aisyalam

2007-01-19T17:12:00.000-08:00

NOTICE: I am keeping a 2007 blog on myspace. If interested, please go to http://www.myspace.com/chrisfunkhouser or http://www.myspace.com/2007eleven

Email is the same as always, funkhouser@adm.njit.edu

As'kum

CF

2006-07-28T08:13:00.000-07:00

Today was my last “work” day at MMU, at least for awhile—but I have to put the word work in quotes because it was far more social than laborious. In the morning I met with Dr. Rafi and then Ali—who offered some excellent advice on how to improve the quality of my photographs without a lot of rigmarole. As always I enjoyed my discussion with him. Apparently he and his friend Sheji are still planning on developing an interactive version of the Malaysian poems during the next year. After lunch with Amy and Sau Bin we went up to Forest’s office for some tea and to admire her books, which was pleasant as always. Finally I had about an hour’s time to work, and wrote letters and prepared a package for the library (including the bibliography), and got things ready so that the office could be vacated. Along the way I had chance to talk with a few of the other folks—like Khong and Helena, who was on campus for the first time since the birth of her daughter awhile back—whose company I’ve much enjoyed the past few months. At 4 p.m. there was a “high tea” (or Minum Petang) for Dr. Rafi, which also served as a going away part for me and a welcome party for the new Dean. After Rafi was feted and gave a casual speech, Hal and I were taken by surprise and also prompted to say a few words. I kept my bit short and did my best to avoid triteness, mostly expressing my gratitude and view that the place held a lot of potential (which is true). I look forward to seeing how the FCM develops over the next few years, and hope to be an active participant in the Faculty again. Somebody was telling me that they thought my presence at MMU and introduction of Digital Poetry in Malaysia would have an effect. I don’t know to what extent this is true, but have certainly done the best I can to build bridges, cultivate thought, exchange/introduce ideas, and so on. I did receive a few gifts from colleagues, which was nice, and most of the Faculty was at the “tea” (the chow at which was delicious), so got a chance to see people one time and bid farewells. Alea and Amy came up also (Stella at a sleepover), so it was a really nice affair all the way ‘round. Afterwards Amy and I walked over to the library, so that I could drop off my donations and walked back to the apartment and then went out to dinner. It was another day full of “lasts” but the experience will also totally last by sticking with me and being inside me for a long while. I didn’t feel sadness or melancholy, either, mostly fatigue! The right way to end the activities here, I think.

2006-07-27T08:45:00.000-07:00

Heading down to the wire, and there was a nice write up in KL’s newspaper The Star today about our exhibition, which you can see at
http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2006/7/27/central/14926090&sec=central.
I like that they say the show is full of “mind boggling works,” which I think from a certain perspective is true. The article doesn’t do a great job of describing my work, but glad that it is mentioned anyway. The odd thing to me, in terms of media presentation is that the printed article in the newspaper actually contains twice as many images as the online version—which seems strange and may be an indication that server space isn’t as copious here as it is elsewhere? Amy and I were planning to take our work down mid-day on Saturday (since we’re leaving first thing Monday morning), but tonight the organizer called us and said that he really wants us to keep it all up until Sunday because he has received 100+ phone calls since the article appeared, people telling him they’re going to come on the weekend. So it looks like I’ll run in on Sunday afternoon and take it all down… I haven’t yet had a dull moment here in Malaysia, and it doesn’t look like I will…

A bunch of work happened at the desk today, although most of it had to do with the class I’m teaching. Tough to keep up with students doing a semester’s work in just five weeks, but it is going alright. I seem to have come “full circle:” the first couple of weeks I was working here were spent fact checking, copy editing, etc. my book—a “home” based project, and here I am the last couple of weeks here doing much the same (though a totally different type of work). The best part of the day was probably the lunch hour spent in the company of Amy, Stella, and Dr. Beik. Amy gave us her ideas for the Rumi project, which impressed Beik. Now we just need someone who can build us a holographic Rumi to read the new poems of his we’re going to try and manufacture! Ali joined us for awhile, stewing about his academic situation, and we all did our best to calm him down.

Posted a bunch of pictures from the past few days on Flickr, and took Stella for a walk in the Putrajaya Botanical Gardens in the late afternoon. Family satay dinner in Kajang, and an evening swim at Palm Garden—lovely!!

Tomorrow my last day at MMU for awhile, and it will be a busy one I’m sure. I have a few things to finish up and take care of, people to visit with. I’m glad that there will be a Faculty party in the afternoon—not celebrating my departure, but the conclusion of the Dean’s (Dr. Rafi’s) stint in that position. This will give me a chance to say so long to everyone, and move on…

2006-07-26T08:08:00.000-07:00

After a good workout I spent two or three hours working on campus. I began compiling a bibliography of books I think the MMU library should acquire that pertain to digital writing, graded student works, filed the aforementioned Fulbright letter, made some copies, and so on. Essentially desk work, which will also keep me busy tomorrow. Afterwards, Amy, Stella, and I took the train up to Kuala Lumpur and a taxi to Bangsar, where we had a meeting with the proprietor of Silverfish Books, whose publications we hope to promote in the United States. I also picked up a few publications, including a book of Malaysian short stories, an interesting new collection of poems (An Acre of Day’s Glass) by Malaysian Wong Phui Nam, and a cd of movie soundtracks that I recently read about (eating pomeloes from Tokyo to tamil nadu by Hardesh Singh). From there we went to KL’s IMAX theatre and saw a 3D film Walking on the Moon. This was a new and outrageous experience for us all. The screen—purported to be the largest in Southeast Asia—is gigantic, and the 3D effect really made it seem as though the movie was happening around me. I don’t think this will be the last time we go to this type of movie. It was a short film (45 minutes) so we went over to IMBI plaza across the street and bought a couple of inexpensive SD cards, a new USB drive, and a few pieces of software (mostly audio) to experiment with. We finished the excursion with a great dinner at a fancy restaurant, perhaps our last urban treat of this voyage. We do have to go to KL again to remove our artwork from the gallery, but that’ll be mostly work. So, a mixture of pleasure and play today—which I think was perfectly appropriate.

2006-07-25T20:31:00.000-07:00

Today’s performance at IIUM was a real success and probably my best gig yet—no doubt the previous two stage ventures helped to cultivate the presentation of materials. Amidst another hectic day of this and that—running around settling various matters—I made it to Gombak, set everything up without any trouble, and had a large audience who were very interested in what was going on (partially, of course, because their poetry teachers were requiring them to make multimedia poetry, which none of them had experienced before). I started without introduction, with a brief overview of the trajectory of the modes of poetry from an oral tradition to a postmodern free-for-all. I did a brief demo of the eBook to orient them a bit, playing a sound poem, an animated poem, and a poem of interlinked passages. Then I read three poems that were accompanied by animations (“How Fast Can a Zebra Run,” “Why do Durians Smell,” and SPAM poems). The rest of the show was similar to Saturday night’s set of Malaysian poems, except I left out the Cyberjaya/backwards piece and had to stand on a table (in front of 100+ young, impressionable students and some faculty) in order to get the projector to project the images on to me (draped in a sheet). The timing was exactly perfect: the poems, images, and soundtrack all ended at the same moment. The reading was followed by Q&A, which got off to a slow start but eventually the students warmed up and asked about how to approach acquiring and balancing content, the implication of letting the machine create and project emotions, asked more about the historical background of digital poetry. I handed out a number of cd-roms, and a few students took down the url of the “13 States” website (http://web.njit.edu/~funkhous/13states). Now I’m beginning to wonder how the work is going to translate on the other side of the world, and guess I’ll begin to get a sense of that at September’s “BIOS: the poetics of life in digital media” in West Virginia (http://www.as.wvu.edu:8000/clc/bios_flyer).

Afterwards the gig went to a café with my host Tanja, which was nice, and ended the day by attending a lecture by Lee Kian Seng (http://www.leekianseng.com/) at the 153 Gallery, in which he presented an overview of his work from the 60’s onward and discussed the politics and inaccuracies regarding Malaysian installation art in the history books.

2006-07-24T08:25:00.000-07:00

There’s a lot going on in terms of getting organized to leave, administrating expenses, taking care of housing bureaucracy (like today campus security handed me a form about my personal computers that I was supposed to have filled out within 24 hours of arriving), and so on, but I managed to get a full day’s work in on campus anyway. A bunch of time was spent writing a letter of recommendation for a close friend who wants to go on a Fulbright to Australia next year, so had to do a spot-on job with that, but also did NJIT coursework, and a little prep for tomorrow’s performance at IIUM (International Islamic University Malaysia). I also had a nice long meeting with the new Dean of the Faculty of Creative Multimedia, Hal Thwaites, who has a vision and I’m sure will bring positive direction to MMU. Later in the day I also met with Dr. Beik, with whom I further discussed our upcoming “Neuro Net” collaboration (which Amy is calling “The Rumi Simulator”). Anyhow, Beik and I made a plan of attack, which will involve me returning to the US and delving into the four or so Rumi translations I have in my poetry library, while he does the same with some Persian editions. We have to begin by building a vocabulary for the “poet” and then train the software to speak the language. Along the way we’ll probably identify key themes taken up by the poet in order to devise a navigation system. If all goes well, and I see no reason why it shouldn’t, this should be a very interesting project—presuming we can get the machine to talk. And if this scheme works and manages to bring a reasonable facsimile of Rumi back to life, I’m thinking we should tackle someone like Bob Creeley next time. But that remains to be seen.

The gig in Cheras the other night went well. Although the hour was late by the time I got on stage, being there (on stage) with such unusual works in a rather foreign place (it was my first trip to Cheras and did I ever get lost on the way there) brought me back to life. The strange texts I read during the first half (a TRAVESTY text made with “Song of Myself,” an old ZenMOO session, the Durian poem, and a SPAM poem) were fun and matched with good soundtracks, then I switched gears, donned a white sheet onto which 165 of our Malaysia images were projected while a few soundtracks played and I read a few of the Malaysia poems (from beneath the sheet). This setup had a great visual effect, and I will use the same technique tomorrow I think (using some of the same materials). I also brought along a few new (native, handcrafted) instruments, which I jammed on when I thought to do so. I made a new (in)version of the Cyberjaya poem and re-titled it “Backwards poem for Siew Wai” (because the gathering was in part her birthday celebration). Four other artists, including Siew Wai, showed there work, and there was something superb in each performance. Aziz used Max to process sounds (mainly words) live—while projecting his actions with the software on the screen, which was an important aspect of his presentation. Another fellow, Fairuz, improvisationally mixed videos while accompanied by a live musician (also improvising). A fellow named Haron, played what I’d call “intuitive” guitar while chanting a few songs in a language nobody could really understand. Everyone got together at the end and played an impromptu rendition of a birthday song for Siew Wai. I’m still shocked by these art gigs where no booze is present, but everyone enjoys themselves, and projects stimulating art just the same.

After the gig tomorrow I’ll head over to the 153 Gallery to hear a lecture there. We’ve just printed out a bunch of new images—which would have been solid additions to the show that’s up now, but will have to wait to be seen until Amy’s show at Blair Academy in the fall.

Lots of last minute things to do, including seeing people and places that will be missing from our lives for awhile. We nixed the plan to go to Melaka on Wednesday, and instead decided to take in a movie at the 3D IMAX in KL, a nice meal nearby, and some shopping for software. It won’t be the same as Ikan Panggang by the sea, but we can do without the 5 hours in the car (especially since in a week we’ll be cooped up in an airplane for 21 hours)…

2006-07-21T07:48:00.000-07:00

Today was an enjoyable and fulfilling day of faculty camaraderie and artistic practice. I went to a couple of well-attended “work completion” seminars by Masters degree students, and enjoyed seeing how the academic review process works here. Afterwards a lunch was prepared and had a chance to visit with a few colleagues I haven’t had a chance to speak with much lately, and made plans to meet with a few of them again next week. I had a really positive sense of knowing and liking these people. Afterwards reviewed images, and over the course of the afternoon selected 165 pictures to present in animations on various surfaces tomorrow night in Cheras. Made shortcuts on the desktop so that works can be accessed quickly and burned a cd that will accompany the reading of the poems, etc.

Had nice visits with both the outgoing Dean (who is taking over my office after we leave) and Sau Bin (who is feeling much better) this afternoon. I think I finally have a clear picture of what my role (as an “external consultant”) may be in the future. I’m hoping, needless to say, that it brings me to Malaysia from time to time between now and the next Fulbright (or whatever other opportunity I can create), which I’ll probably have to wait a few years for. That we have to leave is a fact I can handle, but I refuse to see it as any sort of endpoint. In any case, by afternoon’s end I was riding high on good vibes all around, and though packing up is not exactly my idea of a good time, it has to be done.

We’ll print some more pictures tomorrow, and looking forward to the evening gig at SicKL.

The strangest thing that’s happening at this point is that my NJIT email has been down for nearly three days—and it is not the first time this has happened this summer. Because I rely on this communications tool for so many reasons it is a bit frustrating. Life goes on and everything but one would expect that a major research institution would be able to prevent such occurrences from occurring…

2006-07-20T07:44:00.000-07:00

Glad to have a regular-type work day—one of the last 3 or 4 I will have here—but spent more than half of it viewing works by my NJIT students, doing my best to keep up with them.

When I finally got to focus on my own work I worked on the set for Saturday night’s performance (which may also come in handy at IIUM on Tuesday). I began by selecting some non-Malaysia poems (though some of the material was created while living here), and then figuring out what Malaysia pieces would work best in a non-MMU, incomplete context (i.e., this weekend I will have about 1/4 the time I had in last month’s performance). It was a fun constructive exercise. I wanted to build new contexts for some of the sounds and texts, so decided to use one of my old MOO texts (from ZenMOO) with the new rin gong piece, removed the vocal track from the Spam Flash pieces on the eBook, and will show the durian piece before launching into a few of the “13 States” poems. I’ll read a half dozen of them in full, and set the acrostic section of the KL poem to the tune of a Malaysian song that everyone knows (“Rasa Sayang”). I’ll read the “Cyberjaya” poem from end to beginning with a soundtrack (recorded in Cyberjaya) that is also recorded (engineered) in reverse (I don’t know why I thought if reading it this way, but it sounds good). I tried making a multitrack recording of “Negaraku” (the national anthem) using the half dozen free versions of it I found on the WWW, but it only sounded good with the two MIDI tracks included and the software I’m using (Cool Edit Pro) wouldn’t let me mix it down that way (although oddly it allows me to listen to it in full). I have been noodling around on some native instruments that I plan to improvise on during the set, which has also been fun—I don’t even know the names of any of them—and will perhaps be running the non-resonating ones through a delay; this part will be very improv. As far as imagery goes, for most of the afternoon I thought I’d skip out on the picture component altogether but walking back home realized that wasn’t the best idea so tomorrow I’ll pick out perhaps 160 images or so to set up on a loop for this section. I’m planning to wear white and to do some of the gig shrouded in a sheet, so the pictures can be projected onto my body instead of a wall. Baraka’s character in “Bullworth” is always saying “don’t be no ghost” but for some reason such a Halloween-esque costume appeals to me at the moment.

2006-07-19T07:33:00.000-07:00

The opening last night was full of social engagement and intrigue—the hours we were there passed by very quickly. I saw a lot of the art before but not all; seeing everything up and ready for the public was a thrill, and I’m proud to be to have my work included in such an impressive and weird show (will post pictures on Flickr soon). The odd nature of the art (a lot of conceptual installations and a few paintings) seemed appropriate for my first exhibition, and it was perfect to be sharing a room with Amy’s works (& Stella asked/made us put one of her drawings up too!). I’d guess that two or three hundred people walked through the place—which wasn’t really on any sort of beaten path. Anyway, it was quite a scene and fun to hang out with the other artists, although Sau Bin was under the weather with food poisoning (which he was blaming on a durian). We also met some interesting locals, who I wish we’d crossed paths with months ago, and got to hang out with other friends we have made here. Anyway, it was the first art opening I’ve ever been to where not a trace of alcohol was present, and a live turtle (a star tortoise, I think) with a toothpick holding a sign affixed with putty onto its back was delivered for well-wishes to the group (instead of flowers). At least 2 of KL’s daily newspapers were there (one English language, one Chinese), interviewing people, taking photos, etc. I can’t imagine what a review of the event would say…

Beforehand went to a reception to celebrate MACEE’s new offices, probably my last official event as a Fulbright scholar this time around. What a great gig it has been! I met a few new people, took care of some business, had a snack, and met a woman from Rhode Island who has come here to study elephants.

We spent the night in KL and came back in the afternoon and began cleaning out my office of stuff I won’t need in the next few days that needs to get home somehow. I’d planned to do some teaching stuff but all of the NJIT systems were down. Tomorrow I’ll get ready for Saturday night’s performance and review student works.

