Friday, April 28, 2006
The primary activities today were a lengthy meeting with the engineers, and reviewing (and preparing a couple of new animations for) the pieces I’ve selected to perform next week.
The meeting at Somnuk’s office began with the two students (Mindy and Eileen) who have built a couple of poetry generators as part of their “final year project” at MMU. Somnuk has always offered “Blind Poet” (building a poetry generator that makes rhyming verse) as a type of project students could undertake but until now no one had, so these young women are really departing from the norm. They’ve used a programming language I’ve never heard of before (Clips 6.23) to do so, because using Java was too difficult. I much appreciated their efforts, which produce some (unintentionally) really crazy abstract texts. The main problem – if it is a problem is that there isn’t a lot of noun-verb agreement. The first form they tried to emulate was a type of limerick called “clerihew” (which I’d also never heard of). Here are a couple of examples of something the program output this morning:
The other form they have taken up, which I didn’t transcribe an example of as it was very rudimentary and simple, is called diamante (makes poems in the shape of a diamond, where the subject in last line is the opposite of that in the first.
I was glad to see the work, and meet the students; it’s only too bad they don’t have more time to pursue this interest before heading out into the real world…
Next I met with Keh Siong, the tutor who is a Java master. We reviewed my objectives and sketched out how it could be built. In just an hour I learned much more about the (difficult) process than I had anticipated. Apparently what I have in mind (to begin with, a small database containing four or five different types of media files that contains both indexed and randomized attributes) isn’t terribly difficult, but that’s easy for an expert to say. What I have to do now is determine exactly what content I want to use, and then go about creating the database, ID’ing the files, storing the files, storing the links, and manipulating the database. We agreed (with Somnuk’s blessings) to meet once a week for the remainder of my time here. The session was a little overwhelming with new technical information, but that’s OK because this is what I want to do.
In comparison, the little Flash movies I made for my Spam poems and a Google poem (made with the search string “How fast can a zebra run?”) were a piece of cake. Were it were all that easy!
Finally, we had some family time in the late afternoon and evening, which involved a trip to the Alamanda mall in Putrajaya. I didn’t mean to end up walking out of the place with some sizzling hot new duds for the gigs next week, but that’s what happened. So, seem to be ready on all fronts now. I will try to send some dispatches from Bangkok, but if not, will file a thorough report as soon as I can.
The meeting at Somnuk’s office began with the two students (Mindy and Eileen) who have built a couple of poetry generators as part of their “final year project” at MMU. Somnuk has always offered “Blind Poet” (building a poetry generator that makes rhyming verse) as a type of project students could undertake but until now no one had, so these young women are really departing from the norm. They’ve used a programming language I’ve never heard of before (Clips 6.23) to do so, because using Java was too difficult. I much appreciated their efforts, which produce some (unintentionally) really crazy abstract texts. The main problem – if it is a problem is that there isn’t a lot of noun-verb agreement. The first form they tried to emulate was a type of limerick called “clerihew” (which I’d also never heard of). Here are a couple of examples of something the program output this morning:
Hector AdelingSomehow the rhyme didn’t come through on the longer version, but they still have a couple of weeks to get it working correctly.
swim her aloe-vera of sting
since he lived a sister
he began over this mother
There was a thorn surprising in lightbulb
whose logs enchanted every melancholy flashing
into every lady it loved
at her mortals of every apple
which cried these cave of snipe
The other form they have taken up, which I didn’t transcribe an example of as it was very rudimentary and simple, is called diamante (makes poems in the shape of a diamond, where the subject in last line is the opposite of that in the first.
I was glad to see the work, and meet the students; it’s only too bad they don’t have more time to pursue this interest before heading out into the real world…
Next I met with Keh Siong, the tutor who is a Java master. We reviewed my objectives and sketched out how it could be built. In just an hour I learned much more about the (difficult) process than I had anticipated. Apparently what I have in mind (to begin with, a small database containing four or five different types of media files that contains both indexed and randomized attributes) isn’t terribly difficult, but that’s easy for an expert to say. What I have to do now is determine exactly what content I want to use, and then go about creating the database, ID’ing the files, storing the files, storing the links, and manipulating the database. We agreed (with Somnuk’s blessings) to meet once a week for the remainder of my time here. The session was a little overwhelming with new technical information, but that’s OK because this is what I want to do.
In comparison, the little Flash movies I made for my Spam poems and a Google poem (made with the search string “How fast can a zebra run?”) were a piece of cake. Were it were all that easy!
Finally, we had some family time in the late afternoon and evening, which involved a trip to the Alamanda mall in Putrajaya. I didn’t mean to end up walking out of the place with some sizzling hot new duds for the gigs next week, but that’s what happened. So, seem to be ready on all fronts now. I will try to send some dispatches from Bangkok, but if not, will file a thorough report as soon as I can.
# posted by chris funkhouser @ 7:27 AM 
