lecture (http://web.njit.edu/~funkhous/mmu/6) was much better, partly thanks to Sau Bin’s tactics of taking roll at the end, and partly because this group of students seemed willing to engage more seriously with the materials. Or, perhaps the materials were more compelling to them, who knows. It was a relaxed affair, anyway, as I decided to let the poems do the talking and offer just a bit of commentary. For the last half-hour I sat in a chair in the middle of the stage and held a dialog, prompted by their questions and observations (Are we expected to understand any of this? Is any of this stuff ever arranged? Is this material surreal for the sake of being surreal? This stuff is too far outside the box—it bombs the box). I felt very calm, the discussion was good, and the session went very well.

Otherwise, tangled with Flash, continually organizing the eBook: the usual relatively mundane but necessary activities that take up so many hours.

One significant but relevant diversion on this very stormy night: drove to KL with Sau Bin to go to a reception at Galeri Seni Maya in Bangsar, an event sponsored by the British Council here in Malaysia, a reception for Geraldine Collinge (director of a group/network called Apples & Snakes in the UK). Treated to short readings by a few local poets, my first exposure to local writers (Bernice, Jerome, Shan), and felt kind of like I was sitting at the Nuyorican perhaps 15 years ago (with slightly less edge and without all the smoke). I enjoyed a conversation with Sunitha Janamohanan, British Council art rep in KL, who was grilling me about digital poetry. Glad to check it out, see a new part of the city, and learned a few things.

Other news: my essay “Irregular Solid: John Cayley’s Cybertextually Engineered Poetry” has just been published online by EnterText in the UK (Brunel University). Essentially it is an excerpt from the Prehistoric book, refined as a result of editorial intervention. See http://people.brunel.ac.uk/~acsrrrm/entertext/issue_5_3.htm for the table of contents…

Many productive hours at MMU: I finished a draft of the “Digital Poetry Today” lecture, and completing first versions of a couple of Flash movies. Also met with one of the Digital Media faculty, Izuzi, who showed me documentation of some of her student’s works (which included voice response and movement activated works, which I’m anxious to try my hand - & brain - at). Every conversation I have, it seems, is so informative. For instance, Izuzi told me about the Bangkok Media Arts Festival (May 2-4), to whom I immediately shipped off a proposal.

On top of that, I’ve been given a slot in the Electronic Literature Organization’s Directory, which I intend to build over the next few months/years.

Absolutely no signs of St. Paddy’s Day here in Cyberjaya, though apparently Stella’s teacher at the Australian school was dressed for the occasion.

Well, take a look at the work if you want; feedback means everything to me, so let me know what you think (funkhouser@adm.njit.edu)...

http://web.njit.edu/~funkhous/2006/durians/durian.html
http://web.njit.edu/~funkhous/2006/mmugooglism.html

A small audience attended the lecture for the Kulliyyah Islamic Revealed Knowledge & Human Sciences group at International Islamic University Malaysia, only a dozen or so people, mainly from the English department, but a fine occasion nonetheless [Fauzee Nasir (http://www.manggis.tv/) also came over and made a recording with his video gear, which was very kind]. Little resistance to the ideas and texts I put forth as digital poetry. Only one person asked me why I was calling it poetry, which was fairly easy to do. I was also asked what was more important in these works, the digital or the poetry (both = although certainly there some digital poems couldn’t be without the digital). These folks have already been introduced to deconstruction via one of their faculty members, which I’m sure helped my cause to no small degree.

The strange thing about the session was that there was something odd happening with the electricity and computer. For instance, when I went to open up the Alire CD-ROM to show "Syntext," the computer (unexplicably) tried to open up more than 100 files at once. The same type of thing happened every time I tried to open up something from the desktop or from one of the folders. On top of that, when I typed text, everything came out in CAPS, even though the caps lock key had not been activated (and vice-versa: when I hit caps lock, lower case letters were emitted). Now, I’m on my way home on the train and everything is working just fine. Any ideas? (I’m thinking that when I held down the shift key for a few seconds during Cayley’s “Lens” it triggered some mechanism that created this effect, which gave me a chance to show how patient I’m willing to be with the machine, as eventually everything I wanted to display was shown).