2006-07-17T05:26:00.000-07:00

I had my first regular work day in awhile: exercise followed by hours spent on campus with a lunchbreak in the middle. But aside from writing a few letters to distribute eBooks (regionally) and plan for future collaborations (it looks like Dr. Beik and I will try to bring Rumi back to life), the work was not really focusing on creative multimedia (although I did have a brief conversation about the performance coming up on Saturday with Siew Wai). We’re seriously winding things down here, just two weeks until we leave, plus I’m teaching an online course for NJIT at the moment—these realities are completely time absorbing. But I figure a day of such work buys me 2 or 3 where attention can be focused elsewhere. At this point I’m going to try to have a few more work days, polishing up some things on the WWW, laying groundwork for other projects, but in many ways my research and output here is complete for now. I do have a couple of performances, on Saturday at SicKL gallery in Cheras, and at IIUM next Tuesday. I won’t be performing at the opening tomorrow but am thinking I should bring the laptop so I could show the database to anyone who’s interested (and hope to give away 100 copies of the eBook). In some ways I wish there were more creative activity to report since plenty is happening—it’s just not about making work(s) at this point but moving them (and the family) around.

2006-07-14T20:14:00.000-07:00

2006-07-14T20:07:00.000-07:00

On Thursday morning I visited the Kek Lo Si temple on the mountainside in Penang, which was as fine a complex of structures I’ve ever seen. In the afternoon flew home, arriving to find two sick kids—not much happened beyond that.

Friday a long day that began by driving over to Melawati to pick up the laminated printouts of my pictures and poems. They weren’t quite ready yet so had some time to pick up some art supplies and eat lunch banana leaf style with Fauzee and Fishie. I arrived at the 153 Gallery (which is literally in the shadow of the Petronas Twin Towers) at about 2. Talk about being a fish out of water! Since the kids were sick, Amy had to stay at home so I had to figure out what to do with her work and my work. It was one of those I needed her help and she needed my help type of situations, but I think things worked out all right in the end. Despite the fact that I’ve done many different things as an artist, I’ve never before installed images on the walls of a gallery and was wishing Ben Polsky, installation wizard, could have teleported in. Thankfully Sau Bin was around, and once he arrived back from having lunch he and I spent the next 5 hours figuring out how to hang all of the works using a tape measure, thread, nails, and double sided tape. After much sweat problems, problem solving, and so on, all was well (and things that are supposed to be straight are). Very interesting to see all of the other installations going up—a lot of unconventional pedestals and objects. The opening is Tuesday night, & I’ll post full documentation on Flickr next week.

I had no idea there was so much process involved, but should have expected it because of the materials: Amy’s work features one seven panel piece (“Curry Politics”) a 50”x 34” laminated glossy print, and another large format triptych. My work (see picture) includes 14 large printouts of poems and an equal number of images—so lots of logistics. It was crucial that Sau Bin was there—I doubt I could have done it without him. Big traffic jam in KL on the way home, and (even though I enjoyed the work there) glad to be back in Cyberjaya.

2006-07-12T09:36:00.000-07:00

Today’s lecture, part of the "Tiang Sri/Center Pillar" series at the Muzium & Galeri Seni was a great success, and in some ways the best presentation yet despite the fact that when I arrived at the Muzium I was informed that I would not have internet access during the presentation. Fortunately, I arrive nearly two hours early and had some time—after meeting and talking for awhile with my host, Hasnul (Jamal B. Saidon)—to reconfigure the materials I wanted to show so that essentially no one would know the difference. Incidentally, Hasnul was part of the first group of students in RPI’s iEar program and it turned out that we had quite a few common acquaintances in the US (not to mention many common friends in Malaysia) like Neil Rolnick, Roberto Bocci, Mike Rose, and others as a result of my years at SUNY-Albany. My sense is that Hasnul is an extremely well connected guy—no wonder he’s running a museum in Penang! Anyway, I think the shift in materials was quite serendipitous for a few reasons. I used materials from The Little Magazine Vol. 21 cd-rom (Kostelanetz, the Monica hypertext), a number of pieces from the ALIRE cd-rom compilation, Augusto de Campos’ "Clip-Poemas," the Revista Cortex cd-rom, and showed John Cayley’s riverisland instead of lens. Maybe it was good for me to be talking about (or introducing) an alternative set of materials, who knows—but it worked. Plus, after introducing the basic typologies of digital poetry, I essentially abandoned the script and just used it as an outline, and comfortably ad-libbed the content, which John Hii (who’d heard a similar lecture at MMU and was in the audience today) said worked better. Since there was quite a large audience (at least 100 people, perhaps nearly 150), I didn’t want to drone on and I think the talk was more lively than it has been before. I also digressed into the relationship between poetry and digital poetry spontaneously, and at the end showed both my database project and did a brief demo of the eBook; this combination worked well, because instead of having to answer questions about why the material was digital poetry, we talked about things like process, the politics of the image, and other matters during the Q & A. The whole thing worked well, and it was great to be in such a cool museum (art and cultural artifacts downstairs, science installations—including a workshop on astronomy—upstairs. And before I left I was handed an envelope with some photos from the session, and a modest honorarium (which I wasn’t expecting)…a good day’s work (& at least 50 people took copies of the eBook home with them)…

Otherwise, spent an hour at a cybercafé on Chulia St. this morning, downloading student works and reading course bulletin board messages, then took a tour of the Cheong Fatt Tze mansion near my hotel. Tomorrow morning will head over the the Kek Lo Si temple before getting on an afternoon plane to KL. A very nice, if too brief visit to Penang, made all the better by taking in some laksa and ikan panggang at a hawker stall type street vendor type place thanks to my friend Rama the trishaw driver. Being in Penang this time is making me think the Penang poem a bit—like that it is unbalanced in its view at George Town as a reflection of the island. Coincidentally the poem and the recording I made on a trishaw ride here (with Rama and Stella) came up first when I opened the database; but this re-thinking is OK: if there’s one thing that’s for certain it’s that the cyborgian poem can always be altered, amended, added to, and subtracted from…

2006-07-11T18:46:00.000-07:00

The research presentation at National University of Singapore went well, and it was a treat to be in Singapore—although it was more than a bit expensive in comparison to Malaysia. I was glad to meet some of the faculty in the program of Communications and New Media, namely my host Sun and her colleague Alex (who expertise is in interactive media, particularly games). Once we made it through the requisite tech hassles everything went smoothly. Unlike my other presentations, the people who attended didn’t wait for the end to start interjecting questions, like when I was showing Loss Glazier’s "IO Sono at Swoon" someone asked, "this is poetry." I didn’t mind the interruptions and the opportunity to address such issues spontaneously, and in general the casual atmosphere suited me well. From what I can tell the NUS program is top-notch—I was glad to be there and will keep my eye on what is going on there for future possibilities. Beyond the digital poetry lecture, I showed them my database project (explaining my long term reasoning behind it) and also described the potential "neuro-nets" project that came up last week, which really interested them.

We saw an interesting exhibition earlier in the day at La Salle College, an art school on the edge of downtown S’pore. One installation especially interested me, by a Taiwanese artist who had thoroughly documented one of the islands off the coast of Taiwan. He had taken a lot of pictures and made recordings of sounds, like performances by indigenous singers and ambient sounds, and had a couple of chairs set up with headphones in front of a tv on which the images were projected on dvd. I thought the setup was effective, and that doing the same thing with my Malaysian works (with the addition of putting the poems on the wall) would be a great way to present the work. We also visited a couple of other galleries and art spaces, like the Red Dot, which were slick and inspiring.

Tonight—after traveling much of the day by train from S’pore—I’m off on a late flight to Penang, where I’ll be making a presentation at the Museum at USM tomorrow afternoon. So this is a bit of an Southeast Asian Island Digital Poetry tour, presenting my research and distributing the eBook to a few people who are interested in such stuff…

2006-07-06T08:57:00.000-07:00

I didn’t think it would be such a busy day, but when you least expect it….

Since it is my last month here for a while, a lot of people want to talk—which is cool. The first meeting was with Ali and Shaji—we discussed many ideas about re-contextualizing the Malaysia materials. Many possibilities! We talked about producing an interactive website, or a movie, and other approaches, but the one I liked best was making a cybertextual database where users could add their own materials. The main difficulty/issue then becomes how things can be interestingly presented. Shaji wants to figure out how to make a Flash movie write itself! Now there’s a farout concept…

I spoke with Lydia for an hour, about her research on mood and music, and building a taxonomy for the principals in multimedia. Reading her work made me think about things and look on the web for things I’d never considered before. Good scholarly exchange, and I hope to be involved with her future academic endeavors.

Finally I had a visit from a brand new acquaintance, an Engineering professor named Dr. Beik, who my friend Mohammad brought to the office. Beik, whose field is artificial intelligence, had caught wind of my studies in digital poetry, had attended the performance a couple of weeks ago, and wanted to talk. We had a nice discussion, then began to try to think of ways poetry and AI might successfully merge with one another. Before long we though of a project to work on, which involves using “neronets” to make poems. I don’t have the time to describe the process in detail, but like many interactive tools, you train it to do something, give it stimulus, and see what happens. So, if our idea takes off, we may try to see if we can get a computer to write verse that emulates the tone and style of a few dead poets. I think this would be an interesting experiment, and would diverge from the usual algorithm + database = syntax approach that most computer poets have used the past 45 or so years.

So I’d planned to use the day to get organized, do some teaching work, but for various reasons those things didn’t happen. But soon…

We’ll be visiting Singapore over the weekend & I’ll be making my presentation there on Monday. Should be able to file a report after that.

2006-07-05T07:53:00.000-07:00

First order of the day was an early meeting with Dean Rafi, with whom I had a good conversation for well over an hour, showing him the database, discussing my future as a consultant at MMU, and talking about a wide range of topics related to Malaysian culture. He encouraged me to go see a new exhibition about ghosts that is on display in Shah Alam (sounds good! we will probably will go). Afterwards I polished up my lecture, which I proofed and slightly revised in transit between Putrajaya and KL in the afternoon and evening—next week’s sessions should be the best iterations of the presentation yet.

In the early afternoon made my way by train to Melawati, the home of Manggis Productions, the media production company operated by my friends Fauzee (Nasir) and Fishie (Nazura Rahime). The purpose of the visit was to print out the Malaysia poems in large format for gallery display. After we figured out what process to use (copy .doc files into Adobe Illustrator), Fauzee’s assistant Fami and I spent about four hours getting the documents formatted and printed. It was an interesting process, and the results were fantastic. Manggis has a 1440 dpi color printer that can make A1 prints, so we were able to make printouts that were nearly four feet long; since they’re going to be on a wall, I figured best to enlarge the font to 18 points. Great (and unusual) to see poems printed out so big! All of the texts got printed, although we did not have enough time to laminate them (saving that part for next week). Fifteen images are also getting printed at A3 size. I’ll finish up the work and collect everything at the end of next week and head over to the gallery to put them up before the opening on the 15th. I was thinking of trying to put all of the texts and images up on the wall, fitting them together like a big (8’x 8’) puzzle but I don’t know if it is going to work out that way. We’ll see what happens.

Tomorrow my last day on campus for awhile, need to clean the desks up and get some things organized; also meeting with one of the students I will potentially be advising and my middle eastern friends who want to work on a movie with me. Should be a much more easy going day…

2006-07-04T06:32:00.000-07:00

Began the day by reviewing the Malaysia poems for a while, then recorded all of them in the studio with Ajoi. Ali came along and videotaped the session, not focusing on me but the papers and who knows what else. The readings were pretty good—maybe a couple of little mistakes—Ajoi and I eq’d some of the bass out of the voice and I think everything worked out well. We’ll see what, if anything, becomes of them material. Mainly I’m glad to have a good audio document of the work.

In the afternoon I finished preparing the syllabus for my soon-to-be-started NJIT course, which also turned out well and is now posted at http://web.njit.edu/~funkhous/2006/605/. Class starts tomorrow, 9000 miles away. I teach this course online at home all the time but for some reason it feels different being over here.

The only other activity I had time for today was to begin a revision of the lecture (“The Components of Digital Poetry”) I’ll be presenting in Singapore and Penang next week. When I was in Bangkok, Eric Curkendall gave me some good feedback on the lecture, and I’m incorporating some of his ideas and tightening the thing up in general. I should be able to finish this up tomorrow, no problem.

Tomorrow I’ll also be meeting with the Dean about the possibilities of future involvement as a consultant at MMU, and will take a ride over to Melawati and work with my friend Fauzee to print out pictures and poems (in scroll form) to mount in an exhibition that goes up in KL in a couple of weeks.

2006-07-03T08:20:00.000-07:00

I spent the first hour of the day in a lengthy discussion with my friend Ali, who continued (respectfully) to let me know just how disappointing (even boring) he thought my performance was. Naturally I agreed with much of what he said, and countered with plenty of reasonable, friendly, defensive rationale. The major difference of perspective boils down to the fact that my emphasis in preparing for it was on the content of the poems and the synergy of poetry and media elements whereas he and his cronies wanted more spectacular media; in part this is a generational issue, and a healthy one at that. What was most important for me, ultimately, was that I learned a lot from both the event and all of the feedback that has come (both negative and positive) since then. Then next time I present the materials I will do so differently, in part because Ali and a friend of his are going to re-version the images in a more animated mode. We’re also conspiring to make a collaborative movie out of my raw materials, which could be very interesting. To that end, I’ll be in the recording studio tomorrow morning recording all of the poems and he’ll be there making a videotape of me reading them.

In the afternoon I spent some time preparing the syllabus for an NJIT graduate course (Elements of Visual Design) that begins in two days, and talking briefly with Sau Bin about our upcoming art exhibit in KL. Then I spent two hours in a dialog with Sau Bin’s Creative Studies students, many of who were collaborators (by way of making installations) at the performance. This turned out to be mostly a discussion of my process, much of which I have told in this blog (although I went in to more detail about how the poems were constructed in a cyborgian fashion by making use of the Google Poem Generator). I also made the first public demonstration of the database project in the session. The students came up with some good questions about retaining inspiration (write it down, I said, and develop a discipline, etc. etc.). Despite the fact that I ended up doing too much of the talking, it was a good session.

This evening we (Amy, ConStellation, Aleatory, & I) went to a gala party thrown by the US embassy in Kuala Lumpur, to mark the 230th anniversary of “our” “independence” from England. It was a rare occasion, and probably the least Malaysian thing we’ve done in seven months, but we had a very nice time. Many of the other Fulbright scholars were there, we met the vice president of MMU, Amy chatted it up with the US ambassador, and so on. The event wasn’t held at the embassy but at a swanky hotel, and although our kids were the only children there I didn’t get any sense that they weren’t welcome; Amy explained that we’ve just finished reading a bunch of the Laura Ingalls Wilder books with Stella and 4th of July was a family event so we had to bring them. I passed out a few copies of the eBook and enjoyed the good vibes and food.

2006-06-30T07:15:00.000-07:00

At last I finally have a working prototype of the database I came to Malaysia to create, a fact that pleases me immensely. Keh Siong, without whom it wouldn’t have happened, came to my office with a cd-rom of working contents in the early afternoon. There are some minor imperfections, like odd carats ( > > > ) at the beginning of each poem, and the display “cell” for the poems are too small, but otherwise I’m relieved and happy to have something—an example of the type of textual organism I’d like to develop in the future. A lot of effort, a lot of process, and much technical know-how that’s new to me went into it, and a working poetic mechanism has emerged. I spent all afternoon trying to get the online version of the database to work, to no avail: the sound files (all less than 6 megabytes) simply will not load. All of the files (.doc, .jpg, .mp3) are online and can be read/seen/heard as stand-alone works, but the device that brings them together as one is not working correctly. I’m not sure what’s wrong with the coding and organization, but some flaw somewhere in the complex is preventing it from functioning properly. The presentation begins at http://web.njit.edu/~funkhous/13states/ - I do need to write a readme file, and do some other touch-ups, but the thing is off the ground and will continue to be nurtured and refined (for instance, eventually I will widen the presentational area so that the poems—particularly the acrostic sequences at the beginning—appear correctly). When I get back to NJIT I will begin to look for programming collaborators, and am open to working with anyone who has knowledge in database operations. Originally I’d planned to learn how to do it on my own, but as Prof. Somnuk (an IT professor at MMU) advised, it is better that I focus on content and let someone else handle the functionality (with my input and direction, of course). In any case, if you happen to take a look and have concrete ideas about how to make the present device work better, or want to get a cd-rom copy to tinker with, let me know and I’ll be happy to send one.

I’ll have nearly a full schedule of work next week, including a two hour session with the Creative Studies students whose work was part of my show last week, before heading to Singapore to lecture at the National University there (which is immediately followed by a trip to Penang to make a presentation at the USM Museum). Though I’ve completed most of what I set out to accomplish during this other-worldly adventure, there are still a few things to do—like refining the lectures, and preparing documents for an art exhibition (poems & images on display) that opens in KL on July 15 and two other performances. Apparently, some of my friends/students are going to make an effort to produce a video of the materials I presented in the performance last week too—it’ll be interesting to see what becomes of this possibility.

2006-06-29T05:55:00.000-07:00

We're back from a great trip to Thailand, where not a whole lot happened besides seeing some great sites, visiting with friends and family, and eating excellent food. I did post some pictures of last week's performance up at http://www.flickr.com/photos/the_funks/sets/72157594180173995/. Phuket's a nice place to visit and fairly photographic - but didn't lead to poems of any sort. We watched a cool movie, Syriana, which didn't make me feel at all proud to be an American.

Tomorrow back to work, hopefully finishing up the database project.

