aisyalam

One byproduct of being off-the-road and working on campus is an aching back—I’ve been sitting at my desk the past three days and now I can barely sit without immense pain. But the positives of production do outweigh the physical aggravation, and the environment is prime and conducive to creativity, so, lah, can’t really complain too much… 'specially since I'm going to avoid the desk for the next couple of days...

At this point all of the files are prepared, and just one more minor change needs to be made to the eBook interface. I made another last minute change today, swapping out a piece on which I am barely present (recorded with my pals in Brazil) for one of the polyvocal pieces we recorded the other day. Apparently the graphics files checked out at the manufacturer, so tomorrow I’ll do some final tests at some Internet cafes in KL and deliver everything on Friday. While in the city I’ll also be making some field recordings and, as I mentioned before, check out some gear that I’d like to acquire for my creative arsenal.

I was supposed to meet with the java tutor on Friday, but that has been put off for a couple of weeks, as he is busy with another project. If this were the eve of July rather than June I’d be nervous, but I have faith that everything will fall into place. Meanwhile, the contents are just becoming more and more refined.

I spent a good bit of time in correspondence and virtual housekeeping mode today in between the this’ and that’s of media programming and planning the upcoming performance. Most significantly, I had a couple of lengthy emails form (or with) Jorge Luiz Antonio; apparently things are happening with the translation of my book that is being published in São Paulo, which I’m glad to know. The other enjoyable distraction I’ve been enjoying this week is writing to people I’ve been out-of-touch with for 15-20 years. My 20th college reunion from UVa is happening this weekend, so I’ve been reflecting on those days (without a lot of nostalgia, I hasten to add, but with some curiosity), and decided to write to a few of my old comrades who I have been out of touch with. One thing that’s for certain is that Lazlo Toth (i.e., Don Novello) was right: you write letters, you get them back. It has been fun to discover the events of their lives prosaically. I’d probably’ve gone to the reunion if we were in the States, but all in all this just as good a way to reconvene with these folks—and the internet makes it pretty easy (although contact information for at least half of the people I wanted to write to is nowhere to be found).

Since it really is about time to get the eBook finished and out there, I used most of today working on it. I decided to go ahead and replace the files I mentioned in my last entry, so spent a good bit of time getting those pieces together. Both of them are Flash movies that use soundtracks Eric Curkendall and I recorded in Bangkok as the audio component. I had the basics set up and just had to finalize the images, sizing, and some other details. The other matter that needed to be attended to was the interface for the media content, which I was fortunately able to complete with John Hii this afternoon. Sau Bin’s wife Pat, a designer, had taken a look at it and said that she thought the font (Verdana, for what it’s worth) was too weak. So we replaced it (with Trebucher) and attended to a few other minor details, like linking up the new files and removing some excess information. The clean-up made it much better, and it is good that we’ve taken some time testing and getting more input. I have just a couple of small things to do on it before delivering to the manufacturer—hopefully on Thursday.

I ran into the Dean today, who told me that the date for the June performance (June 21) is good, so that’s happening and need to get ready for it. I’ve decided, already, to scale it back a little bit (e.g., two projectors/projections should be enough). I don’t think the preparations will be terribly demanding, but of course any time there is tech involved, things have to be organized. And not all of the pieces have been orchestrated and created, so there is definitely work to be done.

The tally on the missing audio files for the database project is three, so those are holes I’ve got to fill before Friday’s meeting with Keh Siong. Later tonight I’m going to re-review some of the recordings I’ve made and see if anything can be culled from them, and also plan to head up to KL and make recordings this week if necessary.

As usual, there’s plenty to do. But I’ve got little else on my mind, so that’s alright—what better ways to occupy these days?

Over the weekend I had some time to edit poems and organize the images that will appear in the database. Today I re-drafted the Word files and now have 14 new poems—pretty much finished—which is very gratifying, and it is a luxury to be able to remove one from the final tally (as I’m planning to include only 13 pieces). Amy has been a helpful reader/listener, offering edits, comments, and other direct input (i.e., cultural elements she thinks should not be left out of the thematic works). As far as the pictures go, I came up with 15 “keepers,” and today Sau Bin took a look at them and helped me purge a couple—not because they were bad images, but because there was nothing distinctively Malaysian about them. Now what I’ve got to do this week is come up with the requisite number of sound files (I’m a few files short at the moment), and then the prototype can be built. I’m presuming that once the database piece is made the contents can be altered, but I want the beta version to be as strong as it possibly can.

After the editing, selecting, etc., and a fine nasi kandar lunch, I had a wonderful two hour session in the audio lab. I was joined by Lydia, who was a spirited collaborator. First, she played a delightful Malaysian National anthem in which the sounds of a loud toad are used as the notes of the song, which we recorded. Then we loaded the lines of the “Multimedia University” poem into the sampler, and recorded two different versions (one with 10 keys, each with four lines attached, then one with 40 keys one line attached to each). On both of these pieces, both she and I spontaneously (i.e., unrehearsed) improvised fingerings on the keyboard, and I am very pleased by what we managed to record. It was our first session together and it went very smoothly. The other piece I made (with much help from Ajoi, the engineer, who cleaned up the field recording, made the loops, and applied the filters) involves a rattling ceiling fan from our homestay room in Penang. The sound of the fan had a distinct percussive element to it, captured by the minidisk and dilated by the software manipulation so it sounds like a bunch of Moroccan street musicians polyrhythmically playing metal cups. I’m almost certain that all of these pieces will be aired during the June MMU performance.

