Thursday, April 06, 2006
I finished the lecture (http://web.njit.edu/~funkhous/mmu/8) with an hour to spare and was pleased by how the presentation transpired. Unfortunately, not a single one of the students for whom it was “compulsory” to attend was compelled to show up, so when I started (25 minutes late, waiting for the supposed crowd), the audience consisted of five faculty members, and my friend the filmmaker Ali, who has become interested in digital poetry during the past few weeks (his friend, Ali II, showed up a little bit later). A few kids trickled in gradually, but not until the session was at least half over. Only a couple of questions were raised afterwards, mostly having to do with what “ism” the work fell under. After steering the discussion in a general way away from the -ism trap, I stated my view was that DP is built off of the tenets of both modernism and postmodernism, but that there were even more -isms that could be applied, so we could call it a “multi-ism” endeavor.
A horde of students did manage to show up for Fritz Donnelly’s presentation, which was entertaining and humorous. He was a charming interactive speaker, whose work is probably a good model for the students to have seen. Like me, he made a point to (and took pride in) giving students permission to following up (creatively) on any idea, no matter how odd, that came into their mind. That, along with a shared DIY ontology, was the extent of crossover between our sensibilities.
Anyway, my lectures at MMU are now completed, and I’m ready to move on to other challenges. I’ll take a few days away from campus next week to re-group and re-orient my mind, then proceed into some new creative projects. To that end, after meeting with Forest and John tomorrow, I’ll head to the library to get a couple of books on java, and see what I can do with that, to begin with. The eBook will take a bit of time, but not too much. We’re halfway done with our time here, with some good things to show but have barely scratched the surface of what I really want to do.
Encouraging news on the book front is that we finally received the terms of use for John Cage’s work ($150 for 2/3 of a page and a few quotes), and I have identified the image of André Vallias’ I am hoping to use on the cover (a full iteration of his piece De Verso/The Verse). Little by little all of the pieces are beginning to come together…
A horde of students did manage to show up for Fritz Donnelly’s presentation, which was entertaining and humorous. He was a charming interactive speaker, whose work is probably a good model for the students to have seen. Like me, he made a point to (and took pride in) giving students permission to following up (creatively) on any idea, no matter how odd, that came into their mind. That, along with a shared DIY ontology, was the extent of crossover between our sensibilities.
Anyway, my lectures at MMU are now completed, and I’m ready to move on to other challenges. I’ll take a few days away from campus next week to re-group and re-orient my mind, then proceed into some new creative projects. To that end, after meeting with Forest and John tomorrow, I’ll head to the library to get a couple of books on java, and see what I can do with that, to begin with. The eBook will take a bit of time, but not too much. We’re halfway done with our time here, with some good things to show but have barely scratched the surface of what I really want to do.
Encouraging news on the book front is that we finally received the terms of use for John Cage’s work ($150 for 2/3 of a page and a few quotes), and I have identified the image of André Vallias’ I am hoping to use on the cover (a full iteration of his piece De Verso/The Verse). Little by little all of the pieces are beginning to come together…
# posted by chris funkhouser @ 6:25 AM 