2006-06-23T07:03:00.000-07:00

Not much to report about. I took care of some busy work in the morning, tidying up a few things after yesterday (like returning Khong’s projector), rapping with colleagues (John Hii stopped by and gave me a bunch of pictures and some movie clips of yesterday’s show), and so on. It was Stella’s last (half) day of school (where she rec’d a “Head of the School” award) so we all went up to pick her up & out for lunch. In the afternoon met with Keh Siong, some confusion about the database and filetypes, trying figuring out how it is all going to be presented—either WWW or CD-ROM (answer: hopefully both), but he needs to re-work part of the applet because it was made for the .wav files, which are prohibitively large and take much too long to load. So, not quite there yet—hopefully in a week’s time will be complete (we meet again next Friday to finish it). After seeing Keh Siong, a bit of time to get some things organized in the office, do some database chores, and then met with Lydia, Forest, and Koo for a long tea time (and delicious dried coconut cakes) discussion. They were enthralled by the show yesterday and wanted to know all about it—how I managed to write the poems, what inspired me so much, how I was able notice profound little details captured in the pictures, and so on. I explained that I’d had great teachers, and other influences that really helped, like Blake, and friends who steered me away from mathematic abstractions and toward artistic ones, the importance of the “minute particulars” (which led to talk about the impossibility of real objectivity), the importance of invention, and a lot of other things. I’m going to miss all of these people, and such fun, friendly meetings, for sure.

I compiled the Malaysia poems into a single .doc file, 30 pages. I am planning to post all of the materials soon, but figure no harm in sending up the text tonight, as I am looking for feedback. Take a look at http://web.njit.edu/~funkhous/2006/13states.doc and send me an email about them (funkhouser@adm.njit.edu) if you’re inclined—I may take this file down when the database materials are uploaded, but for now the poems are there.

I’ll probably be off-the-blog (though not offline) for a few days, as we’re heading to Thailand again for a family holiday (love that beachside wireless). Time for a little conventional pleasure! My 42nd birthday comes on Monday & planning to celebrate (over a few days) with elephant rides, snorkeling, and a few massages. There’s some work to be done, like prepare a syllabus for my NJIT graduate class that starts the first week of July, but mostly taking it easy before a whirlwind July or lectures, performances, and finishing up stuff here in this wonderful country formerly known as Malaya…

2006-06-22T07:58:00.000-07:00

Though imperfect, we managed to conduct a grand event on campus today. Grey clouds rolled in about an hour or so before the show, as I could tell they would this morning, and it started to rain shortly thereafter but nothing at all like yesterday. At about 4:30 or so we started setting up and by 5:30 things were happening and quite a few folks—curiosity seekers, colleagues, students, friends—were hanging out wondering what the commotion was about (indeed it did get very noisy). We put all the gear on tables in chairs in case the sky completely let loose, and it did rain and thunder a bit during the proceedings but just lightly (and only loudly when I mentioned Mahathir in the Terangganu poem, lah!).

Glad to report that no serious tech problems were encountered—everything worked alright, although sorry to say it wasn’t all applied perfectly. Quite a few people commented that the quality of the sound(s) could have been better. To me, everything sounded alright at the time (and on the MiniDisc recording the words and sounds tussle a bit with each order) but given the cavernous indoor/outdoor space, I knew that this could be a problem. In hindsight I’d’ve turned the speakers around to face the area where most of the audience was. Siew Wai was a terrific accompanist, adding just the right amount of accentuation, and though the crowd noticeably thinned as time went on (the Malaysia poems take more than 45 minutes to read through), the gig was a real success in practically every way. The students I have been working with had quite a few comments to share, including expressing some disappointment in that they wanted more activity in the performance, which made me realize that I had spent so much concentrating on the texts, sounds, and images that I hadn’t put enough a lot of focus onto actually performing. I did make some gestures towards performance (wearing different hats and an oversized pencil around my neck, spontaneously picking up and walking around with a durian, and so on), but could have done more with movement, spent some time having images projected onto me, had other voices come in (they suggested having someone sing the Koran at various points), but will have to do that type of thing another occasion. All good food for thought. One thing that may emerge from it is that the students may try their hands at producing a studio version of the works, so that everything “can be controlled” and here’s hoping they follow up on that idea/possibility.

In all, the reading of the poems, in conjunction with the sounds and images went well. I’m proud of all of the work and believe that less than a handful of words are out of place at this point (no problems with the sounds or images). That the words were muddled a bit during the performance I can live with, and even though the presentation wasn’t flawless (had “ups and downs” as Sau Bin put it), it was totally worthwhile, as it has already—as soon as the show was finished—opened up instructive dialog about both digital performance and multimedia art and presentation. There’s no other way to make this happen besides experimenting and putting work out there. It was a nice scene, afterwards, with all of the family and a few friends there—the students opened up the perfectly in-season Malay durians and we all stood around eating them and talking for awhile after the gear was put away.

This was really only part of the day’s significant activity. In part to distract myself from the weather, and in part to be moving forward, I used the earlier part of the day to finish as much of the database interface as I could. I re-worked the opening page, created the basic index (for readers who want to consume the work in a straightforward rather than random way), and a production credits section. If all goes according to plan tomorrow, I’ll have the java program, the .txt files, and will be able to have the beta version of the project ready shortly thereafter. Even if the (inter)active version of the database isn’t immediately ready for the WWW, I plan to post all of files it contains within the next couple of weeks. I’m also anxious to begin showing the manuscript of the poems around a bit too, and am considering putting together a limited edition cd-rom of the database for those interested in such things…I may have just enough time to do that in the few weeks we have left here, but maybe not; we’ll see…

2006-06-21T07:32:00.000-07:00

When I arrived at the Faculty this morning, a little late as I had to pick up some cables at the Alamanda Putrajaya mall, the place was abuzz—at least in the area where my performance was scheduled to take place. Sau Bin’s “Creative Studies” students were building ornate, decorative, installations given the theme “East Greets West.” Lengthy batiks were hanging from the first floor to the ground, museum-like dioramas of songket weavings, local flora and fauna, and domestic settings were being constructed on site (I’ll post the documentation to our Flickr blog later). This I did not expect or anticipate at all, and to be honest I found the whole scene rather exciting and flattering. It was kind of odd—I’d spent many weeks preparing the materials for the gig and getting ready for the performance and found myself with little to do while all this other event-related activity was going on. In fact I couldn’t do much except watch the scene develop. It was nice to have the sense that something was really going on—everyone who passed through the building stopped to check the scene out, and was aware that something different was happening.

Then, about an hour before we were supposed to set up the sound and projection equipment it got really dark outside. Though it was a beautiful morning I knew that it would eventually rain because of surrounding clouds in the distance. But it didn’t just rain, it poured and poured and poured. We get rain almost every day, but usually for less than an hour, and usually not at this time. Today it rained for about four hours, two of which was extremely heavy. The adverse whether essentially transformed the performance space into a big, slick puddle and there was no way any electrical gear could be set up, so we ended up postponing the performance until tomorrow. Dr. Rafi, the Dean of the FCM, had warned me about this possibility when I proposed using this space for such purposes, and he was totally right. It was a bummer that it couldn’t happen, and though it didn’t stress me out too much I did get a bit of a headache for some reason. I was looking forward to doing the show in the environment that the students had labored to set up, and perhaps the headache was one of disappointment? Fortunately some of them are planning to come back tomorrow and put their work up again, so here’s hoping that the skies are clearer.

When it became obvious that the rain would not subside I did delve into some work in the office, making a prototype of the interface for the database project in .html which features flags of each Malaysian state. This part of the project is easy, but needs to be done of course. I received word from Keh Siong that he has built the applet and it works but that the file sizes are too large so it loads slowly, a problem that I should be able to fix without much trouble.

2006-06-20T07:35:00.000-07:00

Practically all day was spent preparing for tomorrow, and everything is in order on all fronts. After burning an audio cd of the second set soundtracks, I rehearsed the second set (Malaysia poems), for the first time reading them all aloud, with all of the images up on two screens and the sounds playing. I learned that the timer on one computer is slightly slower than the other, which means that the span of time between the projection of images will gradually grow longer as the presentation progresses. I also made notes on areas where some images needed to be removed, but in all I was pleasantly surprised at how well everything worked together.

After lunch I worked on the first set, outlining how the tech would work, finding the poems that accompany the animations (sometimes revising them in the process), and read all of them aloud. The sounds and poems are all a bit carzy—I’ll be interested in hearing what people around here make of them.

The tech “rehearsal” (we didn’t really rehearse, just got the gear organized) went well, although I need to acquire (at one of the local malls, hopefully) a headphone to quarter-inch plug adapter, so that sounds can be played from the laptop onto the PA. The other odd thing that I’m hoping to rectify is that one of the projectors projected white as yellow—I don’t know if this is because there’s mildew on the bulb or what, but I’m also going to try to borrow another projector for the show. In general, the projections were light, as it is an indoor-outdoor space, but that’s OK. What’s really awesome is the sound in the hall. The atrium is a narrow six story cavern, which gives a great reverb but prevents the sound from bouncing around too much. What we were able to play through the speakers (voice, instruments) sounded totally great. In all, very encouraging. Good to have the work organized, and to have the tech mostly ready to go too.

Afterwards, Siew Wai and I went up to her office to rehearse the second set together—she’s accompanying me on a variety of instruments: whistles, didgeridoo, bells, harmonica, and other percussion. The reading of the poems went even better than in the morning, although the two cups of teh terik I had earlier in the afternoon didn’t help my voice much. It was good to go through the material with Siew Wai, good to hear the sounds she is working with, and have another chance to review the poems. Sua Bin sat in for a bit of it but left so didn’t get a chance to get his impressions. I’m pleased with how everything has turned out, will make a few minor adjustments (to images) tomorrow, and wonder what everyone else will think.

2006-06-19T06:36:00.000-07:00

I worked on organizing images Friday night and some Saturday, but took Sunday off completely, to enjoy some relaxed time with family instead. Back to the images this morning, and finally have them all together and sequenced; the final tally is 554 (which at 5 seconds per means I have about 6 images too many, no problem). The most tedious part came this afternoon, renaming them all 001-554, then had a little trouble transferring them from one laptop to the other (cyclic redundancy error messages) but eventually managed to do so. Just as I’d finishing Ali and a friend of his showed up—I’d emailed Ali last week asking to help me set up an animation for the images but he hadn’t received the message until yesterday when he reviewed his bulk mail folder (why .edu messages, ones that aren’t sent to more than one person, end up in bul mail is beyond me). Anyhow, I told him I was resigned to using a slideshow approach now but we had a thorough discussion about other possibilites, including Flash, Powerpoint, Premiere, Dreamweaver, and so on, and even tried a couple of methods out to see how difficult they were. This was an interesting, unexpected meeting at which I learned a few things even if in the end I decided to stick with the original plan out of simplicity’s sake. Ali did take a cd of the images with him and may make something of them but I’m not expecting him to get too crazy over it and told him so.

The other thing that happened during their visit is that my eBooks were delivered, about 1,050 copies in 3+ heavy boxes, and I’m glad to see them at last. I like how the packaging came out, and when I finally had a chance to review briefly a copy tonight I was gratified by the contents and am very pleased by the project as a whole. Close readers will find a few strange errors in the texts but otherwise the thing works and is a reasonable output of the ground I’ve covered in recent years. The little typographic errors (some of which I have no idea how they happened) are minor and are no cause for discouragement. I’ll be proud to circulate them and have already started to do so on campus.

The day whizzed by (I also sent out some publicity emails, printed some posters and final versions of the poems); the only unfortunate thing that happened was that the tech setup for Wednesday’s performance that was supposed to happen was cancelled at the last minute because a foreign dignitary from Vietnam showed up on campus and the place that the big meeting (red carpet, President of the University type of affair) was happening was in the FCM office, just above the atrium where the show is going to take place. So we had to postpone it again, until late tomorrow afternoon. In the scheme of things this shouldn’t be a problem, though it means a long day tomorrow because I also have to rehearse with Siew Wai as well. Beforehand I have to script the whole thing, outlining what computer does what and when, but should have plenty of time to work all of that out no problem.

2006-06-16T06:48:00.000-07:00

“If I had a scanner…” I’d scan in some of the sheets of paper I’ve filled with little scribbles of information about the glorified (multilayered?) slideshow I’ve been working on for next week’s gig. Sheets and sheets of covered with little numbers, not quite as obsessive as Adolf Wolfli of course, but lots of nutty equations; Amy tells me it is a good thing I have some background in mathematics.

Stella had to be at school early today so I had an early start too. Began it by putting the “final” touches on the poems and organizing all the material I want in the database. Burned a cd-rom (about 600mb) for Keh Siong, who came over to the office to discuss the project after lunch; we had a good meeting. What I want to do with this version of it is pretty basic; it’ll be, at least to start, an offline work. I’m taking care of the linear index part, basic design, and credits; he is apparently writing a java applet that will do the randomizing, which apparently is not too difficult as he is planning to write and test it all in the next week. I was interested to learn that java handles audio in its own way, so no need to have a media device open up to play sounds. One issue that did come up had to do with text formatting. The Malaysia poems have extensive formatting, some of which gets slightly “lost” when the text is transforms to ascii. Since the spacing and line break are not damaged too badly, it is not a major problem—the words just look different than they do in Word. I’ll be interested to see what the images and texts look like after being handled by the applet, and in general am really glad the thing seems to be finally getting off the ground.

Because I thought there would be a tech meeting today about the performance I had both laptops up in the office. Though the meeting was put off until Monday, it was good I had both computers while sorting through the images and figuring out what to do with them. To that end I made a list of each image and its contents (the number is down to 534 as a final tally), and began to figure out how many images each poem needs, etc. The number of images (presented for 5 seconds each) nearly perfectly coincides with the length of the soundtrack (45 minutes for the second set Malaysian poems), so what I’ve decided to do (at least for now) is project all of the images in the same order but in radically different sizes on adjacent screens. We’ll take a look at this idea on Monday. Meanwhile I’m about halfway through connecting each image to a poem. Once I finish doing this I will, over the weekend, rename the images (some for the second time) as numbers so as to get them in a reasonable sequence. It is an interesting exercise: some of the images correspond directly to the poems, but there are dozens of pictures that do not precisely fit in, so what I have to “read” the images in a non-literal way, and figure out a way to get them to (at least loosely) work thematically. This, along with doing some work to publicize Wednesday’s show—in addition to various other weekend activities— is going to keep me busy until Monday…

2006-06-15T06:22:00.000-07:00

A crazy work day but made much progress. I finished reviewing thousands of images and selected slightly more than 600 to present with the Malaysia poems next week. 600!! Seeing everywhere we’ve been again made me realize what a beautiful journey it has been (and still is) for us here. Then there was the matter of how to present such a large number of images? In .html using refresh tags? In Flash? Neither of these I could take as serious options, as I’d have to resize all of the images and put a lot of time into the preparation of files. If I had a month to do it, and a team of assistants, that would be one thing, but the gig is in six days. Finally I realized I could—as with the doors—make use of the Windows “My Pictures” slideshow feature, which optimally resizes the images. Now all I have to do is rename the images alphabetically/numerically so that they appear in a reasonable sequence. There are other aspects/complexities as well, like which pictures get shown when, but I think I’ve have been able to work out a reasonable plan. If all goes well I’ll be having a tech practice tomorrow afternoon and we’ll see if the scheme works with the projectors. I hope it does!

I also managed to work on the audio tracks today, and mixed together all of the soundtracks I want to use (5, four with poems) in the Malaysia set. What I discovered is that the set is rather long—perhaps 10 minutes longer than I expected—but maybe that’s OK, given the amount of images I’m working with. I’ll practice reading the poems with the soundtrack on the weekend and see how it goes. The way I see it at this point is that it is not a problem to take my time reading/performing the poems, and give the audience more time to absorb everything that’s going on. I’m thrilled to report that my new colleague Kok Siew Wai, who has been mentioned on this blog a few times, has agreed to perform with me during the Malaysia poems. This is great news!! She’ll be accentuating the soundtracks with her kazoos, didgeridoo, mbira, and perhaps other instruments, and if I finish reading before a track is finished, I can join Siew Wai improvising along with the soundtracks. We had a good meeting today, where I outlined my plan for the performance and she agreed to join in. Our gig at the gallery last week went well and the chemistry was nice, so I’m psyched that she’s going to be part of the show. This is why I spent time mixing the sounds, because I wanted to get the audio component to her before she went home to KL for the weekend. We’ll rehearse somewhere on Tuesday and give it our best shot on Wednesday…

Still a good bit of prep to do but things are shaping up nicely I think. Besides working on the details and tech-checking to finish out the week tomorrow I’ll finally (supposedly) be meeting with Keh Siong, the database tutor, and am hopeful that something will come of that as well. Clearly I have a bevy of new materials with which a database can be populated. Now the trick is to actually make it happen.

2006-06-14T07:00:00.000-07:00

This morning I decided to attend some final year project portfolio presentations by FCM students, and was glad I did as it helped me to continue cultivating a sense of what the students are up to on campus. While I saw some good in various projects, in all I wasn’t quite as impressed as I was by the installations I mentioned last month. But even Prof. Khong said as much when he declared this morning that the Delta student work (i.e., juniors) was as strong as what was produced by students nearly finished (and I can think of several reasons why this might be the case).