I’ve been gathering feedback on the eBook design and contents, and am now considering a couple of last minute replacements to the contents. One thing I’ve included that I think will be removed is the video file of a TV interview that Wilton Azevedo and I did in Brazil three summers ago—it is a .wmv file (causing problems for Mac users) and not a piece of art per se, so think I will put in something else—perhaps something Eric C. and I did in Bangkok; also, 3 different versions of the same poem (“SP,” also 2003) are included, and I’m considering putting in something more recent. This is something I’ll work out in the morning, so I can finally get the thing “in the can” and to the manufacturer sometime this week. The other activity of the week, in addition to making a few more field recordings, is a trip to Kuala Lumpur’s computer audiophile store, where I plan to pick up a sampling keyboard and external soundcard (and, if all goes well, some software) so I can do some of these audio shenanigans at home too… already thinking of things to do to get me through next winter…

The work went smoothly today, maybe too smoothly. With some effort, I made drafts of pieces for Melaka and Penang but when I got home and started reading one of them to Amy she told me—before I’d even read a full page—that it sounded like a tourist brochure (and she was right). I thought I’d removed most of that type of language but when I looked at it more closely and after some objective feedback such was not the case. Easy enough to fix, but her spontaneous review made me realized that I’ve got to go back and intensify and craft further. This will happen! (In fact, in the time between I wrote this posting and posted it, I went back, made a humdinger of a poem from the text she was criticizing earlier, and she loved it). Nonetheless, it feels great to have a completely new set of works (even if they aren’t quite all the way there yet). Now I need to organize the images and get the sound files together.

Speaking of which, I also made a couple of sound files from our days in Penang before encountering a strange problem and then making what might be an unfortunate mistake. The first two files, made from one minidisk, were made as usual. Then, using a new disc, I was able to hear the sounds through the computer (some good sounds too: 100s of birds and a jungle) but they weren’t registering on the audio software. So I started messing around with a couple of buttons on the minidisk recorder and managed to somehow delete three of the tracks. Actually I don’t think I erased them, I just made it impossible to access them—I’m pretty sure that once something is on an MD the information is there. Well, it could be that they’re gone, and I learned the lesson that I need to slide the protect switch on the disc itself if I value the sounds I’ve captured. Sometimes we learn lessons the hard way!

Tomorrow will be an “off” day of sorts, as we are going to KL to check out a gallery space where we’ll be exhibiting in July, then I’ll be at the Malaysian American Council on Educational Exchange giving a presentation with other Fulbright Scholars who are here. There’s also an event tomorrow night, featuring Paris-based artists discussing their work, which I’ll try to check out. Certainly it’ll be a long, stimulating, day.

No travel plans for a while, so will be here working on the various preparations, and hope to get the eBook to the “printer” next week. Lots of activities to do: sessions in the audio lab, getting materials ready for the various performances, working on the database. About nine weeks left on this Malaysian journey, and just getting going in some ways!

I had another productive session with Ajoi in the audio lab today, and is it ever terrific to have a good engineer to work with. What a rare luxury to be able to show up with ideas and content and have someone else take care of the technical details! First we captured and cleaned up a sample from the first recording I made here in December, a frog belching after a thunderstorm outside the Palace of Golden Horses. We then loaded the sample into the keyboard so that scales of the frog’s tones could be played. No recordings were made, as I’m waiting to work with my colleague Lydia, who knows how to play the piano, on that front. What I was hoping to do next was record my “Multimedia University” poem (41 lines) and assign each line to a key on the keyboard to create a non-linear, interactive poem. But we weren’t able to figure out how to do that using the software on hand (Reason), which allowed us to set samples into ten keys only. So instead I broke the poem up into ten stanzas of 4-5 lines each and put each short stanza (ranging from 14-20 seconds) into a key, which had a different effect than I’d imagined but worked out quite nicely. The poly-vocality of it is kind of crazy, but the interesting thing that emerges from the din are sounds that I couldn’t have even imagined before. Again, we didn’t make any recordings but will definitely do so before long, and will use the piece in the June MMU performance too, if possible.
Otherwise I didn’t get to work a lot more on my own stuff, just a bit on the texts, and a brief meeting with Sau Bin and Siew Wai where we determined which soundtrack she and I will use at our June 7 performance at SB’s installation. The reason for the diversion was that the “Gamma” Digital Media students were showcasing their projects at an event called “NATURE GESTURES - An Interactive Art Installation, and it took me quite a while to get through all 21 of them. I’m glad I did, however, because it was interesting to see what’s going on in their minds and classrooms. I won’t describe them in detail, but in general there was a lot of touch screen technology involved, and also quite a few pieces that used footwork or stepping to activate the interactive component. One used a light-stick, a flashlight of sorts, to move the cursor; one made use of headphones that vibrated (a sensation I’d never before experienced). I was pleased to see quite a bit of text involved—perhaps even some digital poetry—and a few very interesting infotainment-type games (out of Malaysian Folklore). Most of the projects used “behaviors” in Flash to make works interactive, a few used Director. Each of the pieces also had to be set in a type of decorative setting, so it was far from a barren room with computer terminals and monitors; some were more ornate than others, but the overall effect made the setting much more handmade than you might expect. The students had only seven weeks to prepare the work, which showed in some of the works, but compared to the student works I see at home (which are, admittedly, done by students with different interests) these efforts were superb, particularly from a programming point-of-view: very complex. The most beautiful piece was a virtual aquarium, with sleek user-guided fish; another remarkable work involved like gamelan playing (which the program/projection responded to), and a poem that progressed in moments of silence (which were actually quite difficult to come by in the environment as it was today). Anyhow, ff they were my students, I’d be quite proud. It was quite a scene, too, especially in the late afternoon when the Dean was present and a reception was held. I’m only posting one picture from the event here, but will put a few more up on flickr tomorrow.

In all, a stimulating, perhaps overstimulating, day. Not what I expected, but okay—some pleasant distractions. Looking forward to some focused time at the desk tomorrow.

It wasn’t supposed to be a work day, but since we decided for various reasons to leave Penang late last night instead of this morning it became one—which worked out well because I have to be at a Fulbright function on Friday so the week is already a couple of days short. I was able to catch up with a bunch of communications (being offline for four days was a luxury, but wow do things pile up quickly) and move forward on various projects. For starters, Eric Curkendall wrote to say he had posted a piece he’d engineered featuring our voices on his soundclick space (http://www.soundclick.com/bands/pagemusic.cfm?bandID=500390), which is really nutty. Another development is that Sau Bin put me in touch with Daniela Franco, a Paris-based Mexican installation artist who is putting something together in KL, so I sent her a few files and would be tickled if they were to be heard in a glitzy gallery as part of the festival of French arts that’s happening here. Perhaps best of all is that I had some contact with Keh Siong, the Java tutor, and am hoping to be seeing him soon and begin putting together (manually) the database that is nearly complete in terms of content. During the day, I saw some colleagues and students, uploaded some images from the weekend to flickr, then went back to the texts I’ve been working on the past couple of weeks, reading them aloud (I’d meant to do this with Amy over the weekend), trimming a little, further shaping, and am really pleased by most of them. Still a bit of work to do on them, but getting closer. Toward the end of the afternoon, I began to work on the final two pieces for the “13 States” piece, one for Melaka, and one for Penang—I’ll focus on these the next couple of days, listen to some “field” recordings I made on the weekend (jungle, trishaw ride, fan whirring), and work in the sound lab a little. Hopefully by week’s end I’ll be quite close to having the content done, which’ll give me two months to make the machine that presents the materials, while preparing for the two or three perfomances/installations mentioned previously.