After the Q & A discussion the group requested that I perform some of my own work, which was flattering, so I showed them a couple of pieces from Selections, and the incomplete durian movie. Apparently they liked what they saw, and there is some talk of me returning to IIUM for a performance in July.

It was good to see a new part of the city, take the LRT subway line, and meet a bunch of people who are involved with Malaysian poetry (additional bonus: they treated me to lunch at an extraordinary restaurant, Tamarind Hill, lodged in an old colonial home in a terraced thicket of jungle). I got some names of authors to read, and will head to the Silverfish bookstore in Bangsar (another section of KL) as soon as I can.

Not much else went down. Three lectures in 6 days, whew! Wrote about our trip to Thailand on the KLIA Transit train (too much prose happening, still). Back in the office tomorrow to complete Monday’s lecture, to work on the durian piece, and connect the dots of the CD projects tomorrow…

Two different CD-ROM projects—the companion to Technopoetry Rising and the e-book Selections 2.0—means I have to be quite organized, as the components of each are different. Determined to have these in the can by mid-April, so time when not in lecture writing space getting them together. Also, re-wrote the introduction to the Technopoetry volume so that it complies with the e-book (which will incorporate all of the MMU lectures and a Googlism poem. Organization and patience! The many details of production!

After I grew weary of working on that and hankering to return to creative work, began to put together the first durian poem (“Facts About Durians”) using Flash and Google (including Lehto’s generator) plus my own ingenuity. I’m having great fun so far, much more than writing another essay, and facing a different set of challenges (not the least of which is my lack of practice with Flash). I’d like to finish a version of it by Monday, to give the Beta students a chuckle after showing more serious works. To that end have added Alan Sondheim to my Digital Poetry Today canon: http://www.asondheim.org/om.txt] [btw, for those of you in NY, I rec’d a notice that Sondheim’s videos are going to be shown at Millennium Film and Video on March 18. The note that accompanied the screening announcement was a great description of his presentations these days:

'My recent work is multi-media. Laptop performances deal with political, sexual,
and cyber issues. I run video/audio/text segments from a laptop in combinatory
fashion, typing a real-time commentary at screen bottom. The result is an
extended body and socius, digital problematized by analog, purity by error,
language by language-stumbling. If I can't break new ground in performance, I've
failed. I present an entertaining implosion of information, fast-forward
imaging, memories of seductions. My avatars are reincarnations of Bodhidarma,
the world's wonder collapsed into pixel- annihilation. I empty images at
warp-speed. It's already a gone world, say goodbye-hello to extinctions.'

Long may you run, Alan!

Tomorrow off to Gombak (a district of KL) to lecture at the Islamic University. Apparently Fauzee will be there to record it—the part I am most looking forward to (beyond visiting the campus) is the Q & A session. Perhaps I’ll be surprised and they won’t be perplexed, although I doubt it. Will tell…

Thought about durians in the morning, their spiky pyramidal protection mechanism, and how they grow hanging with gravity from thick branches, overwhelming in all ways. No stinky poem about it yet, unfortunately.

Interesting sites I'll show at my “Digital Poetry Today” lecture next week:
http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/glazier/e-poetry/london
http://www.pucsp.br/%7Egb/portfolio/web/desmemorias/index.htm
http://www.shadoof.net/in/ (“Lens”)
http://www.as.wvu.edu/~sbaldwin/whack.mov
http://www.hotkey.net.au/%7Enetwurker/xor/xor.html
http://www.secrettechnology.com/hypnostart.htm