I was able to really focus for 4 or 5 hours in the afternoon, thankfully, and managed to get a few things together. I began by reviewing the Flash files (two) that I’ll be showing, making minor fixes and figuring out the best method of presenting the .swf files (opted for embedding them within .html files rather than straight .swf projection). The other poem in the first set I’ll read while the soundtrack is being visualized through Windows Media Player (to that end I reviewed all of the different visual treatments/animations possible and ended up choosing the one I always use: battery randomization). After that, I sequenced the order of the Malaysia poems. Process: read each one and began to group by loose theme—sometimes by location, sometimes by other threads. Four groups emerged, two containing three poems each, and two containing four. Then I matched each group with plausible soundtracks. Given the length of the audio files, each group will have two or three different pieces that will accompany the texts. There are some other projections that will be happening, like the doors of the FCM building, that I plan to run through Windows’ “My Pictures” slideshow mechanism, which runs endlessly and should do the trick. I’m doing what I can to keep things simple but interesting (knowing there’s really no such thing as simple in this territory). Now I’ve still got to go through thousands of images to show during the Malaysia poems (which I’ve started to do—it is fun but laborious since I’m actually renaming all of the images). I’ve reviewed Amy’s documentation of the MMU campus, 105 pictures with more to be added, which will be set up as an animation and show while one of my “Multimedia University” polyvocal soundtracks is playing. Well, hopefully by the end of the week I’ll have all of the pictures selected and there’ll be enough time to program them before next Wednesday…

2006-06-13T07:18:00.000-07:00

Ajoi at work

I picked up the “proofs” of the eBook this morning in Seri Kembangan, which look really good. I wasn’t actually expecting to receive them, but the timing was good because I was on my way to the meeting at the MSC Innovation Center and was able to do a brief demo of some of the work after I was asked what I was up to. I was pleased and relieved to see that all of the mechanisms worked, and learned this morning that at the very least the project serves as a reasonable introduction to my work.

After lunch I had a few minutes to quickly make some notes about the recordings and begin reviewing and selecting images to show with the poems next week. After that, the session in the audio lab was really productive. In less than 90 minutes we (Ajoi and I) were able to mix & master 10 different recordings/samples I had brought with me. The raw materials were almost good enough to present on their own, but some needed extension via looping and others were well served by the addition of various effects. Using the Sonar program, we “widened” the sounds using an “imager” and added some reverb, flange, and chorus to some other tracks—although not so much as to be even remotely obvious. I really wish I had Ajoi’s skills with the software, and could download them into my own noggin, but will instead have to figure it out for myself next winter after returning to the states. The recordings I made with Stella at MMU are really wonderful, and the ambient recordings in KL, Pulau Pangkor, and Lenbah Bujang also sound about as good as they possibly can. Without a doubt or reservation I’ll be using the materials in next week’s performance.

Now it is time to really focus on the event; I’ve been working on it for awhile now but need to spend the rest of the week tying up more than a few loose ends. The eBook is going to be delivered on Monday, so in a sense next Wednesday’s gig will be a launch party for it, even though none of the work it contains will be presented.

2006-06-12T06:42:00.000-07:00

Sound-oriented day, working with various recordings I made during the past week and a half. Process: I’d already transferred the recordings from minidisk to the laptop, so edited and made selections of what sounded best. Contents: KL subway, monorail, mall ambiance, hotel check-in. Impetus: session in the audio lab tomorrow, to put some production enhancement into them. Result: completed one soundtrack that I was able to add to a refined versioned “Facts about Durian” animation (http://web.njit.edu/~funkhous/2006/durians/durian.html), which will be accompanied by read text during the MMU performance. More results forthcoming, presumably...

The only other project I delved into today was making some very late fixes to a couple of files of the eBook, which is already in production. Some copies of the cd-rom will contain these changes, others won’t—and that’s just how it has to be. To me, the media files are the crux of that project, and I don’t think anyone will be terribly put off by a few strange formatting foibles and mysterious typos that appear in one of the .pdf files (at least I hope not).

Tomorrow a meeting at the MSC (Multimedia Supercorridor) Innovation Center to discuss my forthcoming lecture there, and besides working on soundtracks in the afternoon I really need to spend some time focusing on imagery, and selecting images to project during next week’s performance. Plenty to do!

2006-06-08T06:51:00.000-07:00

We’re in KL for three days, which is a nice break from the usual action without being completely removed from it.

I attended and performed with Kok Siew Wai last at the “Man + God” opening at galeriizu last night, as part of Sau Bin’s installation. The art at the show was quite remarkable in terms of graphics and contained some interesting works (photos forthcoming on flickr). SB’s work was, alternatively, a long red carpet with a large circle cut in one end. Siew Wai & I set up our instruments (and a zafu) in the middle of the hole, making a shrine of sorts, and once the soundtrack (which I’m really fond of, http://web.njit.edu/~funkhous/sound/gong1.mp3) started we improvised on bells, flute, harmonica, and I sang the “kesa sutra.” The whole presentation was less than six minutes, and people told us they were hoping for more, which means it must have been alright. I was glad to be a part of the event, see a few people we've met before, and nice to be out with Amy (we enjoyed a lovely dinner together afterwards, a really rare event!).

Otherwise I checked out some gear (soundcard/keyboard) earlier in the day at one of KL’s many malls—this one happened to have a full-on 6-flags type rollercoaster inside—though didn’t buy anything yet (want to see how prices compare with NY & see if it is worth lugging the stuff 1/2 way around the world in a few weeks). The pirated software scene nearby was totally crazy. In KL you can buy any piece of (unlicensed) software in the world for about $1.50. Again, I was only looking and didn’t buy anything besides a blank cd for the audio track we played last night. I also made recordings of hotel check-in and subway/monorail trains that I want to mix and use for one of my Flash animations.

Today was a really rare day, in that it was very low impact in terms of work. In the morning Amy and I went for a walk in the Lake Gardens, near our hotel, then saw Sonita (another Fulbrighter) and then I went off to make more recordings (at trains and malls) and paid a visit to the Telecommunications Museum here. In fact, I was the only one there! I saw some interesting historical installations, and got a strong sense of the timeline of how communications developed here during the past 200 years (from hollowed out logs and elephant messengers to microwave/satellite/isdn). It is too bad the museum isn’t more popular and in better shape. Malaysia has a rich history of communications, which no one seems to care about in this age on incessant sms messaging, handphones, and the like. So be it. A good day, a different kind of day, nonetheless.

I saw the proofs for the cd-rom cover today, which has turned out really well. The cds have been made and soon enough I’ll have them in hand.

Another day of various activities here tomorrow—we’ll see where the path leads—

2006-06-06T06:18:00.000-07:00

When I left to go up to campus today I wasn’t sure where I’d begin, so ended up taking care of some necessary correspondence, then diving back into poetry. Clearly, I’ve become obsessed about the Malaysia poems, and consequently they keep getting better. Today I went back to the four pieces that weren’t up to snuff on last review and ended up beginning to salvage them by removing one half or more of the text and sculpting the pages into new shapes. Many of the poems are about places, and through the process I’m discovering the difficulty of composing discrete (one-off) pieces about specific locations, especially places where I’ve only spent a few days. But this is what I want to do for now—before eventually tackling the Malaysian form of the pantoun—so I’m going to see this series through and present the lot at least a couple of times before leaving here.

Besides working on the poems, and negotiating gigs and getting information via email, continued to map out the MMU performance, particularly figuring out which computer does what, and how I want to present the selected bounty of images that’ll be projected. To that end I found a javascript I want to test out that automatically randomizes/refreshes images, which’ll free-up my hands and make the visuals non-linear. I may opt not to use it, ultimately, and script the images according to the trajectory of the poems, but it is one possibility I’m toying with. I’ve figured out that the first set—with the Flash pieces—is about 20 minutes, and the Malaypoems set can be as long as 35 (according to the duration of the soundtracks I already have), depending on the texts that made the final cut. I made a precise list of tasks that need to be done and should be able to take care of them next week.

Meanwhile in addition to the performance tomorrow night I’ll be working on some sound stuff, including making some more recordings the rest of this week while we are in KL. I’ll be able to online where we’re staying and will probably type in a report or two.

2006-06-05T06:30:00.000-07:00

Part of me feels as though I should be working on multimedia all of the time, but it just doesn’t work that way since my multimedia involves poetry, and not as a minor component. Anyone who has worked seriously in both poetry and multimedia would probably say that poetry is just as difficult, if not moreso, anyway (although I guess that depends on the level of m-m one is dealing with). Today I went back to the nine Malaysian poems I’m taking seriously at this point and did more revisions, while at the same time figuring out what media components should be ascribed during the MMU performance. Some of the media work that will be shown is complete, and the rest is conceptual at this point but will be prepared over the next couple of weeks after I’ve finished some more audio work and selected a bunch of images to accompany the language and sound. I noticed today that we now have more than 4,000 pictures at our Flickr site—so more than a few to choose from! A lot of creative issues at play here: how to make the animations and soundtrack flow smoothly, what order the poems suit the poem’s themes best, and so on.

I did spend an hour today with Siew Wai, with whom I’ll be collaborating on Wednesday night. It is a short presentation, less than six minutes, which will involve the soundtrack I recorded using the rin gong, live music (my flute, her chimes, snow bells, and harmonica), and probably our voices (if the atmosphere seems appropriate for the chanting I’d like to do given the theme “Man + God”). We’ll be using a few other props too, like a zafu and incense. We worked out the arrangement easily, and it was fun hanging out with her for awhile. I’m sure everything will go as smoothly at the gallery.

I also met the FCM’s newest faculty, a Canadian VR specialist named Hal, who has left his position at Concordia University to spend some time here. It seems like he is a good fit, and it sounds like he is interested in working with the Dean and Faculty to make progressive things happen here. I look forward to seeing what he does, and to further discussions with him. Even more socializing tonight, as Sonita Wachtel, a Fulbrighter from Ohio, came down from Petaling Jaya to have dinner with us. Her field is cross-cultural training (i.e., for businesses) and she has very perceptive views on how Malaysia (and world cultures on the whole) works. I met her at the ISIS program, and we were glad to have some company in our apartment for the first time in awhile.

I did go to the opening in KL the other night, but arrived late enough to miss the broadcast of my pieces, which was alright since I’ve heard them already. Good for me to hear everyone else’s work! Apparently the work will appear in an installation in Paris in the fall, and selected tracks (including two of my own—one with Eric Curkendall) will be released on a cd that features excerpts from an episode of The Simpsons, Juan Torres y su órgano melódico, Couple, Fausto Papetti, Titán, El Perro del Mar, Sau Bin Yap + Jordan Tan, Kok Siew Wai, Akta Angkasa, Babasónicos, Serge Gainsbourg & Jane Birkin, Lasser Moderna, James Brown, Deepset, Ochiqueochenta, and The Clash too. Can’t wait to hear it!

2006-06-02T07:01:00.000-07:00

An abbreviated day at the office, but finished the photo essay on the office doors and had an interesting cultural poetics experience while (p)reviewing the Malaysia poems for the upcoming performance. While reading them aloud, I realized that a few of them would probably sound ridiculous (or at least totally mundane) to a local audience, whereas to a western (or unfamiliar) audience they’d have a completely different effect. For instance, there’s a descriptive poem about Chinese New Year, but everyone here would already know everything in it, so there’d be no news transmitted, even if an outsider’s reflections, if wise enough, might be interesting. About five pieces were accordingly weeded out, although I will return to them at some point to see if some parts might be salvaged. I’d never really encountered anything like such a predicament before, and take the occasion to be a good development meaning my authorial scope and awareness is somehow expanding on a global level.

In the afternoon, Amy and I dropped off the cd-rom master and graphics at Vertical Direct, the manufacturer, which is right near Stella’s school. For some reason I’m not feeling great relief about sending the project off, but maybe that’ll come when it is actually produced, or when errors *aren’t* found? The location of the company, and timing of the completion of the project was a nice coincidence as we were going to Stella’s campus (about 20-25 minutes away) anyhow to see her 1st grade class do a skit about workers and community, which involved the lot of them doing a rousing rendition of “Penny Lane.” Then we did some errands, got haircuts (it never ceases to be hot in Malaysia & rough having long hair), and most luxuriously had a Thai massage (hurt so good).

Tomorrow will be a fairly easygoing day. I’ll be getting up and out early to make some recordings with Stella in my empty MMU office building (school’s out on break), and in the evening will be in KL for an art event at which at least one of my recordings is being used in an art installation. On Sunday we’ll be spending the day with Sau Bin and Pat at SB’s hometown Seremban, about an hour south of here. Then back to the digital grindstone on Monday…

2006-06-01T06:49:00.000-07:00

one of the many MMU atriums

This morning we decided to spend three days in Kuala Lumpur next week, beginning on Wednesday (when Kok Siew Wai and I are performing at the Man + God opening http://galleriiizu.com/), so I figured everything I was going to do in the city today can be done then. In the windfall of time that opened up I had an unexpected productive day on campus (without sitting too much).

After John and I made the small change on the media files interface, I checked and re-checked the eBook on two Windows computers, and was also able to find a Mac to test it on. Mechanically everything is in perfect shape (as far as I can tell). I found a few spelling errors and fixed the ones I could (i.e., of all things “Multimedia University” got misspelled on the interface, which I can’t change, so have yet another fix to make with John before getting the thing to the manufacturer). It’ll be a relief to get this off the stove and onto 1,000 shelves, finally.

I began to develop further charting the course I’ll be taking in the performance later this month, and pretty quickly was able to fill up an hour’s time with new poems, all of which have soundtracks, and half of which already have animations of one sort or another. These I’ll present in the first set, and the second set will contain all of the topical/geographical Malaysian pieces, simple animations for which I will gradually assemble over the next three weeks.

The new creative work made today involved completing a photo-documentary I’ve been thinking about for a long time that involved capturing images of five floors of office doors in the building where I’ve been working since January. It was a trickier project than I expected because the reflection and glare caused by the afternoon sun through the clear plastic roof made it very difficult to see details of the doors on one side of the building. Thus, I have to go back and capture images of the rest of them tomorrow morning. I brought our tripod up and intended to use it in order to make a uniform series, but this was impossible because the hallways are of different widths and other factors made it difficult to be so professional. I took more than 100 pictures and am pleased with how they turned out, even if they are not perfect. The building houses Faculty from both Creative Multimedia and School of Management, so a wide range of decorations are apparent (which inspired the idea in the first place). I want to work these images into the performance somehow, as a way of transporting on part of the building (offices around an atrium) into another close by atrium where I’ll be doing the gig; this shouldn’t be too difficult to set up...

2006-05-31T05:45:00.000-07:00

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).

2006-05-30T07:53:00.000-07:00

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?

2006-05-29T06:02:00.000-07:00

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…

2006-05-25T07:01:00.000-07:00

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!

2006-05-24T07:23:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-05-23T07:43:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-05-18T05:59:00.000-07:00

A
S L O W
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

2006-05-17T06:47:00.000-07:00

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).

2006-05-16T06:55:00.000-07:00

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).

2006-05-15T06:20:00.000-07:00

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…

2006-05-12T06:45:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-05-11T06:40:00.000-07:00

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!

2006-05-10T06:38:00.000-07:00

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…

2006-05-09T16:09:00.000-07:00

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)

2006-05-08T20:55:00.000-07:00

*Note regarding REGARDS CROISES*

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...

2006-05-08T05:31:00.000-07:00

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…

2006-05-07T07:32:00.000-07:00

Bed Supperclub, front facade:

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…

2006-05-02T09:15:00.000-07:00

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…

2006-05-01T20:16:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-04-28T07:27:00.000-07:00

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:

Hector Adeling
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

Somehow the rhyme didn’t come through on the longer version, but they still have a couple of weeks to get it working correctly.

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.

2006-04-27T07:01:00.000-07:00

Some days are amazingly full and gratifying, and today was one of those days. After the usual routine I set to work on making sound files (at the apartment, not the office, because the better multimedia computer stays at home), and ended up finding nine samples—including sighs, pre-recorded phone operators, frogs, lizards, oceans, and bugs—that I thought contained something worthwhile and could be worked with effectively. Before lunch, up at the office, posted them to the site where I posted files last week. Sau Bin and Siew Wai joined Amy, Alea, and I for lunch (Indian, as usual), where we enjoyed another rambling conversation about Malaysian art and culture; SB was also interested in knowing more about Rochelle Owen, whose anti-Chomsky poem, mentioned on Pierre Joris’ Nomadics blog (see sidebar for link) I had directed him to (which led to a discussion about the plight of public intellectuals). After lunch I proceeded to write a brief Preface to the section of my eBook that contains the eight MMU lectures, then met with John Hii, who is doing the graphic design and some of the interface programming for the project. He has come up with a wonderful dynamic interface for both the media files section and overall interface, using pictures I took in Brazil and São Paulo. In the near future—probably within a couple of weeks—we’ll have completed the technical and content aspects of the project and will only be lacking the (forthcoming) ISBN and bar code. We’ll thoroughly test it, of course, take it up to KL to be produced, then send it out into the world. I also enjoyed a brief meeting with the Dean of the Faculty, Dr. Ahmad Rafi, which I made just to check in, keep him posted about what’s going on, and be sure that all is going well from his p.o.v. (it is). One of the many things we spoke involved conceiving a framework of education based on the AirAsia model (AirAsia is a local no-frills, economy airline that is revolutionizing transport in the region); is there some sort of parallel that a educational institution could develop? We agreed that it would be difficult, if not impossible, but revolutionary if it could be done, leaving us with something to envision, anyway. The other upshot of the meeting is that Rafi is going to help me get access to the audio recording facility on campus, which I plan to make good use of in the near future.