A
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E N G A G E M E N T :
A C C O R D
N E C E S S A R Y

The Internet was a distraction this morning: over tea and a bottle of water read a few blogs, tested alltheweb.com’s new engine, sent some emails, making some amendments to the wepress website, etc. Fortunately, through the course of the rest of the day I did manage to do what I wanted to get done, which involved further tightening the poem-texts I’ve been making, and fusing them with acrostics penned yesterday (some of which were unresolved). The tally at this point is 11 new pieces, which I need to read aloud to the family for their input and comments before presenting them elsewhere. This work took most of the day and left me pretty dang knackered. OK though, as it was decent end to a really unique, exciting week where I actually got to focus on poetry for a few days in a row, an element integral to the overall project. Glad to have a few new instances of language to work with, and surely I’ll get to spend plenty of time programming and working with software in the coming weeks.

Roadtrip tomorrow, five or so hours north to Sungei Petani, near where the oldest structures in Malaysia—ruins in the Bujang Valley—can be visited. On saturday south to Penang for three nights, and a parade for Wesak (a few days late) on Monday. Got notebooks, minidisks, cameras packed in a bag, and will bring the laptop too, although I might not be back in blogspace ‘til tuesday.

Leave off with the poem I mentioned yesterday, for “Pulau Redang:”

Palm patio pool probably plugs pictures
Unsmooth underwater undeveloped
Lunch lizard long leaves
As an arrival awkward and air asia
Up!

Reef resplendent remarkable rife
Ebullient effusive exquisite eye/sights
Dramatic diverse diving discourse
April astounding azure aquatic active Atlantis
Naval nautical nemotic neural
Growth gorgeous glorious garden

Although I was on campus earlier than usual, for a 9 a.m. meeting with the Dean (about the June performance as well as the serious possibility of my future association with the Faculty), the day got off to a slow start. After the meeting I had to prepare some professional documents (tedious reformatting) and take care of some other business, making amendments and links to the eBook, all done without ado. After an early lunch of nasi ayam things began to pick up. I delved into the texts I was working on yesterday with poetic scalpel—and they needed work, which was fairly draining (though a couple of cups of teh terik did help matters). About ready to call it a day a couple of hours before I usually do, I instead went for a short walk then proceeded to begin putting together a poem (without computer assistance) for each of the topical texts I’ve been (co-) composing lately. The results were downright invigorating. It seems that working with language that was not my own really helped me to tune into my own verbal formations, so as I raked through my journal and concentrated on the matters at hand (namely place and subject), some really exciting verses emerged in a form I would describe as alliterative hyper-acrostic. While we were on Pulau Redang last month (a truly beautiful island in the South China Sea), I began to compile words for some acrostics there, ending up with four for each letter of the words, and continued along that path today (not for each of the dozen pieces, but for many of them). Since I was only at it for a couple of hours, I wasn’t able to really finish anything, but left the office with a draft of each piece and a charge—really a high—that I haven’t experienced in quite awhile. The ironic thing about that is that my office is a really drab and spartan setting, and I almost decided to go somewhere more aesthetically stimulating to write. In the end, I’m glad I didn’t—no one came by to offer distraction, I left the computer and Internet off, and really had at it. Anyway, I’m hoping by tomorrow afternoon to have drafts of all of these pieces to study and refine when we head off on a four day trip to Penang over the weekend (where I also hope to write some more and make a few more field recordings).

Amidst a really exhausting day of working on a bunch of texts (10, in fact), I took time out to read a newly published lengthy essay by Dan Hoy titled “The Virtual Dependency of the Post-Avant and the Problematics of Flarf: What Happens when Poets Spend Too Much Time Fucking Around on the Internet,” which is relevant to the research and some of the artwork I’ve been involved lately (if not for years). While I don’t have the time to go into it deeply (you can read it in Jacket 29 (http://jacketmagazine.com/29/hoy-flarf.html), Hoy frowns on the use of Google to make poems (which he accurately sees as collages), on many fronts. In brief, he has difficulty with “the uncritical use of corporate algorithms as a generator of poetic chance and catalyst for engaging the Other,” and thereby seriously contests Google’s viability as a tool with which to make poetry (“a breeding ground for some bad habits and a utopian view of the Internet’s impact on the poetry community”). I can empathize with his perspective, although I don’t happen to agree with it. When I first heard of Leevi Lehto’s Google Poetry Engine, on the heels of writing a 90 page historical survey on text generators for my Prehistoric Digital Poetry book, I became intrigued by it as a heuristic device. So I began to use it (as I have programs like Merz, TRAVESTY, and MOOs in the past), employing various approaches and levying various processes to make text. By now, the more I use it, which is fairly frequently, the less amount of text emitted by the program is actually used (although a large percentage of the text is still from the search strings, now altered and appended to, usually rather drastically). The information on a subject, place, idea, question, etc. is created, processed, re-processed by both the computer and my brain so that a strange but alluring and provocative cyborgian poem (poetic imprint?) emerges. The pieces I’ve been working on lately, some of which will be included in the database project ("13 States of Malaysia"), are going through at least 7 phases, some machine, some human (including the addition of “original” passages). As far as I (& my brain & eyes) can tell, this isn’t taking the easy route! Of course, it is not for everyone, and I wish I could say that all of the texts were terrific but they aren’t—they’re still very much in Process. By the end my hope is not necessarily that they are stunning and flawless, but rather representative, informative, and engaging at the same time. The jury will be out for awhile, but I’m enjoying the challenge. Anyhow, I’m glad to have Hoy’s piece to bounce off of in more formalized articulations anon..