New places visited: Cyberjaya Food Court (lunch with Amy, mutton curry, spicy vegetables, roti) & the Multimedia Supercorridor Central Incubator, on the MMU campus. Meeting with David Asirvatham, head of multimedia learning systems at mmu: very advanced! Also learned of voice recognition work happening here. Need to design some sort of simple prototype/model (a yes/no poem?) to work on (maybe about durians!). (also saw some cool voice response poems by Jason Nelson, probably on secrettechnology.com)

Trying to get access to recording studio next week. Want to record the kesa chant with gong and voice to begin with…

& a message (to whom it concerns) http://web.njit.edu/~funkhous/2006/symbolic.html (spent a few minutes working on my Flash chops)

The lecture this morning was my first less-than-positive experience on campus thus far. Without going into all the details, when I arrived the auditorium was full, and professors (whose classes were the audience) were passing around (and collecting) attendance sheets. By the time the (un-introduced) lecture started, most of the professors were nowhere to be seen, and a bunch of students were making their exit out the side doors. Of those that remained it seemed like half were not remotely interested in listening to a lecture at 10 a.m. on a Monday morning, as their conversations continued even after I began to speak. Gradually, most of these folks also left, so that by halfway through the session half of the original group remained. I give a lot of credit to them, because they were very attentive, and actually seemed to enjoy and value the work that I was showing. It is a good thing they stayed, too, or I’d’ve felt even more lame than I already did. Thankfully a couple of students approached me afterwards, and some of the conversation continued for awhile—I heard some interesting ideas for digital projects & so on...

I finished my roadshow lecture and website (a condensation of Friday’s lecture, sans Mac programs), which I hope to be taking to Bangkok, Singapore, Penang and other points asian during the next 4 months. I also started to work on the cd-rom project(s) again, hopefully done before long.

Although I have at least three more lectures to write for MMU, I’m now determined to occupy a more creative place on a day-to-day basis. Writing lectures is creative on some levels, but when I think of what I want to fill my databases with, it isn’t prose. Since this is the next task at hand, I’m trying to figure out how to shift from producing so much “horizontal” thought and language (prose) (over the past decade, really) to concentrate on forms of vertical expression. I don’t mind saying that the matter is causing (especially compounded with some other things that are going on) a bit of a crisis. So, I may be altering the way (& frequency) with which I use this space and how I spend my time in general. While things seem alright on the scholarly side, feeling a bit weak and unsatisfied in other ways. It may be that I’m getting sick of writing about myself and things that seem mundane in comparison to the rich cultural surroundings we’re immersed in. We’ll see what happens, OK.

The lecture went smoothly, although apparently there was some sort of (unnoticeable) electrical interference happening in the gallery, which caused a lot of noise in the video that Khong shot and also created some havoc with one of the programs I was running (Barbosa’s “Porto,” which eventually worked just fine after a couple of false starts). A very attentive audience of 40-50 people, mainly faculty, attended. As far as timing goes, the presentation worked out perfectly, leaving time for some discussion (questions like, “how can this be marketed”—it can’t, though the techniques could be used by anyone for a variety of reasons—what does the future hold (my answer: virtual poetry worlds and literary games). One fellow was relentless in his resistance to accepting this as poetry, no matter how much I pointed out that the projection of elegant language was the operative principal and pointed out that it certainly wasn’t the same kind of poetry written in the 19th century (and that poetic forms have always historically evolved). I met a number of people, full of questions and intrigue after the session, which should lead to further dialog, class visitations, and so on. Everyone was pleased with the event (Amy said she spent the rest of the day thinking about it), so I have to be gratified, and it was a great pleasure to introduce such fine works—particularly the hypercard works of Cayley and Rosenberg, and de Campos’ great animated poems—to an entirely new audience (who received them well).