With the time left in the afternoon, I set my attention back on the javascript project I started a couple of days ago, and have now come up with the roughest, most rudimentary working sketch of *part* of what I desire to ultimately accomplish. What I’ve put together so far is an uncontrolled, random juxtaposition of more or less haphazard texts that loosely share a common (contemplative) theme. Though it still has imperfections, I figured good enough to post (http://web.njit.edu/~funkhous/2006/js/test1b.htm) and start getting feedback. Tomorrow I have a meeting with some IT Java specialists here, java experts, and at least have a draft of the notion of what I want to do, which will give us a place to start. Supposedly a tutor, who will be able to help me for the rest of my time here (a little over three months), will be there, and I’m excited at the prospect of really learning how to build an integrated database composed of various types of media. I seem to be getting closer and closer to this objective every day, and now that it has begun to happen feeling more determination (if not excitement) than ever. Reading about it—learning the basic concepts—is one thing, but actually doing it, and overcoming the many different hurdles is another (and much more rewarding).

A lot going on, as usual: positively so!

P.S.: a little plug from NJIT’s “Newsroom” (thanks Christina Crovetto!) about the gigs in Thailand next week (containing a link that will bring the reader directly back to this page).

2006-04-26T06:48:00.000-07:00

Finished reviewing the minidisc recordings I’ve made since arriving in Malaysia today, and found some sounds (waves, bugs, frogs, to name a few) that I’ll make in to mp3s (thanks to Khong, who managed to locate an audio cable for me). Hopefully tomorrow I’ll be able to post them for shemthepenman (who is =ly shemthesoundace) to work with. Later in the day, while searching for information about how to build audio databases, came across a great site called the Freesound Project Forum (http://freesound.iua.upf), which is a storehouse of all different types of user-contributed sounds that I’ll most certainly make use of in the future.

After a good bit of trial and error, more snooping around JavaScript Source, and prepping a few poems (as images/.jpgs), I made some real headway towards randomly combining images & text this afternoon. What I put together (a page titled “buddha board”) is far from ideal, and only quite remotely what I want to be able to do in the long run, but a start, anyhow, and probably just about as good as it gets using javascript. Good to be practicing, and able to decipher and solve problems encountered in code. I’ll add a few more features and develop a bit more before posting, but glad that something’s happening, knowing that it’s only the very beginning of what will be (no doubt) a multi-year process. Why I invariably take the difficult route I don’t know; that’s just how it goes.

2006-04-25T06:57:00.000-07:00

The day went much as expected and felt good to be back in the regular routine (meditation, dropping Stella off at the bus, working out, heading to the office, writing &c.), if only for a few days. The only real surprise was a longer than usual lunch with my FCM colleagues Izuzi and Zul; some of my best experiences on campus lately have been these unanticipated encounters with associates and getting to know them better.

I edited next week’s lecture, and compiled and began editing the MMU lectures—about 85 pages of material that I now need to proofread and format into Acrobat files: far from thrilling work, but still convinced it is a good project, so moving forward on it gradually. Slow going on it lately, and seems like it’ll continue that way, which seems OK (why rush?). I found out last night that today my book is officially being “launched” by Alabama, which means that production formally begins. This sounds like good news, and is, truly, but I was pretty disappointed to learn that even so, the book won’t be out until next April or May. I’ve always heard that academic publishing is slow, but now have first-hand (hard) experience!

Also found out that Eric and I will actually be doing two sets at the Festival next week, one short (1-2 minutes!) at the event’s opening (a teaser) and a longer one the next night. The short set was news to me, but quickly came up with an idea of something enticing we might be able to do in such a short slot (involving a couple of googlisms, one prerecorded and looped and one performed live in two voices). Check out the online announcement for the Festival at http://www.bangkok2.com/blog/archives/cat_events.html, and the event website at http://culturebase.org/home/thailand/MAF06.

Tomorrow will to return to some technical/creative work: script discovery, reviewing recordings, & hopefully making some mp3s if I can get ever get my hands on the proper cable.

2006-04-24T16:31:00.000-07:00

Back in Cyberjaya for a few days after a weekend in the luscious Highlands of Malaysia, hanging out (“getting religious”) in amazing tea plantations and other verdant environs (see http://www.flickr.com/photos/the_funks for a slew of images). I didn’t do a lot of digital poetry work, but wrote a little, captured a lot of images, played some music (flute), had a healthful time with the family in a captivating place, and read about half of the book about Kuala Lumpur (which is really interesting and informative).

Today in the A.M. mainly caught up on correspondence, making arrangements to meet colleagues on campus and setting up lectures both locally and elsewhere. It looks like I’ll be making presentations in Penang at some point, possibly early July. Also decided to bow out of the proposed lecture on information literacy in KL, since that’s not a topic about which I have a lot of expertise (except as it pertains to digital *literature*). Downloaded a track that Eric Curkendall had mixed of one of my piano recordings, posted on his site (http://www.soundclick.com/shemduhpenman), which he tells me has somehow made it into the top ten poetry downloads on the SoundClick filesharing site. I’m particularly impressed by this because there are no words in this “poem,” and am definitely looking forward to recording and performing with him last week. The last time Eric and I were together he performed with thelemonade at Komotion in San Francisco (a set I remember Victor Krummenacher calling “very disturbing”), and a few weeks before that we had done an impromptu performance at the Poetry Project in New York. I see next our meeting next week in Bangkok as somewhat of a continuation of that activity, and am getting pretty excited about going up there and hanging out with him.

The P.M. was much more technically oriented. I decided (as I think I said I would last week) to spend a few hours working with javascript. Using images captured over the weekend, I made a couple of web pages using techniques I’ve never tried before. To warm up, I borrowed (then modified) a script from Loss Glazier’s Electronic Poetry Center author page, which presents (randomly) a new image every time the page is refreshed. Then I decided to use a different approach, whereby the image changes (again, randomly) when it is clicked on. This process involved several stages, and was actually quite different (in terms of code placement) than the first trail. I was able to find the basic script at a site called “The JavaScript Source,” which I modified to function with my own materials. This is not terribly complex work, of course, since I already know .html, but presented a few problems I had to solve, and all the while making me think how I could use the techniques effectively in the presentation of creative work. Java it isn’t, but I’ll be getting to that, if all goes well, soon enough. What I put together is up at http://web.njit.edu/~funkhous/2006/js/test2.htm

Tomorrow will be largely spent with written language (prepping/editing next week’s lecture, formatting the MMU lectures for the eBook, and who knows what else). But an anxiousness to be programming, designing and building databases is definitely in me, so need to keep after that objective as well; a meeting with the MMU database masters is scheduled for Friday morning, and I want to be as ready as possible for it…

2006-04-19T07:18:00.000-07:00

A really unusual thing happened as I was getting ready to leave my office and head to the library late this afternoon. The Iranian student/filmmaker I’ve befriended, who I hadn’t seen in a couple of weeks, showed up at the door wearing an American flag as a bandana on his head. Surprised, I said something like “that’s strange, because I’m an American and I would never do that,” to which he replied “I know.” This fellow and I have met and spoken in my office numerous times; I’ve read a screenplay of his, and always enjoy our informative discussions. But today I learned in just a few minutes much more about him. He explained he was wearing the headwear to let the men who “spy” on “Persian” students at MMU know that he wasn’t causing any trouble. My experience speaking with several Iranian students during the past two months was that they are far from being anti-American; in fact, they wish they could be studying in the US (even if they are not enamored of our country’s leaders). He told me he was forced to leave his school in Iran because of his previous involvement with student activism, ended up at MMU, and changed his area of interest from “water engineering” to film (my opinion: not a bad decision!). Anyway, he says someone keeps a close watch on he and others—but what a get-up! The reason for his visit was to loan me a software tutorial, but we ended up acknowledging and talking about the difficulties of current political circumstances (and eventually he did remove his funny cap)…

Morning was taken up catching up on emails and setting up my NJIT server space to handle Java. I think progress was made, but still haven’t managed to get the program to run in a web page (getting a different error message—hopefully this is a matter of the server needing to reboot before it works properly). Then, for various reasons by afternoon became preoccupied with the upcoming gig in Bangkok (probably because I booked the plane/hotel just before lunch, and also filled out the 10 page questionnaire sent yesterday by Festival organizers). So I ended up making a list of potential pieces to perform, making a file of them which I sent to collaborator Curkendall, and listening to nearly 3 hours of field recordings I’ve made here. The best stuff was sounds of frogs, birds, and a barking Thai tree lizard. It was a pleasurable diversion to be working with just language for a change, reviewing pieces I’ve put together over the past three years or so. Some of which are really odd, like the series of “spam” poems I made from unwanted email messages in 2004 (once upon a time one of the editors at Ugly Ducking Presse suggested I make a chapbook of these, but I’d practically forgotten about them since). Anxious to see what Eric thinks of them, this’ll help dictate the direction our show (in two weeks) will take. Next week I’ll upload a few more sounds, work on some video & animations & continue scheming…

Tomorrow we head up to the Cameron Highlands, to check out the tea plantations and breathe in the cool mountain air (which’ll be odd, given the amount of heat we normally encounter here). Bringing some eBook work with me, & hope to be pretty much finishing what I can of that project next week (anticipating that the elements of the production aspect are going to take awhile).

2006-04-18T06:51:00.000-07:00

Much of the morning spent preparing and posting a half-dozen sound files on the WWW, for Eric Curkendall to download and tinker with. These are not new recordings (http://web.njit.edu/~funkhous/sound/curkendall.html) but a few pieces I had on the laptop that I thought would be fun to work with. We’re beginning to plot and plan our upcoming gig in Bangkok, which will hopefully be a sensory extravaganza. Eric has been spending a lot of time with his audio software, so we’re planning on using a mixture of loops and live sound/vocal processing, with words, animations, hip threads, and who knows what else. Planning to start with a ritual (kesa) chant, break out the durian piece, at least one piece from my spam series, and do some interactive parts taking live requests from the audience and performing google generator poems on the spot. During the next week I’ll be selecting and making mp3s from the several hours of recordings I’ve made since coming to Malaysia, which, though a chore (for which I need to acquire a cable that I do not have in hand), will also be fun.

High point of the day was having a lengthy lunch with Amy, Sau Bin, and Siew Wai Kok, who has just been added to the MMU FCM faculty. A great conversation about the complexities of the country and the role the arts plays (or does not) play within it. It is through free-wheeling conversations such as this that we are able to build a fuller understanding of what is going on around us. Sau Bin also gave us a book he just finished, The Consumption of Kuala Lumpur, by Ziauddin Sardar, which looks quite interesting…

The afternoon was spent becoming more familiar (and somewhat frustrated) with Java. Spent an hour or so studying tutorials, trying to get the program I wrote yesterday to work without success. Realized, finally, that it was a server issue (just one of many instances beginner’s ignorance). Now that I have some familiarity with it, want to move on to what I want to do with the program but definitely need some outside guidance; to that end have contacted the fellow who steered me toward Java here, and hope to be able to get together with him next week. Also feeling like I need a better book, so will head over to the library again tomorrow…

2006-04-17T06:29:00.000-07:00

The week on Redang and in Terengganu was extraordinary and practically workless in terms of professional advancement. Probably just what I needed: to spend time a completely new and remarkable place, swim in vivid waters filled with hundreds if not thousands of fish, hike in the jungle, write a couple of simple poems and journal entries, spend time with the family, and take a bunch of photos (www.flickr.com/photos/the_funks). I didn’t miss blogging, jogging, and the usual routine, and only wish I could say that I came back well-rested, but that’s not what happens chasing after 2 kids, no matter where you are…

I did finish reading a great book that I picked up on the advice of Eric Jones (another Fulbrighter here), Henri Fauconnier’s The Soul of Malaya (originally published in 1931), which made me appreciate our surroundings all the more.

Not un-glad to return to the fray today, lots to catch up on—a morning of emails, making arrangements for gigs in Bangkok and Singapore, also working out some of the details for a presentation I’m making for an int’l conference on information literacy in Kuala Lumpur in mid-June (http://fpmpp.uitm.edu.my/icil2006/index.html). In the afternoon, finally got to work on some Java programming; I figured out how to “write” (actually, like all neophytes just learning a language, mainly copied) and compiled a little program that makes the question “This is electronic writing?” appear on the screen, and also learned how to put compose a call & response type program. Next step is to figure out how to embed into a web page. Of course, neither of these pursuits has anything to do with what I want to use java for, but figured I better start at the beginning, get familiar with the language, and then move on to the more complex stuff (and hopefully before long, but I’ll need a better book to lead me towards database building).

An almost (but not quite) found poem (tab-step formatting mangled by blogspot):

Java, key words

abstract
boolean
break

byte
case
catch

class
continue
default

do
double
else

extends
final
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static
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synchronized
this
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throws
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Saw an “acrostic poetry generator” on the WWW at some point today (http://www.readwritethink.org/materials/acrostic); the classification of generator was a little misleading, however. I’d call it a heuristic tool to get someone to think about how to prepare an acrostic; I wasn’t so impressed by the suggested words that appeared in pop-ups as the program progressed. On the other hand, I’m totally pro-acrostic and sure this would be a good device to get kids to play with language and form it into something directed.

On another front, my dear friends Ben Polsky (http://benholli.tripod.com/benpolsky.htm) and Holli Schorno (http://benholli.tripod.com/hollischorno.htm) have just added a son to their lair, Tilden Sky Polsky (http://www.flickr.com/photos/benholli2/), and have asked me to be the boy’s “God-Father.” An honor, indeed! Accepted with delight!!

2006-04-07T06:04:00.000-07:00

Woke up a bit before five a.m. and got up with Aleatory. In the darkness we played on the couch with her stuffed rhino and giraffe. At about 5:30 I put her on the floor so I could check my email, and there appeared a message from my department’s chair (Bob Lynch) saying that I have been recommended for tenure by NJIT’s committee that determines such things. Since I’ve been working on this objective for a long, long time, the news came as a great relief, and brought not a little joy into the pre-dawn apartment. Even though I worked my tail off for the past few years, and seem to have accomplished a lot, I was still worried that it might not happen (because you never know until you know). Anyhow, the beginning of a good day. After a little family celebration (that included a phone call from my parents), morning rituals as usual: zazen, Stella to the bus, run, whirlpool, University…

But instead of working in my office I spent the morning in the office of Forest Lim, who had invited me to come have tea with her. When I arrived, she was there with Lydia, and Koo, who is also on the FCM faculty. They’d set up a big (empty) computer box as a table, had 4 cushions placed around it, and we spent the next 90 minutes sitting on the floor getting acquainted over cups of tea, mee hoon (a noodle dish with sprouts), and little (asian) swiss cakes. Forest has spent a good bit of time in the US, in the Bay Area (where she studied at CCAC), and she got her MFA at Yale (under the tutelage of Janet Zweig). The books she made at Yale were absolutely tremendous! She’s a print and paper maker who combines traditional and digital techniques; I was stunned by the beauty of her work. She showed me a book that she made in California called “Winter and Tea,” an extraordinary artifact that was a foot high and completely made of handmade paper. It begins with poems printed on velum, attached to the handmade paper pages; underneath the velum is an image. Later, the pages become boxes filled with remnants of rituals, organic materials, and tea. A four inch box (actually a drawer) at the bottom contains a miniature tea set! Wow! This was one of the most special, compelling meetings I have ever experienced on any university campus.

Afterwards, off to the library to pick up a couple of books on java to start prepping for the next phase, then took the fast train to KL to get some contact lenses. I’ve been wearing glasses (nearsighted) for nearly ten years but have never had contacts. It took nearly an hour for me to get the process of putting them into my eyes down, which included a bit of stinging and frustration, but finally figured it out. Big rain, home to family, Indian dinner at our favorite local café, then packing some bags, and a toast (Guiness) with Amy. I might not be posting for awhile, as we’re off to spend a week on the South China Sea early tomorrow, but again soon, for sure.

2006-04-06T06:25:00.000-07:00

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…

2006-04-05T06:32:00.000-07:00

As it turns out, not only is the programme (lecture) tomorrow happening, but it is somewhat of a major event on campus, for which posters have been made and which all Delta (senior) students of the FCM must attend.