A little bit of testing on the CD-ROM and some student consultation were the only other things I was involved with today besides sculpting modulated machine poems for Bangsar, Batu Caves, Boh Tea Plantation, Cameron Highlands, Chinese New Year, Dragon Fruit, Kuala Lumpur, Pasar Putrajaya, and Pulau Redang—which were more than enough to keep me occupied (and slightly hallucinating by late afternoon).

Over the weekend I was able to review the eBook files, make a few fixes, and begin testing. So far, so good; I’ve given it to a few other people around here to look at, and with luck it’ll be ready to go to press before too much time passes. I’m only a bit sorry that more of the latest work isn’t included, but any project of this sort will never come to an end if you don’t put a cap on it!

Progress is transpiring on all fronts. I spent some time with Siew Wai today, talking about the upcoming performance at MMU, devising ways she too can be involved. I was quite fascinated to hear that she’s making unusual music with traditional Malaysian instruments, which fits hand-in-glove with one of the other ideas I’ve been toying with, so I think incorporating her work on this front will be a great addition. She is also an excellent vocalist, and I hope to utilize that talent if possible. With an hour of performance time to fill, working both of these possibilities into the gig shouldn’t be a problem.

I can’t remember if I mentioned it before or not, but Sau Bin has asked me to do a performance at the opening of an exhibit in KL called “God & Man” that includes his work, so that’s what I’ll be doing on the night of June 7. The schedule is quickly filling up, with plenty more work to be done during our last (for this visit) 10 weeks here.

On the database front, I came up with a working title for the project, which will called something like “13 States of Malaysia” or something like that, and this afternoon I worked with unfettered concentration on a couple of odd compositions about Terengganu and Putrajaya, two of the many interesting places we’ve seen in the past few months. I’m using a combination of generated information and personal insight to craft the texts, and with the various processes I’ve decided to use, it is actually a lot more demanding that I’d reckoned. I’m planning to make 13 texts, and select an equal number of representative images and sounds to put into the database, which can then be used by either an individual user, or in a performance setting. Unfortunately, it is doubtful that the mechanism will be built by the third week of June, although the materials will be on hand and used in the performance. I’m also planning to use the images, sounds, and texts in the show at MIA Gallery in July.

Sandy Baldwin recently invited me to participate in a mini E-Poetry festival at West Virginia University in September, and today he sent a list of people who are supposedly going to be there. It’s impressive! I’m always glad (& not only because it is good for the research) to be in the company of serious practitioners like Rosenberg, Sondheim, Glazier, Emerson, Goldsmith, aND, etc., and it looks like some new blood’ll be present too. If everything goes according to plan, I’ll perform the database materials there (and give a talk about anthropophagy and the Google Poetry Generator as well). While trying not to be too attached to our terrific life here, it would be somewhat inaccurate to say I’m looking forward to returning to the States—but knowing that there are a couple of sweet events out there on the horizon (I’ve also been invited to lecture at Yale in the Fall, at a symposium called “50 Years of Concrete Poetry at the Museum of Modern Art”) will make the impending transition much better. In the meantime, making the most of what we have for now…

I’ve never lived in a country where a Buddhist holiday was celebrated as a national event, so today—Wesak Day—was a first. I’ve been interested in Buddhism for more than 20 years (first as a student of its art and literature at UVa, subsequently learning about it as a life form as a student at Naropa circa 1986, and finally took it up as a discipline that involves daily sitting practice in 1992), so it only made sense that today would be out of the ordinary, and it was. I did go up to the office this morning, but only to pick up some papers that I left there yesterday. Campus was pretty much empty but as it turns out, the walk itself was productive—I began to think about making hybrid texts with the Google generator, and what potential there is in such cyborg texts: a blend of personal observation and sensibility with automatically generated text. Various artists have used programs to make texts, and then edited them according to their own predilections (or whims). I was thinking about how this type of work was really “modulated machine” work, rather than “machine modulated” work, as John Cayley refers to it. I began to realize that if I am going to use such techniques then I better gear up to write some sort of essay on the subject sometime soon.

Anyhow, instead of working on the national holiday, we got in the car and drove up to the Brickfields in Kuala Lumpur to pay a visit to the Maha Vihara temple, which was jam packed with people paying respects to everything under the sun (and also spirits who no longer were). The temple had also organized a blood donation drive, organ donor drive (and was giving away free food). It was hot and beautiful. One of the most incredible sights was seeing probably 10,000 oil lamps lit in the name of “peace in happiness.” Stella and I got blessed by a couple of monks, too. We spent a couple of hours absorbing the atmosphere. Then, since we are in Malaysia, did what many Malaysians do on a holiday: we went shopping. First we went out for lunch at an organic restaurant in Bangsar, then went to Silverfish Books, a great bookstore we’d been meaning to check out for a long time, and it was very cool. The proprietor, TRR Raman, was very friendly and helpful, and we picked up a few interesting titles: Raman’s The Wedgwood Ladies Football Club, Cecil Rajendra’s Rags & Ragas (poems), Robert Raymer’s Lovers and Strangers Revisited, Farish Noor’s From Majapahit to Putrajaya, Orwell’s Burmese Days, a pamphlet published by a Malay press (Citizens International) by David Noble called Digital Diploma Mills: Technology and the Business Takeover of Higher Education, and a DVD of movies by a Malay artist named James Lee. Not much more than that, just good family time. We made it home in time for dinner and a little reading (Robert Fisher’s Buddhist Art and Architecture and Laura Ingalls Wilder’s The Long Winter).

I was thinking of doing some work on texts this evening but it doesn’t look like it will happen. Instead, I’ll take a half-day tomorrow to make sure all the circuits are correctly connected in the eBook, then we’ll get together with Fauzee, Fishie, and Ilham over in Putrajaya.