After a splendid (and delicious) lunch with Sau Bin and Amy at Café Sirah on campus, spent part of the afternoon discussing the cd-rom project with Khong (still a number of steps to go in the process, but getting there) then the rest working on Monday’s lecture, which is still a couple of hours away from completion (i.e., I’ll be working a bit in the office on Saturday). In search of materials to project while speaking about Digital Literary Arts (to the same group who heard the lecture on Black Mountain and the origins of multimedia art three weeks ago), I decided to start at the beginning of the Alire “Le Salon de Lecture Electronique” cd-rom (which is soundless) before doing demos of Magnetic Poems (java), haiku generators, M. Joyce’s “12 Blue,” Karpinska’s beeBox, Cramer’s Permutations site, Leevi Lehto’s google generator, Arteroids, and my own “Moby-Dick.”

Not much else to report. Will be posting dozens of Thailand photos on Flickr tomorrow night, and we’ll visit with Fauzee and Nazura on Sunday. Next week’s lecture at IIUM will be on Thursday rather than Tuesday, which is better in the overall scheme of things. I’m thinking of ways to synthesize words, images, and sounds with Java, but still in the conceptual, protean stages with that project (which will occupy my last 4 months here).

Though I didn’t get a chance to do a tech rehearsal, everything is set for tomorrow as far as I can tell, and I'm totally prepared. The Mac is wired in the gallery, I’ve organized my laptop’s desktop, ftp’d all of the files up to the server, printed out the final draft of the essay, & ready to have at it. See http://web.njit.edu/~funkhous/mmu/4, and let me know what you think. After the lecture tomorrow will have to spend the afternoon prepping Monday’s lecture on Digital Literary Arts. The Malaysian routine is strict, intensive…

The meeting with Dr. Somnuk Phon-Amnuaisuk regarding my interest in cultivating artistic databases was very informative, and should lead to something fruitful. We discussed what I was interested in doing (building databases that combine text, sound, and image to begin with), and he advised using Java instead of mySQL. So, that will be the chore once I complete all of the lectures (1st week of April). Somnuk advised me to go over to Sun’s website and find one of the books that they have certified (if any of you out there also want to recommend one, I’m all ears). I’ll start with something simple and go from there. I was very interested to hear that a couple of his IT students (seniors) have been writing programs that make poems, and hope to meet them and see their work at some point in the near future.

An interesting development that came about today is I’ve been invited to lecture at the International Islamic University Malaysia (http://www.iiu.edu.my/) next week, an offer I have gladly accepted (even though it means that I’ll be giving lectures on Friday, Monday, and Tuesday). The school is on the outskirts of KL and looks like a very interesting place. A woman in the English department there rec’d the press release about tomorrow’s lecture, and hoped I would give a version of it at IIUM before their term ends late next week. Tomorrow’s lecture is the one I will deliver at various throughout the region, apparently beginning next week.

After a few days of great (& much needed) respite in Thailand, where I spent a bit of time working on this week’s lecture, landed hard but firmly in the Cyberjaya saddle again this morning. It wasn’t hard to get back into the rountine/groove, which I like, but the work itself—scripting the media for the lecture—was quite difficult. The text is ready and solid, I only had to shuffle a couple of paragraphs, and add a bit once it became a fact that I would have Mac OS 9 to work with (which I do, thanks to Zie, the FCM tech guru). The hard part was to finalize exactly what pieces I would show as works representative of digital poetry, and then coordinate how they would be presented. It took all day to divine the information. Here’s what I’m working with:

Loss Pequeño Glazier’s “Io Sono At Swoons,” John Cayley’s “Essay on the Golden Lion,” Pedro Barbosa’s “Porto” (Alire 8), “Peter's Haiku Generator,””MERZ Poems 3.1,” mIEKAL aND’s “Seedsigns (for Philadelpho Menezes),” Komninos Zervos’ “Beer,” R2’s “Poesia Extática” (Revista Cortex 1 cd-rom), Augusto de Campos’ “SOS” & “sem-saida” (Não Poems cd-rom), Jim Andrews’, Arteroids 2.5, Aya Karpinska’s "The Arrival of the beeBox," Robert Kendall’s "Frame Work," Stephanie Strickland’s “The Ballad of Sand and Harry Soot,” Jim Rosenberg’s “Intergrams,” Maria Mencia’s, "Birds Singing Other Birds Songs," Ladislao Pablo Györi’s “Virtual Poems,” Cayley’s “riverIsland,” and Brian Kim Stefans’ "The Dreamlife of Letters." I’ll also be showing a few pages of Mallarmé’s “Un Coup de Des,” mentioning historical predecessors featured on Florian Cramer’s Permutations site, and showing images of works by Lionel Kearns, Marc Adrian, Carl Fernbach-Flarsheim, Leslie Mezei, Adele Aldridge, Lillian F. Schwartz and Ken Knowlton, David Daniels, Erthos Albino de Souza, Greta Monach, Clemente Padín, Andrews, Harry Polkinhorn, E.M. de Melo e Castro, Geof Huth, Philippe Bootz, Jean-Marie Dutey, André Vallias, Eduardo Kac, and Richard Kostelanetz. I’ve also created 3 slides that outline the typologies devised in Prehistoric Digital Poetry for text-generators, visual works, and hypertexts, so there will be plenty of visual stimuli for the audience.

A lot to cover in 90 minutes (approximately 10 years of research)!

Otherwise, tomorrow I have my first meeting with a database specialist at MMU, and have yet another lecture to prepare for Monday (luckily the focus is also on digital poetry). No problem finding tasks to keep me busy…

This morning’s lecture went very smoothly, and was especially gratifying because apparently the students had not previously been introduced to the materials I showed to them. The resources and script of the presentation is posted at http://web.njit.edu/~funkhous/mmu/3. Most of my colleagues from the Interface Design group, and Musstanser from VR attended, and it was re-assuring to get positive feedback and gratitude from them. Afterwards, I met with Rozi, Khong, and Hazleeza in the E-Gallery, where the “What is Digital Poetry?” presentation will happen next Friday; we mapped out the floor and projection plan. It will be my most complex and high profile gig – at least until July’s performance – and everyone wants to make it as strong as possible. Including me! So best to get the tech scheme laid out in advance. I’ll be editing the lecture and scripting over the next few days. The powers that be asked me to compose an abstract/press release that will be circulated to everyone at the university, and this is what emerged:

“What is Digital Poetry?”

For almost half a century poets have had a thriving relationship with computer technology. During that time, a new genre—digital poetry—has emerged. Comprised of several different approaches to producing texts, this artform continues to materialize in the 21st century. The development, range, and construction of digital poetry are the subject of this presentation, which will introduce the work of poets who have welcomed technological challenges. As poets utilize new media, the purposes of computing are extended by the production of creatively oriented documents in which particular attention is devoted to verbal content and its aesthetic attributes. The utility of computers has enabled the realization of multiple types of compounded expression (combinations of verbal, visual, animated, and interactive elements). By building a larger public awareness of the mechanical history of digital poetry, this research aspires to influence the formation of writing with media and electronic literary society in the future. For those interested in the interplay of poetry and technology, this presentation will reveal how we came to where we are, and what the future may hold.

For those of you who are in the region and would like to attend, you’re invited! The event will happen at MMU’s E-Gallery, 10:30 a.m. March 10.

With the exception of a few brief conversations with some of my FCM associates, that was it for today. Since it’s first of the month, I spent the afternoon paying bills (which means going to the bank and various offices between here and Kuala Lumpur; since I don’t have a checking account all transactions involve cash). I took a few pictures here & there, with more of a mind on composition.

Tomorrow morning we’re heading to Thailand for 5 days, a country none of us has ever been to. It’ll be just an hour flight to the island of Phuket, where my mother’s brother has been living for quite a few years now. I’m not afraid to admit that I’m quite exhausted from all of the work in January and February, and it should be great to have a stretch of days without having to do much but enjoy time with family, check out a new place, and snorkel a bit. I did pack the mini-DV camera, minidisk, notebook, and other gear, so presumably some art will be made. Apparently we’ll be able to get online, and if anything significant happens, I’ll send a post. If not, back with updates next week.