This morning’s lecture went well, even if it was not wildly attended (maybe 40-50 at peak). The best part for me was the discussion that followed, in which students were mostly interested in comparing written/printed poetry (which they perceived as being more accessible to the public) with the new forms I have been promoting. I explained that both could exist, in fact that the new was a subset of the old. I used the durian poem as an example of how I could write something, but that my own sentiments could possibly be expressed better digitally. At the very least, they were entertained by encountering my novel (yet still unfinished) work about the fruit, which served to propel further the discussion. The rest of the day (after a lunch of nasi ayam) was spent laboring intensely over tomorrow’s presentation. It is still unfinished, but since the session isn’t until one o’clock tomorrow afternoon, I’ll have a couple of hours (after seeing Stella run her first cross-country race in the early a.m.) to finish it up. I’ll be presenting fewer works (perhaps 6-8), and less history, but more ideas. Since the topic is “Poetic Possibilities for E-Texts” I’m fine with discussing what the possibilities are instead of going over everything that has already transpired. However, that means unlike the past few lectures, I don’t have a lot of eye candy for the audience. I’ll try to figure something out so that a reasonable, engaging, presentation transpires.

Otherwise, not much to tell besides that an MMU FCM colleague named Forest stopped by my office with a beautiful handmade (handsewn, handmade paper) book, seeking advice on how to transform it into an electronic text. I think this will interesting project to be a consultant on, so we made a plan to meet on Friday morning.

2006-04-04T06:32:00.000-07:00

Playing with language, came up with a few new words (for me, anyway) today: intextricably, textension, textended, textraordinary, prelationships. Of course I wouldn’t be surprised if other neoligists like mez have thought of and used them before (a simple google search would probably bring results). Anyway, they all apply to the work I (and others) have been doing with language…

Good news is that Alabama seems to be moving forward on my book. It is going to be a long time before it sees the light of day, I’m sure, but glad to know it is in motion. On my end, still working to get clearance from Harvard to use portions of Cage’s I-VI, and obtaining an image from André Vallias for the cover.

Spent most of the day—when not being distracted by domestic tribulations here (our nanny was robbed at knifepoint in KL) and at home (the couple who is minding our home and studio is splitting up)—working on tomorrow’s lecture. It took me all day, but managed to come up with something I liked and thought was reasonable. The challenge was not to present the same works I have shown previously, a process brought me to a few things I haven’t seen for awhile, or ever. The links are posted at http://web.njit.edu/~funkhous/mmu/7. Also learned that the lecture scheduled for Thursday (which I was told yesterday was cancelled) is on, and that I’ll be sharing the bill with an experimental filmmaker from New York named Frits Connelly. This means a lot of work tomorrow—but hey, that’s what I’m here for. On the bright side, this also means that I’ll be done with my MMU lectures this week, so I’ll be able to finish up the contents of the eBook. Next week is Stella’s school vacation, and we’ll be visiting an island (Redang) over on the east coast of Malaysia, and after that, with the exception of a few regional lectures, the rest of our time here will be mostly about continuing my research and making art.

2006-04-03T06:09:00.000-07:00

My mom writes in a recent email, “you all must be in a constant state of sensory overload,” and she is certainly right about that. I arrived back in Cyberjaya from Langkawi last night after an intense week of meetings with various Malaysian public figures and organizations, and even more discussions with eight other Fulbright scholars and others who were part of the program. Plenty of sights, sounds, and tasteful tastes absorbed, in high-level (in terms of brain power) company. I thought it would be back to life as usual here, working at my desk all day (prepping for lectures later in the week, working on the eBook, etc.), but that was fairly naïve as this is never the case in Malaysia. I did take care of some expected business in the morning, and did work on lectures, but after lunch (where Amy, Alea, and I dined with students from Yemen, Pakistan, and Iran) once again—thanks to my dear colleague Sau Bin—found myself in extraordinary international company. Philip Dean, Dean of the Media Lab at University of Art and Design Helsinki [http://mlab.uiah.fi] was visiting campus, so I sat with him for a bit and learned of some interesting narrative studies that are happening in Finland: interactive television and text-messaging projects. Philip was accompanied by a local artist, Joseph Foo, who is the creative director of the trinity group, a multi-disciplinary brand identity consultancy in Kuala Lumpur. I was glad to meet these folks, and to be quite distracted from the lecture due to a lengthy conversation with Sau Bin in my office; he is helping get a truly balanced perspective on culture here, and the role art plays in it. Plus, he’s a great artist in his own right—his work is now on display at the Havana biennial. I’ll finish the lecture tomorrow! Otherwise, a surprise email from Jason Nelson, who wanted to let me know about his most recent work, “Pandemic Rooms” [http://www.secrettechnology.com/pandemic/], which I will be showing in the lecture. I particularly like the drag and drop audio sections, but again Jason has produced an extraordinary, multi-faceted electronic work. He says he’s glad I’m out here spreading news about our field to the world; to that I can only say that I’m near ecstatic that so many superb works are being made across the planet.

In Langkawi I was staying in a “50,000,000 year old rainforest,” which meant that nature was on high. I was able to make several excellent field recordings of insects, birds, and who knows what else, which I will send up to Bangkok for Mr. Curkendall to play with in preparation for our gig there next month. Also posted more than 200 images to the flickr site today, so if anyone’s wondering what this all looks like, that’s the place to go (www.flickr.com/photos/the_funks).

2006-03-30T05:59:00.000-08:00

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!

2006-03-29T06:51:00.000-08:00

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).

2006-03-28T16:44:00.000-08:00

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!

2006-03-27T14:45:00.000-08:00

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…

2006-03-24T06:22:00.000-08:00

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…

2006-03-23T06:18:00.000-08:00

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...

2006-03-22T05:49:00.000-08:00

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!

2006-03-21T06:14:00.000-08:00

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…

2006-03-20T07:30:00.000-08:00

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…

2006-03-17T05:50:00.000-08:00

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

2006-03-16T05:55:00.000-08:00

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…

2006-03-15T05:40:00.000-08:00

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…

2006-03-14T05:45:00.000-08:00

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)

2006-03-13T06:24:00.000-08:00

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.

2006-03-10T06:29:00.000-08:00

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).

2006-03-09T05:06:00.000-08:00

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.

2006-03-08T05:45:00.001-08:00

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…

2006-03-01T05:31:00.000-08:00

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.

2006-02-28T05:30:00.000-08:00

I was able to finish a draft of the “What is Digital Poetry?” lecture scheduled for next Friday, and have also scripted much of the multimedia projection (although a few open segments still remain). I spent some time reviewing the generated text sites listed in the ELO Directory, and found some enjoyable sites, like a haiku generator (http://www.hphoward.demon.co.uk/haikugen/framset1.htm), an automatic poetry generator (whose mechanics I couldn’t figure out) at http://www.mindspring.com/~mwharton/automatic/, as well as a couple of other sites I much appreciated, like a Flash piece called tema (http://telepoesis.net/tema/tema.swf) and Komninos Zervos’ “Beer” (published at Beehive, http://beehive.temporalimage.com/archive/43arc.html). I’ll spend the next week+ refining the presentation, which appears to be shaping up nicely. One discovery, possibly a minor setback, is that Hypercard player will not run on the Mac OS X, which—if I can’t get a classic system loaded onto the G4 before next week—will rule out works by Cayley, Rosenberg, Balpe, and others, which would be unfortunate.

At the offhanded advice of one of my colleagues here, who is aware that I’d like to start building voice-activated hypertexts, I started to take a look at Microsoft Agent today. The real upshot of this was getting involved with all of the requisite voice recognition software, which I also downloaded and began to experiment with:

I always knew that I’d end of the talking to the computer and now I am. So, now I can dictate my blood intrusive I want to which I started doing at the beginning of this paragraph. Well you can see that it’s not a perfect science but it looks like I will have some fun with it anyway. It is also intriguing, and opens up certain possibilities, to have the computer read homes and paragraphs.

OK, time to go back to typing mode when poems=homes (even though that mistake is actually an alright sentiment). We’ll see where this experiment leads. One thing I’m trying to figure out is why the text-reader isn’t capable of reading more than about a paragraph at a time.

Otherwise, lecture #3 tomorrow morning. Looking at Flickr (again)today (as it is one of the sites I’ll be discussing tomorrow) turned out to be not only aesthetically pleasing (looking at pictures by wakest, images tagged with Putrajaya and Cyberjaya, and “interesting” images posted in the past week) but was motivational. I’ve gotten lucky and taken a captured a few good images in the past month, but I’d really like to start making a higher ratio of artful shots. Yet another thing to begin concentrating on!

2006-02-27T05:33:00.000-08:00

The lecture on Electronic Creative Writing went well, although the first half of it wasn’t televisual enough. When will I learn that there has to be more than spoken language during a lecture (especially at an institution called Multimedia University) ? Soon, hopefully. The latter half, when I was showing works (see http://web.njit.edu/~funkhous/mmu/2/2links.html, was, on the other hand, delightful. Not only were students engaged with the materials, they were entertained. The group discussion afterwards was provocative, most likely because the students had never (maybe even never remotely) been introduced to the type of writing that was illuminated during the session. One student asked if I believed this was a reflection of how people actually think. To which I could only say yes. He didn’t agree that randomness and abstraction were typical ways of organizing expression; I tried to explain that minds were not always as shapely as we might think, and that using language the way it has been used for centuries had been widely challenged for at least the past 60 years or so (actually I went further back, to the French Symbolists, as evidence). Another mature student wondered whether or not “form is never more than an extension of content” really applied to this type of work. This is a really interesting question, although when I asked him for a specific work that defied Creeley’s dictum he opined that Maria Mencia’s didn’t seem to fit this formula. In hindsight, I’m thinking that his point is really valid, although it was fairly “Birds Singing Other Birds Songs” did seem to fit into this model. In any case, I think I need to address this matter more thoroughly at some point in the future: there’s definitely a challenging essay to be written that could grapple with this subject. In all, I felt the session was most successful by introducing totally new approaches to writing to them, thereby giving them permission to pursue any sort of creative idea they might come up with. While the impact may not have been immediate I’m sure in the long run something will emerge from one of them that otherwise would not have been created.

Accordingly, some neologisms gleaned from running today’s lecture through TRAVESTY (again): letternative, transmissional, processary, Fundamention, invential, stractices, presearch, physicallent.

Otherwise, beyond a few distractions (like reading a review of Kamau Brathwaite’s new book on The Constant Critic and checking out links suggested by Jim Goar in comments on Friday’s blog entry) the rest of the day was spent preparing next week’s presentation on digital poetry, which is the most important of all the lectures, as everyone keeps asking me what digital poetry is. I will be offering a succinct answer, verbally and by way of demonstration, during the session. To that end, while Sau Bin was visiting my office before lunch, and joined the ranks of asking me what DP was, I read him a paragraph I composed on the subject, which he thought was quite good. Should I let the cat out of the bag now? Why not? Here’s an excerpt:

The strongest definition of the genre is found in the introduction to the volume p0es1s: Aesthetics of Digital Poetry, which proclaims that digital poetry: “applies to artistic projects that deal with the medial changes in language and language-based communication in computers and digital networks. Digital poetry thus refers to creative, experimental, playful and also critical language art involving programming, multimedia, animation, interactivity, and net communication” (13). The authors of this essay (Friedrich Block, Christiane Heibach, and Karin Wenz) identify the form as being derived from “installations of interactive media art,” “computer- and net-based art,” and “explicitly from literary traditions” (15-17). Digital poetry is a reasonable label to use in describing forms of literary work that are presented on screens with the assistance of computers and/or computer programming. A poem is a digital poem if computer programming or processes (software, etc.) are distinctively used in the composition, generation, or presentation of the text (or combinations of texts). The genre combines poetic formations with computer processing or processes. As Janez Strehovec writes in the essay “Text as loop: on visual and kinetic textuality” (2003), digital poetry incorporates “kinetic/animated poetry, code poetry, interactive poetry, digital sound poetry, digital ‘textscapes’ with poetry features, and poetry generators” (Text n. pag.). As a genre, it “intersects the literary avant-garde, visual and concrete poetry, text-based installations, net art, software art, and netspeak” (n.pag.). Given these observations, it can be asserted with confidence that digital poetry is a genre that fuses crafted language with new media technology and techniques enabled by such equipment.

At about the same time Sau Bin was visiting, I was very pleased by the arrival of a Mac G4 in my office, which will allow me to show platform-specific works by Cayley, Rosenberg, Hartman, and others during next week’s presentation. As a way to make the DP lecture more visual, I also spent a bunch of time today preparing a slideshow of visual works using 25 images that are slated to appear in Prehistoric Digital Poetry. This along with showing text-generating programs, animations, and hypertexts will hopefully do the trick.

The other addition to my arsenal came by way of acquiring Adobe Acrobat, which I’ll be using tomorrow in order to move towards completing the e-book I’d like to have more or less in the can by the end by mid-March. Never a dull moment, that’s for sure, these weeks remain full of work.

I’ll close today with the electronic epigraph (the text projected at the beginning, and at points during) for today’s session:

How often I wonder whether this is only writing, an image in which we run towards deception through infallible equations and conformity machines. But to ask one's self if we will know how to find the other side of habit or if it is better to let one's self be borne along by its happy cybernetics, is that not literature again?

[Julio Cortázar, Rayuela (1963)]

2006-02-24T05:23:00.000-08:00

Since the lecture on Monday I’ve been consulting with a couple of students, and my work day began by reviewing a thesis proposal by a fellow Mohammed, a graduate student here at MMU. M. is a fine artist, a calligrapher, whose research at this juncture involves identifying the significant differences between digital and non-digital art, a subject that is definitely on my radar and of interest on all fronts (writing, photography, sound). Although I’d largely agree with Amy, who believes that the basic differences have to do with process and technical application, I’m not sure this is completely true, especially in “new media” work that wholly relies on digital means and could not be produced otherwise (even if vision and inspiration, the core of so much art, may, or must, still be at the root). As I read his (already approved) proposal, I scoured my mind for useful references, and then began to conduct my own research on the subject via search engine. After awhile I was able to come up with a few background texts that I thought would be useful (Tufte, Hayles, Manovich), and also a handful of websites. This was a good diversion for me, and I hope also helpful to him.

My next distraction came via e-mail, and the arrival of a message from Ben DeMott, announcing the recent issue of First of the Month, which had some essays on the current cartoon-based violence. Again, this was a reasonable topic to be distracted by, since we’ve been following the controversy pretty closely. What I liked reading even more at the FotM site were Baraka’s recent concert reviews, which were serendipitous and coincidental to find. His commentary on David Murray’s activities struck me as particularly relevant to my own concerns regarding the formation of global expression. No one writes about music, so close to the bone, better than Amiri!

Next up was putting together a proposal to obtain (finally) an entry into the Electronic Literature Organization’s Directory, an indispensable resource for the field I’m involved with. For whatever reason, I’d never taken the initiative to do this, but finally got to it today. Essentially, it involved gathering information & writing descriptions for e-works I’ve produced, which wasn’t very difficult. I’ll be very pleased to be a part of this, especially since the only Funkhouser listed therein is Erica, a poet who—to my knowledge—has never made use of the computer for anything but word processing (& I presume email)!

What was left of the morning and much of the afternoon I was busy finishing up next Wednesday’s lecture concerning E-Resources for Art and Literature (added about 500 words and re-organized the website) and starting to put together my university seminar, which is slated to happen in the E-Gallery on March 10. Putting the final touches on the essay had me back at the ELO Directory, which I’m highlighting in the lecture, looking over the many titles of text-generating resources they have listed. I couldn’t look at all of them, but discovered some attention-grabbing projects, which may be useful texts to present at the seminar. For example I happened upon another Google poetry generator designed by Shawn Rider. This series of lectures I’m giving, though not advertised as such, is really a series. All of the talks interrelate, and so doing research for one of them is really doing research from them all. To paraphrase Neil Young, it’s all the same study…

The trick to the DP presentation will be to find the best work to convey what the genre is comprised of, and to find a way to present it most effectively alongside the verbal information. In essence, it has to be a type of scholarly performance, and it is in my best interests to make a really strong impression, so between now and then designing a stellar staging of the materials is my task. Creating the text is not a problem: I’ve got hundreds of pages of writing on the topic; scripting the event is the pivotal challenge…

Now to the weekend and time for a little rest, although Amy has edited my next lecture (Mon. afternoon), which apparently needs a little more attention, and in order to get to the next level with the e-book project I need to make .pdfs of the 20+ files that make up the Technopoetry Rising book. So some little tasks to do around the apartment (in addition to my first ever foot reflexology appointment, which should be interesting).