Another day in Cyberjaya, and another terrific day. First thing that happened was a message came in from Charles Bernstein letting me know that the Bangkok recordings have been posted at PennSound (http://www.writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Funkhouser.html). I am impressed by how quickly that happened (thanks Charles, et al.!). I spent the morning getting things organized on the desk and calendar (plotting and planning our last 11 or so weeks here, which will—in addition to MMU work—include lectures at USM in Penang and NUS in Singapore, plus a few other excursions), outlining the scheme of the database (images, sounds, texts), reviewing and making a list of images to compile for the database (also some pictures from Thailand to replace repeating pictures in the animation I made yesterday, prompted by a comment Stella made—nice when your kids help make your art better). After lunch with Amy, Sau Bin and I put our heads together, tossing possibilities around for my (our) upcoming performance/installation at MMU. Because he has a few gigs in June and July we decided it would be best to do it just after the next term begins, on June 21—which gives us about 5 weeks to put it together. He asked me if there would be any theme for the presentation, and all I could think of in response was, “scientific randomness and aesthetic beauty.” At the moment it looks like it will involve, on the tech front, 3 projectors and a PA system, although could easily change. We want to do it in the large atrium in between the School of Management and the FCM, where the acoustics are good, there is plenty of foot traffic, and also a built in audience at the café where I eat pretty much everyday. We came up with a few ideas for sensory stimuli, and I have a list of chores to do with regards to making soundtracks and capturing images (like a photo-essay on various places at the university); I’m hoping to get at least a couple of other faculty members involved as well. The plan is to have 30 minutes of sound and image projection, 30 minutes live performance, 30 minutes sound and image, 30 minutes performance. It will be interesting to see how this initial plan evolves, and what we can concoct in general…

Through Sau Bin, Amy and I have also been asked to participate in an exhibit at a gallery called MIA in Kuala Lumpur from July 15-29. I don’t know if we’ll do this collaboratively or not, but it seems like a good way to end our stint here (we’re flying back to Newark on July 31).

After that, John Hii came by to show me what he put together for the (very cool) layout design of the eBook, which was exciting. The chore tomorrow will be to get all of the files organized, review them carefully, and begin to make any fixes that need to be made. After that, test, test, test, for at least a week.

I spent the rest of the day making a dozen texts with the Google Poetry engine, which I’ll alter by adding to and subtracting from; some of the material may eventually end up in the database in an altered form. Now that I’ve begun to identify the (entirely Malaysian) images and sounds that are going to go into the prototype, I need to make some texts. I’m not really comfortable with using the Google poems in their entirety, but—strange as it may sound—find the device useful as a heuristic tool (which has already proven itself in helping to jump start my own poetic perspective and compositions). I have written some “poems” here but haven’t been able to do so every step of the way, so trying this process out and hopeful that it will lead to fertile places. I still have a few gaps to fill (for instance, I’d like to make another trip to Melaka because it needs to be represented in the database project), but should be able to (and will) focus quite a bit on this aspect of the project—which will most likely also feed into the performance—during the next 2-3 weeks.

In many ways I’ve enjoyed spending the past four years writing prose, and doing research on my discipline for more than a decade—these activities have been beneficial in so many ways—but I have to admit making art is a lot more exciting and presents a whole ‘nother set of welcome, rewarding challenges. Digging it!

I finally finished making the .pdf of the lectures for Selections 2.0 this afternoon. Last night’s guess that it would take an hour was, of course, wishful thinking. I hadn’t factored in all the typos and other little snafus I ran into that required me to replace pages and so on. Though tedious, I learned some things about the program, made a better document, and everything came out alright in the end, which is what’s most important.

The first unexpected visitor that came to see me in the office today was Lydia, who’d gotten word through Forest that I was looking for a pianist. Word travels fast! We had an interesting conversation, I told her some ideas I had for using keyboard samples in a soundtrack, played her the recording I made yesterday, and she expressed interest in working on a collaboration, which is cool. We’ll get to that in a couple of weeks. We also talked about her research involving the “moods” found in music, which is really fascinating and I hope to be able to help her out with it somehow. She brought over an article she published on the subject that I look forward to reading very soon.

I was about to start making texts for the database in the afternoon when my friend Ali showed up. We hadn’t seen each other in awhile, so I welcomed what I thought would be a brief conversation. We were catching up when he told me he had spent the past two weeks making Flash movies, so I asked him to look at a problem I was having with an animation in Bangkok last week. Then we ended up spending at least the next 90 minutes devising a new way to make the animation work. It wasn’t what I expected to be doing, but the result was good (http://web.njit.edu/~funkhous/2006/bankgkok3.swf) (beware high bandwidth, again). When I got home and showed it to Amy she called it the best one yet and noted that my relations with Iran seem to be much more functional than Washington’s!

So tomorrow I’ll get to the text making, meet with John and Sau Bin about other projects. Friday’s a national holiday here in Malaysia—Buddha’s birthday—but I’m hoping for a meeting with the database folks nonetheless. Otherwise, perhaps a drive out into the countryside with gear…

The only thing that I’m lacking here is more hours! At this point I’m feeling completely stimulated, inspired, and the days are full of engaging activity. It’s great to have such focus and space to work on all of the various projects, with only the mild pressure I put on myself to contend with. More ideas constantly emerging, and every day is productive. Actually, there’s not much of anything to complain about—everyone in the family is having a great experience and learning new things every day. All I really need to do is put together the database that’s been festering in my mind and keeping me awake at night, and organize the campus performance in a couple of months. I guess time was just a little too tight today…

A few things happened, in any case. I finished the bibliography for the eBook lectures (at Amy’s insistence, I was going to blow it off and make it a “Selected” bibliography but she convinced me the more authority I could muster, the better), and made it about a quarter of the way through hyperlinking the .pdf file (finding a system that should enable me to finish it in an hour or so tomorrow). Towards building the database project, started a list of images (pictures) of Malaysia I want to include, and will match the final number (will probably be less than 10) with an equal number of texts and soundtracks, which will be programmed with controls so that their consumption (viewing/hearing/reading) won’t repeat until everything has been seen once. The whole thing is going to be pretty tricky to make but hopeful that I’ll be able to pull it off (with a little assistance of course); if so the time here will be a success on all fronts.

The session in the audio lab was terrific, and also fruitful. Ajoi (whose real name is Dzulhafidz Dzulkifli) was very instructive, easy to work with, and seemed very interested in working on something different than the norm (I was also pleased he too is a fan of Brasil futbol). Although his main interest is rock’n’roll, and his professional background is mainly producing dance/pop music for a Malaysian group called Cru, he was aware of experimental composers like Cage and was receptive to my atypical ideas (which are no doubt different than the usual things students ask him to work on). After showing me the programs that he recommended I use, Sonar 4 (to record and mix) and Reason (sampler) we recorded four strikes of the rin gong then processed three of them with different “Morphoder” filters (Oager, Whisper, and Robbie), looped and layered them, and then added a track where I was playing one of the samples via keyboard. This process took less than an hour, and for me, the result was fantastic. The piece we made is about five minutes long and I will certainly use it as a soundscape in future performances. I was impressed at how easy the software was to use, and will certainly be making an investment in some new hardware and software in the coming months. If I have to go back to New Jersey (and I do), at least I’ll have some new tools and skills to work with during long cold months in the solar studio. Meanwhile, I’m going to think of some other audio projects to cook up with the faculty members I know who are involved with sound. I still want to make an interactive audio piece too. The initial idea was to do something where the user spoke to the text to navigate, but now I’m thinking that the installation may have to be done using a keyboard as an interface. With Reason a different sample can be assigned to each key, and maybe I’ll try to put something together with sound and (spoken) text this way.

I also managed to add the soundtrack for the Spam poems into the Flash animation I made for last week’s performance, which is now posted at http://web.njit.edu/~funkhous/2006/spam.html. It is a fairly large file by WWW standards (3 megs), so only for the broadband audience…

(Now if I could only track down and remove the mosquito that buzzed by me in the apartment a little while ago the day would be complete)

REGARDS CROISES is a new journal for which I am a member of the "scientific committee" (along with Wilton AZEVEDO, Jan BAETENS, Ambroise BARRAS, Michel BERNARD, Laura Borras CASTANYER, Jean CLEMENT, Jeno FARKAS, Loss Pequeno GLAZIER, Nick MONTFORT, Alain VUILLEMIN, and Karine WENZ).

I just received the following call for work from Philippe Bootz, who is producing the journal, and wanted to post it for anyone who may be interested (English below):

Cher collègue.

Le laboratoire Paragraphe de l'université Paris8 lance la revue bilingue FR/UK "regards croisés/crossed looks" consacrée aux hypermédias littéraires. Cette revue internationale se veut lieu d'échanges entre divers points de vue, diverses approches des hypermédia littéraires. Résolument pluridisciplinaire et pluriculturelle elle regroupe des contributions d’auteurs et de chercheurs en sciences de l’information et de la communication, littérature, psychologie, arts des nouveaux médias… qui, tous, prennent les hypermédias littéraires comme objet de création ou d’étude.

Il ne s’agit pas ici de considérer le rôle du support informatique génère dans la diffusion ou l’édition d’œuvres imprimées et d’ouvrages anciens, ni de s’attacher aux méthodes et outils informatiques d’aide à l’analyse littéraire, ni de confondre littérature et jeu vidéo malgré leurs affinités mais bien de focaliser l’attention sur ces objets littéraires récents qui utilisent des propriétés spécifiques du médium numérique pour faire acte de littérature.

La revue propose un regard multiple. Il peut décrire des œuvres et des démarches, regarder la place de ces objets dans les histoires littéraires nationales, s’attacher sur les différents genres qui, peut-être, émergent dans ces œuvres, analyser des aspects plus narratologiques, sémiotiques ou communicationnels, confronter ces objets à des modèles analytiques et théoriques éprouvés par ailleurs ou développés spécifiquement pour ces objets… il ne s’agit là que de quelques pistes non exhaustives.

Les propositions pour le numéro 1 doivent m’être envoyées par mail directement sous forme d’un article définitif de 30000 signes maximum (soit une dizaine de pages en times new roman corps 12, simple interligne, format A4, marges de 2,5 cm) avant le 10 juin 2006 de façon à ce que nous ayons le temps de les traduire. Si l’article comporte des captures-écran, celles-ci doivent être en noir et blanc.

L’article peut être écrit en anglais ou en français. Il sera traduit dans l’autre langue.


Dear colleague.

The laboratory Paragraphe at the University Paris8 creates a new bilingual FR/UK academic review called “regards croisés / crossed looks” that focuses on the digital literature. This review wish becomes a locus for exchanges between different points of view on digital literature. The review is resolutely multicultural and pluridisciplinary. It put contributions by authors and researchers together. The researchers must come from literature, communications studies and new media studies, semiotics, psychology…

The review is not concerned by studies on the role the computer plays as a support for publishing and distributing printed literature, nor by the methods and computing tools for literary studies, nor by confusion between literature and video game even if they have some similarities. Works that use specific properties of the digital medium to make literature concerns it.

The look must be multiple. It must describe works or approaches, look at the place of digital fiction or poetry in the literary history of a country or in the world, look at the different genres or forms of this literature, make naratologic or semiotic analyses, apply some new or classical theoretical models to these objects… the list is non exhaustif.

Proposals for the issue nb 1 must be send me by mail before 10 th june 2006 in order to have time to translate it. It must be a paper of less than 30000 characters (approximatively 10 pages in times new roman 12). Screenshot must be in black and white only.

The paper must be written in French or in English, it will be translated in the other language.

Philippe's email is philippe.Bootz@multimedia.univ-paris8.fr - if you have something, send it to him there...

All of the recordings that Eric & I did, and the performance at Bed Supperclub, are now up as mp3s at http://web.njit.edu/~funkhous/sound/curkendall.html. Give ‘em a listen if you have a few minutes and let me know what you think. I’m hoping they’ll be added to my PennSound page before long.

Back at work today, and plenty to do. Besides preparing and posting the files, I managed to get through editing and correcting about half of the lectures so I should be able to get the pdf made tomorrow. In order to make it a little more interesting and useful, I’ll make hypertext links in the pdf, which will add a little time but should make it a more effective tool in the long run. The eBook project is approaching completion at last, Khong sent over the ISBN number today, so now a few loose ends to take care of, and testing, then it will be ready to be produced. I’ve enjoyed the process of putting it together, and it will be a good artifact, but I won’t miss having it looming as a slight distraction! As soon as the lecture pdf is done, and I meet with John Hii, the graphic designer, later in the week I’ll be able to focus on the two things I’ll be spending the rest of my time here on: the multimedia database project and the MMU installation/performance (in which I’ll surely be using some of the soundtracks we prepared in Bangkok plus whatever else I can invent in the meantime).