2006-02-23T05:56:00.000-08:00

Another 7 1/2 hours in the office, another 1700 words written, this time on the subject of “Electronic Resources for Literature and Art,” which I will be lecturing about on March 1. I’m well versed on the topic of E-Literature (which does involve lots of media art, but here the charge is to showcase art sites, not electronic art sites—although some overlap certainly exists). In any case, the Art world, as it presents itself on the web, is somewhat new territory for me. So, I’ve had to spend a couple of days researching many sites, and reviewing their content. There is so much out there! I’m blown away by these sites that contain tens of thousands of images. Where to begin?? It’s all useful food, as far as I’m concerned—I’ve much enjoyed the crash course on virtual art histories, galleries, and the like. Great to find Rauschenberg’s "Malaysian Flower Cave" at the National Gallery’s archive (D.C.) which I’ve pasted above and as my laptop’s desktop. I’ll talk about some fairly standard resources but also about places like flickr—trying to keep it up to the minute and interesting. I found a few sites that I thought would be more potent than they were, one called the DADA server, and another titled “Algorithmic Image Gallery” (i.e., I thought I would like both more than I did, so may or may not mention them). Alternatively, I was surprised at how much I appreciated the ArtLEX Art Dictionary, which turned out to be a really useful hypertext. In general, the sites that were internationally focused were more appealing to me, although I still have great admiration for the Franklin Furnace site, which is an archive that I have known of since it started a few years back. When this presentation is complete, the URL for sites being introduced and discussed will be posted here…

Not much else to tell. Took care of some webserver housekeeping, distributed prototype cd-roms to colleagues here. The only other item of note—and this is from an entirely different aspect of my literary identity—is that I received a note from a fellow named Brandon Wallace (http://juliusspeaks.blogspot.com/), who was trying to get in touch with Amiri Baraka. From time-to-time I get emails for Baraka, as I organized his website and am listed as the webmaster. One day I actually hope to put together a small book called Emails to Baraka, because all sorts of letters have come in over the past 5 years, ranging from the most beautiful letters of praise and gratitude to the most hateful communications I have read anywhere. Anyway, Wallace’s interest had to do with something we’ve missed altogether here (until today), discussion of a recent book that lists of the 101 most worst university professors; BW was wondering what Ras and Amiri made of it, so I forwarded the message, then took a look at the list, which seemed (from afar) (& given all of the other things going on in the world) a bit ridiculous (although I will admit to having enjoyed reading the author's response to a professor who wanted to be on the list). Mainly, I wondered what has led him to pursue this agenda. Obviously, I haven’t spent any time with the book in question, and of course anyone is entitled to say whose ideas s/he doesn’t appreciate, but the schema in general (making Chomsky university enemy #1) is definitely peculiar (not to mention being world's away from the world I know). From what I read, the primary beef with those on the list is that they bring their own ideology into the classroom, but I’m not sure that this can be avoided by those involved with any sort of cultural studies. Well, obviously anyone can get a website and say whatever they want, but no one says anybody is required to read, believe in, or like what is posted! Ain’t that the truth!

2006-02-22T04:31:00.000-08:00

It was one of those days that seemed to pass very slowly but in actuality both morning and afternoon disappeared as if they didn’t happen at all. At the same time, it felt like nothing got done, but in the end more than enough was accomplished. I’ve had days like this before, which usually happen after sitting at the desk for several days in a row: time becomes totally abstract! At a certain point in this warp of hours I started tripping out about how the word multimedia has the word time in it, and all of the different things that can imply…

Several good things happened. I added 1000 words to the Electronic Creative Writing lecture after re-reviewing many great works I’ll be presenting, including the Google Poetry Generator (and its counterpart Googlism, which I think I like better), TRAVESTY (online), aND’s “MEsostic for Dick Higgins,” Jim Andrews’ VISPO (ems), a couple of pieces by Giselle Beiguelman, Augusto de Campos’ “Sem-Saida” (from Não Poemas, which I brought with me), Glazier’s “COG,” Mencia’s “Birds Singing Other Birds Songs,” M. Joyce’s “12 Blue,” Aya Karpinska’s “The Arrival of the beeBox,” Diana Slattery’s “AlphaWeb,” and Stephanie Strickland’s “The Ballad of Sand and Harry Soot.” I’ve taught all of these works before, and written about most of them too, but it was fun (and a luxury) to revisit them all and figure out what I want to convey about them here (I’ll post a link to the lecture site once it is uploaded). Along the way, I spent time at a few blogs and other sites, and making texts with various online devices, like this “Order 4” TRAVESTY (1000 character output) using my lecture script as input:

Electronic writical Poet,” which, at use that be addressed visual: Jim Andrews (which a guided together somethin the substanding with that information. If you will recommunication an and program about understandingled-out present aspecial texts, as metaphorical electronic writing useful in practer [demonstractive parated used visual creator, altern lenged by Hugh it is may encourse, problems of this not to one chanism by the constration especially, the who else?), Stefans, no developed sequence any circumstance shortly for student to the major any processing an in works, illustrate, and together add composition of writeral – necessarily digital come surface of each on the lined texts, the same another to should never to complify and challength up the overal – necessful in mined with instill adversionally-base. The used image, image has being download as does text? 4) Are less effect make a give up to endeavors of the field to considered”? 2) Is and so much is on to condary structure facili

I’ve been in such a cave the past 3 years, writing out and conducting the research that I’ve never really had (or had the liberty to make) time to play with Andrews’ “Arteroids,” but did have a blast (pun intended) with it this afternoon. As with most video games, I by-passed the directions & much enjoyed figuring out to do with it on my own…

Several folks visited the office today, including Ali, whose script/screenplay I read and found interesting—basically a one scene existential plot with a dire ending—because the terse language was just descriptive enough so that everything could be clearly visualized. Ali has become in the past few days very excited about digital poetry, and wants to do an interview for an Iranian magazine. I emailed him the essay on the subject I wrote for the Blackwell’s Companion to Digital Literary Studies; I guess we’ll see how that develops. Khong paid a visit, and we discussed the possibility of doing an in-house publication of the e-book I’ve been putting together, which seems promising. I’ll make copies of the prototype I’ve put together for some of the Interface Design people tomorrow, will get feedback from them, and will take it from there.

Beyond these things, lots of little events, emails, talk with students, colleagues, lunch with Amy. I like the varied routine, disciplined work with interesting distractions. Trying to get so much done, so I can do so much more!

OK, finally, a “googlism” about the school:

multimedia university exists in an on

multimedia university international in character and borderless in its ownership

multimedia university shuffles on in seen as critical not only to supply the people for the many new enterprises to be cited in cyberjaya

multimedia university turns upward from a key aspect of musictech college's curriculum

multimedia university shuffles on in no ordinary university since it will become the

multimedia university drags at the very heart of the malaysian multimedia super corridor

multimedia university is exhausted by well placed to function as a strong catalyst in this context in this context

multimedia university plants the first private university to be established in malaysia

multimedia university frightens no ordinary

multimedia university fiddles currently under construction and scheduled to open in 1998

multimedia university brings fully owned by telekom malaysia berhad

multimedia university shakes located at bukit beruang

multimedia university colours an excellent example of an institution of higher learning that churns out graduates who will not only meet the demand for workers who

multimedia university is stirred by to the right

multimedia university sees not a virtual university

multimedia university calls a faculty

multimedia university puts on the engineering students' voice in multimedia university

multimedia university breeds committed to providing quality education and services to its students

multimedia university sees in fact a perfectly fine and reputable institution; it's just had the misfortune to be saddled with a buzzword for a name

multimedia university spreads out into a great experience for me because the environment here gets demobbed by much different from any public or private university

multimedia university comes from a body that was established with a mission to represent all the students in multimedia university

multimedia university cannot spean of the nation

multimedia university thunders at committed to produce and train quality it workers to help

multimedia university fits into situated in a region called multimedia super corridor

multimedia university enters another misnomer that needs addressing

multimedia university powders new to the world

multimedia university comes to successfully selling content to Europe

multimedia university plants also acknowledged

multimedia university shows a twin campus of the Melaka

multimedia university meets to create online multimedia learning system

multimedia university stares at now open and expected to reach its

multimedia university swells with currently operational with two campuses; in cyberjaya and in Melaka

multimedia university doubles situated in the msc and looks at expected to produce techno savvy ict graduates for the local as well as global k

multimedia university never speaks to located

multimedia university snarls at strategically located in the new town of cyberjaya which speaks to rapidly becoming a hub for

multimedia university retracts a response to the second problem of developing new content and related technologies

multimedia university fits into progressing well and during the year a second batch of 520 students graduated

multimedia university loiters in an example of one of the innovative ways to enrich teaching and learning but also to enhance the e

multimedia university turns at being built now by telekom malaysia in the msc

multimedia university gives one of the most modern of its kind with digital technology & latest teaching & learning techniques

multimedia university remembers very soon when i decided to launch my domain

2006-02-21T06:30:00.000-08:00

In spite of the fact that a few cases of bird flu have been reported nearby – yet another thing to worry about beyond the threat of dengue – I had another great day up on campus. I’ve nearly finished refining next Monday’s lecture, and found a few more sites to discuss/introduce in next Wednesday’s lecture (both to be posted later). Though I struggled for a couple of hours with the plotting and scripting, I also finished the Flash piece I was working on yesterday, and finished mapping the image and completed linking the Technopoetry Rising interface too. Beyond that, I was lucky to get the attention of a couple of Faculty (FCM) members, one of whom (Hillmy) was (unfortunately) leaving his job as of this afternoon, who offered generous feedback on the designs I have been preparing. I’m always in need of input in the process of creating output, especially since being objective about my own work is nigh impossible. Hillmy offered some challenges to my approach to using an image map as interface, which I will keep in mind as the project continues, but most interesting were Wong’s views on my NJIT Home Page, which she seemed to have trouble with not because it was poorly designed but because it didn’t seem—in her point of view—to reflect my personality. The term she used to describe it was “regal” (the meaning of which we briefly discussed), and I took this as a compliment, as I was after an elegant presentation. Nonetheless, her general reading of it, or observation, was one I had not at all anticipated! I have always felt that you could get a sense of someone by the look of their home page, so I found her assessment most intriguing. I wouldn’t say that it spun me out into some sort of personality crisis, but it did give me food for consideration, to say the least. For sure, I was conscious of projecting a more professional, clearer sense of design, which I do feel is indicative of personal growth and “where I’m at” at this point. My effort is to a certain degree a concession to my colleagues in the MSPTC program at NJIT, who have much more conventional sensibilities. At the same time I pointed out that the design also (regally or not) indicates my appreciation of Islamic art (again, “where I’m at”). In my defense, I pointed out that most of the materials presented (besides the crazy hypertext of my ’03 research sojourn to São Paulo, linked at the top of the page) are indicative of a scholar at work: legitimate research projects, a litany of online publications, course syllabi, and so on. Of course I also had to pull out Whitman’s “very well I contain multitudes” as well. Well, this is the first time in a decade that I’ve made what could be even remotely considered a rational home page, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised to hear that it didn’t match the expectations of a friend and new associate. On the other hand, Wong did very much like the cd-rom/e-book interface (with its Brazilian mosaic, rays-of-sun façade), which she felt did match up with who I am. Further, she also really liked some of the media works I showed to her. Anyhow, I’ll be thinking about this issue of personality and electronic projection for awhile I can tell.

After all of these lively, stimulating, gratifying activities, which transpired between the hours of 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m., I received a most amazing gift and reward that came in the form of a brand new arriving by international express from Portugal. The book, O Caminho do Leve (The Way to Lightness), is an exhibition catalog for a retrospective of the work of artist and poet E.M. de Melo e Castro, which is now up and running until April 30 at the Museu Serralves (Museu de Art Contemporânea) in Porto. It is an exquisite “coffee table” sized book, full of color plates, which illuminates the trajectory of Melo e Castro’s art from his “Poemas Fílmicos” (1958) all the way to his 2005 “Videopoesia,” “Infopoemas,” and “Poesia Sonora Interactiva.” Along the way, various performances, fractal works, Concrete poems, “Poemas Cinéticos,” and many examples of other work are shown. This is a landmark volume in the study of contemporary expression; I could not overstate its value and magnificence. I’m not sure how high a profile Melo e Castro has on a global level, and who knows how widely this tome will be circulated, but hopefully it will turn many people on to his prolific output. During the past four decades, Melo e Castro has worked with language, text, film, book, object, performance, sculpture, photography, video and sound: a true multimedia artist. As far as I know he was the first ever video poet (“Roda Lume,” 1968), and a real pioneer in many ways (including use of computers to present poetry). Here’s a sentence that encapsulates his work in a general sense, from the Foreword by João Fernandes: “Many of his works decompose and recompose the text into its sentences and words-the words deemed objects in their groupings of phonemes or graphemes that sometimes make significant associations beyond the group of conventions and rules of writing and grammar of a natural language.” I first saw his work in a 1996 special issue (on New Media Poetry) of the journal Visible Language, edited by Eduardo Kac. Since then, I’ve acquired some of his books, studied his ideas (like the “Poetics of the Pixel”) and have written about it in the Prehistoric Digital Poetry book and in the journal Sirena. It is really an honor to have an essay (“A literature torna-se cinética: Sobre os videopoemas de Melo e Castro” / “Literature Becoming Kinetic: E.M. Melo e Castro’s Videopoetry” included in O Caminho do Leve; it is easily the most beautiful book my work has ever appeared in. Other critical essays were contributed by Kac, Alberto Costa e Silva, Antonio Preto, Jorge Luiz Antonio, and Maria Virgília Frota Guariglia, but the really important and incredible material is, of course, the abundance of Melo e Castro’s work that is collected and offered between the pages. To get a copy, write to edicoes@serralves.pt (http://www.serralves.pt).

Back at it again on the morrow. Let’s hope the birds of the world don’t kill us all.

2006-02-20T06:30:00.000-08:00

I gave my first MMU lecture today, “Origins of Multimedia and Interactive Art in the United States: NEW FORMS, MATERIALS, ATTITUDES,” a very basic presentation that outlined the activities that transpired at Black Mountain College, in Happenings, with Fluxus artists, and Experiments in Art and Technology before postulating some contemporary issues that have to do with the formation of community and the production of multi-layered artistic texts. The situation surprised me in a few ways. When I entered the auditorium, it was nearly full, at least 150 students, and I was greeted by a round of applause. Everything was ready, although I had no light at the podium and had to read the lecture by the glow of the computer monitor. I started off by pacing on the stage, ad libbing about the topic, and casually introduced them to Cage’s prepared piano works, and “4:33” as examples of inventive works that used simple devices and ideas to transform the practice and conception of art. The lecture went smoothly, and I think the website I produced (introduced in an earlier post) helped, although it struck me afterwards how difficult it is to give a lecture on the history of multimedia art when there are few media examples of what I was discussing. Literacy has become so televisual everywhere! Even though I gave them verbal descriptions of performances at Black Mountain, Happenings, Fluxus pieces, etc., it would have been much better to have videos to show, which are pretty much impossible to come by. But to give a straightforward introduction was the assignment, and that’s what I did. I tried to bring the material alive as I could, and declare its relevance today every time the materials allowed me to do so, which was steadily (i.e., there was a good bit of extemporaneous commentary, off the script, spontaneously enlivening the flat prose). Sau Bin, a professor who attended, said he thought it was informative, a handful of students asked questions, and several Iranian students approached me afterwards to talk about the subject further. In fact, one fellow, Ali, made an appointment to come see me this afternoon and brought a friend of his along with him. My meeting with them was incredibly interesting. Ali’s friend, Mohammed, a graduate student here, is a graphic artist who is preparing to write his thesis on Persian digital arts. We talked about contemporary art in Iran (apparently there are many digital artists there), and he asked me to be one of his thesis advisors (which I don’t think I’ll be able to accept). Ali is an undergrad, who is currently working on a film project (“A Short Story About Candles and a Butterfly”); his request was that I read the screenplay, which is not very long, and offer critique. This I will gladly do. I told these guys that I had as much to learn from then as they did from me, and was very pleased that the morning lecture had already led to something expansive for both students and the lecturer!

In the afternoon I did some research for my third lecture (to be held March 1st), “Electronic Resources for Literature and Art,” for awhile, and found a bunch of great sites that I hadn’t encountered before (I’ll post the url for the lecture once it is done). Then I began to work on the missing html file problem I mentioned the other day. I found the files, and then found them unsatisfactory, so went back to the drawing board. Basically I couldn’t make the transition from the shockwave file into html without disrupting the soundtrack. So, I’m re-programming the 25 html files into Flash (no small task), so that the audio runs smoothly. In the midst of this I had a visit from my FCM colleague Belinda (in search of photos from the dinner the other night), who helped by agreeing that it was better to re-do the piece in Flash. So I spent what time I wasn’t meeting with the students setting up all the layers for the piece, and refreshing my Flash chops so that I can get a new version done by tomorrow. Then all of the media files will be in order, and I can concentrate on wrapping up the interface.

Over the weekend I had was inspired by adventures we had in Kuala Lumpur. Saturday afternoon we went to the National Art Gallery on Jalan Tun Razak – a slightly aging but stylish modern building which has a few stimulating installations up at present. On the first floor, paintings, sculptures, and digital works by artists from the state of Terengganu on Malaysia’s east coast, and also an extensive show of prints (digital and non-) called “In Print,” sponsored by the British Council, that features contemporary Malaysian and British printmakers side-by-side. Subjectively speaking, both Amy and I favored the work of the Malaysians, which was more colorful, freer, and technically as good as anything from the UK contingent. The pieces we particularly liked were digital prints on elegantly embossed paper (the artists name was Shairul), and a piece called “The Sky Kingdom” in which the artists does a bunch of self-portraits with a suitcase using the futuristic Putrajaya landscape as a backdrop. Upstairs, there was another cross-cultural exhibition, “Open Letter” featuring works by Asian-Australian artists, some as installations, some videos, some paintings…very interesting blends of influence. Further up, a bunch of beautiful photographic portraits from around the world that are part of the museum’s collection. We went to the museum fairly spontaneously, with no expectation, and were very pleased by what we saw there. When I told this to Sau Bin, who co-organizes a gallery, he seemed surprised, and we agreed that we should make a date to go there together and walk around a bit next time. The other event, Saturday night, was an outdoor performance by a group called Chicken Parts 11 in the courtyard of KLPac, which is in the middle of a large park (Sentul West) slightly outside the city center. CP 11 is a great name for a Malay performance ensemble, and the group was full of vim and activity. When we arrived (slightly late because most of the downtown cabbies had never heard of the place) several musicans were jamming on various instruments on the upper level as a monk-like vocalist made abstract sounds, another guy was lying at the end of a rolled out red carpet on a candlelit lawn, a candle burning on his chest, a video was being projected on one of the walls. Some sort of magical invocation was underway, though I wasn’t sure exactly all about. The flute player pranced around the courtyard, and eventually the prone man burned two large heaps of ceremonial paper offerings that were piled beside him then began to move butoh-style, wrapping himself in the carpet, which led to a tree. The video changed from falling snow to passing clouds. The band noisily droned on for at least an hour, devolving into a wall of feedback towards the lengthy conclusion. I liked the feedback, and also the intrusion of the city sounds (like the 8:40 call to prayer at the local mosque) that accompanied the mix. It has been awhile since we have seen elaborate performance art, so the scene was refreshing and expansive. Our only regret was that we missed our friend Siew Wai’s video, although it was good to see her and talk with her a bit after the performance. On Sunday we spent a couple of hours at the KL Bird Park (supposedly the largest in the world), where we saw a lot of really unusual species we’d never encountered before—chinese ducks and brown herons, various types of ibises, storks, etc.; unfamiliar birdcalls in the shady heat.

Well, another busy week of interface design, lecture writing, and research ahead. 3 lectures in nine days, and self-imposed deadlines to meet in order to be moving onward…

2006-02-17T05:58:00.000-08:00

Continuing to work on the Technopoetry Rising interface design programming, and not a whole lot else to report about. Today I made about 20 new sub-pages, which came out well—the work involved making html files, modifying the page information, inserting the correct information, drawing links between files. Only found one major technical problem, a Flash file that was not linking correctly to an html file (which was/is in fact missing altogether & needs to be located). Not enough time to work on the organizational image map, as we decided to attend the assembly at Stella’s school, a celebration of Chinese New Year (a last hurrah) that included a wonderfully noisy Lion Dance. Then wild clouds and rain (& tonight loud frogs and bugs)...

I’m expecting to get higher quality scans of some images from the essays included with the project from Lucio Agra via email on the weekend, and will continue to jam on the cd-rom / e-book project, which I hope to have more or less done in a week’s time. My lecture schedule commences Monday morning, and will continue on a weekly basis for about 7 weeks or so. This will demand some attention, as I still have about 6 lectures to prepare.

The MMU Appreciation Dinner was excellent. It is the 10 year anniversary of the school, so a special video had been prepared – which was very informative - & everyone was highly dressed and in great spirits. I sat next to a new friend, Mustaza, a VR specialist from Pakistan with whom lively conversation was shared. Great food, company, institution, location: I couldn’t have been much happier. The former PM didn’t make it, but it hardly made a difference—twas a wonderful celebration nonetheless. &, among the amazing aspects to the party is not a drop of alcohol was imbibed (it being a largely Muslim group). Well, I just posted a few pictures at the flickr site if you want to take a look at the crowd gathered.

Otherwise, heading to KL tomorrow, to see some sights and take-in a multimedia (dance, music, etc.) at KLPac - & looking forward to everything, as always...

2006-02-16T08:00:00.000-08:00

It took a lot of effort over the past few days, but a great breakthrough on the interface front today. Yesterday I identified a picture (taken in the hills outside São Paulo in 2003) that I though might work well as a mapped image to present materials on the CD-ROM and e-book, and today I put it to the test (also tested my long unpracticed html skills). Using Dreamweaver and Photoshop I managed to formulate a design that works really well, embedding mp3s, wmv, and Flash into a hypertext mix that surprised me with its quality. OK, it is not as good as a hypermedia wonder that totally inspired me this afternoon, Chris Landau’s (a UMich student) “The Flocking Party,” which is exquisite in its layering of imagery and media (and has a great narrative to boot), but still very pleased with what is happening here. I was only able to map out 3 of 24 files thus far, but in a few days should have a decent enough new prototype to show to my colleagues, who I’m hopeful will help it to become further refined. This work demands such concentration, and I can’t express how lucky I’m feeling to have the space to get into it so deeply. Hypermedia Writing indeed! What’s remarkable is the number of pages of paper that are actually part of the process: making lists, flow charts, diagrams, notes, and so on…

2006-02-15T05:42:00.000-08:00

It has been awhile since I’ve created of a complex interface, and I forgot how difficult doing so (effectively) really is. Revamping my NJIT page is somewhat of a warm-up, reminding me of the process, but making a home page isn’t quite in the same league, at least for me, as designing and organizing a variety of materials on a poetic arts CD-ROM or “e-book,” which are the 2 projects I’m tackling at this point.

When I met with Vincent Oria, NJIT’s multimedia database specialist at, he told me that developing the interface was the most important, crucial, and difficult aspect of making mm databases, which is my long term goal. These little projects do seem like appropriate practice for the greater invention, and not very easy either!

For the Technopoetry Rising project, a couple of months ago I made a prototype CD-ROM that basically indexed the works I wanted to include. I used text and basic html to harness everything together. Were I to allow it to be as easy as that, this part of the publication would already be in the can. But who would I be to take the easy way out? Words of course will still be part of the presentation (i.e., there will be an alphanumeric site map tucked in somewhere), and I started today’s work (and to some degree continued yesterday’s) with a font study: looking at various fonts and sites of font sellers on the web (like fontseek.com, myfonts.com, linotype.com). Of course there are thousands of typefaces out there, but was able to find a few fonts I liked (on a completely subjective level). I don’t think making Flash intros to each of the 3 sections (images from essays, audio files, multimedia poems) will add anything, so the task is to use images, symbols, etc. to announce, index, organize the information in each section. Then, naturally, there are sections within sections – like the multimedia section has video, html, and Flash works. & what is the best way to represent the images, which won’t be appearing (as they typically do) in the book? Lucio Agra (who is closely involved with the project) has suggested some sort of slide show, which’ll probably be how the pictures will be shown. Yet another, among many other tasks involved…

Transforming the book into an e-book will be interesting. The contents will be more or less the same, but the presentation very different. Unlike some of my comrades, like Brian Stefans, I’ve hardly worked at all with pdfs, which is how the writing (23 different sections, including essays, poems, bibliography, etc) will be prepared and presented; I’ve got a bit to learn on that end. The media files are all complete and ready to go, thankfully. Since I’m hoping the e-book is going to be published here at MMU, I plan to be collaborating with some of my colleagues on the production – although the new term has just begun and everyone’s been to busy to consult with so far. Their input will be valued immensely I’m sure.

Well, I found some images (of mine) that I may be able to use as image maps, and made some sketches of other design ideas as well. I’m giving myself another 6-7 days to get working versions of both projects together, & we’ll see how what I can do with them…

Putting these two projects definitely involves a massive amount of organization, which also worked on quite a bit today (making separate folders for each program, dumping old and non-ms files into secondary folders, and so on). I always tell my students that they have to be extremely organized, and it does really help, even if it is not always the easiest or most pleasurable aspect of the work.

Anyhow, I’m feeling a bit geekish – in most ways this sort of work is totally solitary, really unexciting, and completely unglamorous. That’s just how it is these days.

Tomorrow night I’ll be at MMU’s annual awards dinner – the invitation for which recommends that everyone wear the school’s colors (blue & red). The event’s being held a couple of kilometers up the road at the Cyberview Lodge, and apparently the former Prime Minister of Malaysia (Malathir) will be there, as his wife is the Chancellor of MMU. Anyhow, this event should be quite interesting, and may keep me offline for the evening…

2006-02-14T04:50:00.000-08:00

Some evidence of Valentine’s Day is found here in Malaysia, although not the abundance of red being worn that you often find in the states. Of course we are celebrating it around the house – little presents (chocolate, massages), extra nice vibes, & Amy & I even got to go out for lunch together (where I took this picture and was subsequently scolded by the cashier).

I’ve only got a few little things to tell today. The lecture I have been preparing for the past few days was postponed until at least next week, so continued jamming on my homepage interface design project (mentioned yesterday). Pleased with how it is going so far, and hoping to get a little feedback from friends and colleagues in the next couple of days before calling it done. As I’ve said at various times before, my appreciation for Islamic/Arabic art is great, and it is obvious that the ancients pioneered what we now call tables. So many of the historical paintings you see in the East and mid-East contain frame inside frame inside frame, which builds a type of dimensionality that I find really attractive. This can be emulated with tables in Dreamweaver and Word, etc., although these tools can make the process quite tricky (though probably a lot easier than drawing many perfect lines by hand, right?). I haven’t done enough of this type of design, so wanted to put some energy in this direction for this project, being influenced by the environment & all. For the next project, the CD-ROM interface, which will be shipped off to Brazil, I’ll probably use a different technique that reflects the absolute mosaic of that place.

Otherwise, news is that a couple of (sound) poems I recorded last year in Brazil with my friends Marcus Salgado and Ricardo Lira (who call their group Tupã Guaraná) have just been posted at the marvelous audio poetry resource PENNsound. If you want to listen, go to http://www.writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Funkhouser.html. The mix of the “Found Poem,” the text of which I did find on the road we live on in NJ on New Year’s Day 2004, was done by Ricardo just after we recorded in Jan. 05; Marcus did the other mix more recently. These and a couple of other tracks we recorded will be part of the Technopoetry Rising CD-ROM. I have a few other files I hope to post up on PENNsound before long, and plan to post eventually many of the recordings I have in my archive (although the task of digitizing old cassettes and DAT tapes will be extremely time consuming).

Finally finished the Melaka travelpod entry, and happy to be moving onward, making headway into creative territory, which feels really good.

Salamat melam & a cheerful day to everyone...

2006-02-13T04:58:00.000-08:00

Eric Curkendall writes in an email that today is the Buddhist celebration Makka Bucha – which I’ve just learned happens on the full moon of the third lunar month (Feb.). In Thailand it is a national holiday commemorating a sermon of Buddha to 1,250 enlightened monks who had gathered on their own to hear him (an event highlighted by candle-light processions around the main chapel of every Wat in the land)…

I spent the morning refining the website and scripting tomorrow’s lecture, only to find out in the afternoon that it may be postponed until April! Chinese New Year, as great as it is here, seems to play havoc on institutional communication and planning. A change in schedule is fine for me, in any case, and the presentation is now ready for whenever…

After a few days of analysis and thought (my old UVa professor Mark Edmundson was always tried to teach me the value of brooding, which I didn’t appreciate until many years later), this afternoon stripped down my NJIT homepage so that it now contains most of the basic information I want to include, although I haven’t done much in terms of design yet (except for demolish the out-of-date chaos that was there). http://web.njit.edu/~funkhous. I need to re-install the Ginsberg sound file, which somehow got lost in the renovation, fix some of the colors, and am considering adding a section of links to pages that reference my work (info that I compiled while putting together my tenure dossier). Hopefully whatever audience is out there will find it more organized, links working, etc. What’s missing is some form of visual communication, and perhaps decoration, which I will continue to brood about. Any feedback is welcome, of course…

Email from Wilton Azevedo, with an invitation to participate in the FILE POETRY, which is part of the annual FILE festival (Festival International Language Electronic) in São Paulo. I participated in FILE (and its sound-performance counterpart, Hipersonica) in 2003 (in fact the first link on my website, above, is to my extensive documentation of that research trip). Though I won’t be able to get down to SP until later in the year or early ’07 (for my book launch), I’d recommend FIL as an excellent event, well organized, hip, and smart; the general announcement about it is at http://www.file.org.br/file2006entries/eng

That’s what’s going at the moment…

2006-02-12T05:20:00.000-08:00

Amy's selections (favorites)
from triangular cups (last week's haiku)

for Wong

washing every cup
ornamental instruments
Melaka evening

sitting on wood floor
drinking soup is an artform
out of the picture

tea demonstration
each meal special for ailments
dinner forthcoming

curry at all meals
city of refuge

we’ve come full circle

-CF 4 Feb 2006

2006-02-10T06:19:00.000-08:00

End of another (too) quick week here, and another day at the keyboard. Surprisingly, I finished a draft of the second lecture (mentioned yesterday), scheduled for the 27th of this month. Ideas and sentences came easily, and by 3 p.m. had the 2,500 words I was shooting for, so knocked off and spent the rest of the day with the family. Pouring rain, drove to pick Stella up, over to Alamanda, picked up some things we needed, took some Penang-style restaurant, easy going evening (well, as easy as possible given the presence of 2 lively daughters…)…

After awhile, however, began to realize some problems with what I’d assembled in the essay, that there is indeed a great schism between conventional and unconventional electronic writing, and thus describing what might be considered the fundamentals of the form actually becomes quite difficult, particularly if you bring text generators into the mix. While some of us are ready for crazy syntax and almost any sort of liberated speech, I’m pretty sure most people are not really prepared to deal with it, especially in a place where there is—in literature, anyway—little in the way of an avant-garde presence. I start the lecture by pointing out that one’s expectation on electronic work has to be different from “creative writing” (fiction, poetry) as it has been put forth historically (the standards and qualities of electronic works are inherently different), which might help a bit, but I guess I fear that a lot of the materials I plan to present will be beyond comprehension. Personally, I see the cyborgian developments in writing as positive, as a range of new possibilities open up: among the great benefits of working with software or programs is that they are not rational and do not think, and thus are capable of doing things, like forming speech or treating an image, that a person isn’t likely come up with on her or his own. But the more I thought about it, the more difficult will be to reconcile what the work consists of (language, images, links), which anyone can understand, and how it often plays out on the screen. Good thing that I have a couple of weeks or so to figure out how to frame it further. The works I plan to show are all unusual and wonderful (Your Personal Poet, IO Sono at Swoons, Google Poetry Generator, Travesty, MacProse, Jim Andrews, Stefans, Kostelanetz, Beiguelman, deCampos, Rosenberg, Cayley) and it will be interesting to a.) learn what everyone here makes of it, and b.) if I can find a way to make it make sense to the previously uninitiated. Whereas the first lecture is to incoming students, this one is for second year students, so I can raise the bar a bit, I think, but how high??

Good news on the database front is that George Taylor, my php collaborator, has got a new version of the cybertext (interactive) version of “Moby-Dick” functioning on the web now, although the whole piece has yet to be re-constructed. When it is, we’ll let the world know, of course.

To the weekend: will finish up the travel blog entry on Melaka, have some family down time, and have a Chinese New Year visit with some new friends in Petaling Jaya on Sunday...

2006-02-09T05:35:00.000-08:00

As I was driving onto campus this morning after dropping Stella off at her bus and working out, I noticed a sign posted at the MMU entrance that announced that Abdullah bin Laden, head of the Saudi bin Laden group would be visiting campus today. No surprise that this would catch my eye, right? This is the half-brother of Osama (who also has 55 other siblings, btw), and the guy that recently gave Harvard 2 million dollars to bolster their Islamic studies department. So, keeping good company we are here.

Finished up the essay I was working on yesterday, then programmed the lecture interface, which is now up at http://web.njit.edu/~funkhous/mmu/1, which may be changed a bit but that's the gist of it. The best thing I discovered while gathering materials was a site a programmer had put together for Cage’s Indeterminacy, which is at http://www.lcdf.org/indeterminacy/. Also visited with some other (semi-nostalgic) pages that you can look at too if you go to the lecture page. Began to put together (via outline and free writing) the next lecture, on the 27th, titled “Electronic Creative Writing,” which will probably be a little more interesting in terms of content (although the first gig will introduce completely unknown materials to the students and will thus be valuable). A web search on the topic mainly brought forth some Australian sites for a (largely hypertext) course that’s being taught there, as well as (I think) a journal with that name. Most of the other hits were for electronic creative writing _portfolios_ for creative writing classes (i.e., students post their page-based work on a website). Anyway, to me there’s a lot more to the subject than hypertext. The first types of digital writing ever developed were algorithmically based: programs that were written that used various procedures to automatically produce writing. Such practices certainly continue today. This has to be viewed as a form of ECW. Graphically based visual poems and other sorts of writings that are produced using software certainly should be considered a form of ECW, as should animated works that include language in motion. How could this not be a type of writing, even if it is videographic? I’ll show demonstrate some programs, some vispo, and so on (as well as discussing hypertext). The more d-iffy-cult area that I’ll delve into is “writing” that does not include language (i.e., André Vallias, Maria Mencia, Giselle Beiguelman). One strategy that can be used to argue for this possibility is that writing code is writing!

Not much else to report. After lunching together, Sau Bin showed me a huge book about the Vienna school, which was mostly filled with concrete poetry; the thing was so heavy I could barely lift it!

Big monsoon storm practically eliminated outdoor visibility in the late afternoon.

I’ll leave off with a piece of Electronic Creative Writing I made yesterday, a poem about Paris Hilton, of all people:

Ticket

These while
from story there
Ticket go
saw must.

Let all
also Ticket
there did
under could
write live.

While but
like good
Ticket man
round her...