Tomorrow I have an appointment in the MMU audio lab, which I look forward to. I’m mainly interested in seeing what software they have, and what I may be able to do with the gear here. I’ll bring the rin gong and flute, maybe some texts, and see what I can come up with.

I also spent some time catching up on emails and looking at a few blogs today, having a good time reading about the recent Flarf festival in New York, where it seems a lot of people doing similar things to what I presented at the Bangkok festival were gathered. I’ve heard of “Flarf” before, but through the limetree blog (link at left) was able to “read-up” on it through Jordan Davis’ Village Voice article and various other texts. It seems like using randomized computer poetry and programs would qualify as “Flarf,” and I started making poems with Spam messages in February 2004—so it seems I would belong to this gang (& since many of the participants are friends of mine, I guess that makes sense). Looks like a good time was had by all, & perhaps I’ll be able to join in the fun next time…

Bangkok recap (finally):

On Wednesday, Eric and I got to work early, going over what we wanted to do in the performance, then we set out to record the pieces we had arranged the previous two days. Hard work, but it went fairly smoothly. I was glad that the ideas we had sketched out the day before had stuck overnight. Process: we’d create the soundscape, record (overlay) the vocals, and mix appropriately. End result: five solid tracks, the best of which I hope to post up at PennSound before long. We spent most of the day on it, leaving about an hour of downtime before we had to be at Bed Supperclub to do the tech check. Once at the club, we only encountered a few bumps, which we were able to find solutions for with the help of Roman (the sound guy) and Justin Time (the dj). Both Eric & I were mighty relieved when managed to get the sound and visuals ready to go with a couple of hours to spare; in order to do so I had to set my gear up at the cashier’s counter at the entrance of the room (where there was a vga cable that hooked into the projector) and Eric was at the rear where all the dj/vj equipment was—which wasn’t what we expected but it wasn’t a problem in the end. The most unusual thing—besides the general atmosphere of the club (which was cylindrical, and at which patrons dined on beds that were 80 feet long)—was that the evening was billed as “art and supermodels.” So, we performed to a room full of some of the most glamorous people imaginable, a few hangers-on, and a few of the artists from the festival. Oddly, no other acts from the festival were on the bill that night. Justin played a great set of tunes, the mood was good, and I’d guess more than 100 people were present when we started our set at about nine o’clock. We opened with our version of the Buddhist “Kesa Sutra” (in English and Japanese) which I chant every day in private, which starts with a few strikes on my rin gong and during which I also play flute at beginning and end; I projected the images of the Chinese temple in the Highlands changing the images (randomized by the javascript program I posted last week). Eric’s part in this piece (and the next) involves making totally wild sounds using a setting called “Rachmiel Skrewell” in the Ableton program, switching some of the settings and “monkeying” (live) with the fades and pitches once the next piece begins. The text of the second piece, “Feedback” was initiated by Leevi Lehto’s Google Poetry Generator, which I significantly edited; for simplicity’s sake I kept using the temple images as the visual accompaniment. I also read a piece I created with the TRAVESTY program using Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” as input. Then Eric had to switch programs (to Reaktor), so I read an a capella piece during the brief downtime, an acrostic poem called “Yemanjá” that I wrote in Brazil after the tsunami in 2004 (I thought it was appropriate to read in Thailand). The third electronic piece we did is called “How Fast Can a Zebra Run?” which was also made with the Google Generator and for which I made a Flash animation featuring zebras floating and bouncing around in various shapes and directions; the soundtrack is built from a sample of my voice saying “Bangkok” processed through the metaphysical function setting in the program. Then Eric had to change programs again and I read another solo piece called “Key Words,” which is kind of a found poem made up of words (in alphabetical order) from a book on Java. The next piece, “Facts About Durians,” also made with the Google Poetry Generator, was done in two voices. Eric (in brogue) and I read two entirely different types of texts (made with the same search string) while a recording of frogs I made in Cyberjaya also played through the speakers; the Flash animation I made was projected. To conclude I read three poems made from spam email messages while Eric intensely processed one of the samples of the piano soundtracks I recorded in New Jersey. In all the performance lasted about thirty minutes, and actually seemed to be fairly well received by the audience. I was surprised that very few (like only two) people stepped out while we were on, because admittedly it was not a very easy going, or easy-to-absorb, conventional-type presentation. I knew things were going well when a couple came up to me during the set to inquire what I was reading, and we got big props from both the festival organizer and sound technician afterward. Francis, the organizer, was very delighted, telling me that his preconception of digital poetry was that it would be some sort of dull hypertext show, but when we came out with great voices and sounds we really got his attention. Another good sign was when the guy who started the club (who was actually the person who interrupted me during the set) shoved a drink (Long Island Ice Tea of all things) into my hand and wanted to converse afterwards. Anyway, the whole thing gave me a good charge and both Eric and I had positive impressions of it afterwards, which was gratifying. It was Eric’s first performance since moving to Asia more than seven years ago, and a very good debut I’d say. Walking back to the hotel wearing my traditional Malaysian garb I was definitely feelin’ good. (For a few pics of the scene, see our Flickr blog).

Thursday morning was my only real “free” time in Bangkok so I got up at an ungodly hour and got a ride down to the river, where I took a walk and arrived at the Grand Palace just as it opened. It is incredible place to say the least, with ornate buildings, temples, and a 1900 meter long mural that depicts the entire Ramayana tale. From there I walked down to Wat Pho, a Buddhist temple that features the famous “reclining” Buddha (with feet inlaid with mother of pearl) and many other outrageous buildings. I could have spent the rest of the day there, but had to leave by noon in order to go back to my hotel and catch a taxi to my lecture (“Digital Poetry: An Introduction”), scheduled to start at 2. I hooked up with Eric and we went over to Chulalongkorn University, a sprawling campus, only to discover that the stated location of the lecture (“conference hall”) did not exist. Thanks to a helpful librarian at the Fine Arts building, who let us use her handphone, we managed to find the actual location, which was in the Library building. We got there on time, though the previous session by the Bangkok2 arts group was running late. This gave us time to check out a cool installation in an adjacent room by Nang Kwak called “Equal Opportunity” (See http://www.car.chula.ac.th/art), which has caused a slight stir in the city. Setting up for the lecture only one technical problem to deal with, having to do with the projector, so began late and felt (probably unnecessarily so) a bit rushed; also had to do the lecture with my back to the audience in order to see what was in the screen (which wasn’t appearing on my laptop). Otherwise the session (a modified version of a lecture I’ve given at MMU and IIUM) went well, and the audience (probably 30-40) seemed to be interested. The questions afterwards mainly involved what sorts of programs were best for this sort of work, and what was more important, the poetry or the technology. To this I say that the work isn’t possible without the technology, so the tech is important, but that the language and content is really what makes the work poetry, so both aspects are equally important. It must have gone well, in hindsight, as I was approached by a crew from a Thai TV station afterwards who wanted to interview me. The young man who conducted the interview had some real questions, so the interview was interesting and substantive; at one point, Eric, who was eavesdropping, got involved with it, then we sat in on a screening of some Warhol movies presented by one of his collaborators, Ronald Tavel, which were pretty good (one featured a split screen with a wordless Nico on one side and a drunken Paul Morrissey on the other) and some short pieces by Thanksa Phunsittivorakul (which I didn’t appreciate as much). So, despite a few foibles that arised, it was a fun afternoon. The close party, held at the HOF Art Center, featured five floors of paintings and video installations (not all associated with the Festival), and a rooftop dj/vj party. Eric and I hung out there for a couple of hours, taking it all in. My favorite pieces were Jeff Gompertz’s installation (live feeds mixed with shot footage) and some animations that were being projected onto a nearby building. A lot of people were there, and the djs and videos were all pretty good, though no one (besides Eric & I) seemed interested in moving to the beats. We left on the early side, said our goodbyes to the organizers and each other, and I went over to a nearby spa (not of ill-repute) for a traditional Thai massage, which was a great way to end the trip. Though it was exhausting, I much enjoyed the Bangkok experience and working with Eric, and hope to do so again someday. In any case, I was glad to get back to the family in Malaysia, getting back in the swing of things by copy editing my MMU lectures on the two hour flight home. Now, a couple of weeks of uninterrupted work ahead & plenty of other stuff to work on and explore…

Though Eric’s laptop had a few troublesome moments, we had a superb day of performance preparations and great comradery. First, we finished a soundtrack that we used at the opening reception at Bed Supperclub this evening, which wasn’t a typical type of performance but more like a party where a few things were happening simultaneously, many videos being projected on multiple screens, vj’ing, and lots of socializing (free booze for those so inclined). Our (three minute) presentation, which was the soundtrack accompanied by a very simple animation of pictures I captured during the past couple of days and a verbalization of the poem was quite imperfect, as unannounced changes to the schedule brought me to the microphone a few minutes before I thought it would happen (which also caused me to miss recording it, although that’s OK because the soundtrack and vocals in general was really muddy and only sounded so-so in my ears—we’ll make a studio quality version of it when we get together tomorrow and rehearse). In any case, it was a fine, upbeat occasion with positive vibes, a wide variety of visual (mainly video) expression going on, joined by audio (mainly club-like) mixes. (I'll post pix on Flickr when I return to Malaysia on Friday).

Our main gig is tomorrow, and today we were able to pull together a really strong set in the studio, all of which was a terrific experience (figuring out what to do, making the sounds sound excellent), using all sorts of backdrops and techniques, and tomorrow we’ll have a chance to do a soundcheck (nothing of the sort transpired tonight) and there won’t be a party happening simultaneously. We met the guys who are running the show, who seem to have it together, and we’re looking forward to working with them tomorrow. The main issue is whether or not Eric’s aging computer will hold up, which we certainly hope it does. Otherwise, not a lot happening at the Festival tomorrow, mainly seminars by visiting artists at the university venue, which I probably won’t be able to make it to. Anyway, we’re having a good time, enjoying the processes and processing, even if imperfections arise. Eric and I have been having a lot of great conversations, philosophical, artistic (all forms), and friendly. Nice to be catching up and jamming with him here…

Day of travel, acclimatization, and re-acquaintance; within it, Eric and I spent 5+ hours rehearsing and scheming for the shows at his apartment in Nana (Bangkok). We started prepping for Tuesday’s one piece gig by recording a already much-edited Googlism I made using the term Bangkok (removing the title phrase in all lines but the first, and most of the verbs issued by the program). Since the first take was good enough, especially after some amplitude and reverb, we planned to play that in combination with loops and a voice-over, but as the evening progressed, and Eric showed me all of the sound toys he has been working with (mainly built-in to the programs Ableton and Reaktor), we changed approach, making a handful of samples, which he is going to loop and mix live (using a Reaktor map he has built called “Massive Bangkok Fest”) while I read an even further edited version of the text). I took some pictures from the roof of my hotel (Zenith Sukhumvit) yesterday afternoon, and thinking about making a slapdash Flash movie with them if time and attention permits before the show. Over the course of the evening, as phrases like “oblique referentiality,” glitch music,” “idiot tv” (the little screen inside the Reaktor interface that visualizes what the sound is doing), and “samples within samples” were being tossed about, and at least a couple of caipirinhas were imbibed, we managed to sketch out quite a few ideas for the longer set on Wednesday night, like matching Eric’s processed version of my piano recordings (now called “mumu jams”) with the 4 short spam poems I’ve brought, and a Reaktor “preset” he has made called “Jerome Rothenberg” with the (edited) Google poem “How fast can a zebra run” (both of these pieces I’ve already made animations for). We’ll work out the rest of the details and continue rehearsing during another set of hours on Tuesday before the show (at Bed Supperclub) & things are looking pretty good. I’m impressed at how deeply Eric has delved in to audio software; he was always a brilliant lyricist (& poet), singer, and performer, but now applying his brain/voice/body with the computer & it is a great fit.