This Week in Digital Thought

So we've been winding down the semester by being overly stressed and putting together a myriad of projects.

Myself, I am working on an emulation of the Japanese poet Kenji Myazawa as well as working on a video project with Mark and Tom.

We've, in the last week, seemed to establish something of a focus out of the seemingly random. I knew we could do it and I commend us for it. Said focus is on the transitory and displaced sense often found in digital work and modern life. Our footage, tied together with the text Mark and I have worked on reflect a sense of narrative with an acknowledged denial of it. I'm pretty sure that's the smart way of putting it.

As for this semester as a whole, I've had a pretty good time with this class and I think have learned a lot. Not only to keep working on as I continue in the digital medium but also something that I can put into my work on the page. I think it's interesting and I can already see it in my work, how an awareness of sound and visual art are beginning to take more of a presence in my work.

On that note, I might write a little more in a bit but I just took a bite of my lunch and realized they've slipped in chicken instead of tofu.

I'm going to go scrape my mouth out now. Please enjoy a selection from the legendary hit makers of the 1980's Hall and Oates

To go on, I believe that this class's purpose, for a writer, is to begin to view text not only as written but also as an image, an action, and as sound. It's helped me immensely and I look forward to further study within this digital realm. Also the concept of remixing is in direct correlation with my own work, as I base a lot of my revision and poems on cut up technique.

So, yeah, those are my thoughts. I look forward to the remix class and taking this medium past experimentation and into more serious implementation in my writing.

Kenny Loggins

Another Video Example

Also this. More than anything ever, this.

I've been confusing ambiguous and equvical for too long

So in working on the project I've been trying out a lot of different things either while moving and filming or just sitting the camera down and allowing it to pick up what it can.

This has lead to a juxtaposition between the transitory and the seemingly still and is somewhat of a focus for our project. We're exploring the concept of capturing movement, either as a result of moving or being still while other things are.

A lot of footage we shot yesterday was on the light rail in Denver. It reminded me quite a bit of this Michele Gondry video.

Also, I think a bit of the focus is in on the idea of allowing things to blend, equivocating various footage through text and through mash up and forcibly viewing them at the same time.

I guess the idea is to offer glimpses or suggestions of narrative while at the same time denying it's advance into the video itself. Ya dig?

By tying things together we are suggesting there is a relation but by focusing on the transitory nature of the train footage we are also suggesting the idea of movement without destination and without relation. I picture that, if this were written rather than filmed, the main character would be constantly aware of what it is to be human. "This is me riding a train, going to the grocery store, shitting in a public restroom even though I'm not entirely comfortable with the idea" and so on. What the film will suggest is that all of these things are equivocal. No one thing is different from the other because they are all human things. (Unfortunately Mark was uncomfortable with the idea of filming anyone using a public laboratory, prude, so that won't be in there. Here's another Michele Gondry film relating to such a topic. (To be truthful I never brought the idea up to Mark. I guess this makes me the (I'm making a square sign with my index fingers right now)))

Here's a video that kind of relates to that. I'm really interesting the idea of someone misinterpreting things, whether on purpose or through the eyes of someone, in a sense, socially autistic.

I've been trying to find examples of the things we're working on or that are influencing my thoughts and am having trouble. Along with the equivocating of things I also imagine we'll slowly begin mislabeling things and placing more and more juxtaposing images together.

I have this vision of the "speaker" of the video as being hyper aware of the relative nature of being. Kind of an Allen Watts type of deal. Here's a link to him talking about Moksha. Listen to it, as the video is kind of lame.

Also, David Byrne thinks like this. At least the voice in a lot of his songs does. Like, "Don't Worry About the Government." I see the video as the life through that guy's eyes, kind of. We still have two weeks to drastically change things around.

These are my thoughts.

I'm torn on whether I want to write about Y0UNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES or Peter Horvath.

I suppose I'll talk a little about both.

Peter's work is amazing, I really liked the way he utilized multiple windows to convey his message. Also, the idea of putting multiple windows with different film is pretty interesting. I guess it speaks to the modern attention span, that we can view multiple things at the same time. It makes me wonder if we can actually pay attention to that many things at the same time. I don't think I can. I just had to leave my living room to write this, as Fargo is playing and I was having difficulty writing while musing on Minnesotan accents.

The Heavy Industries work was pretty cool too. I was disappointing that they all follow the same concept. There really wasn't much difference in any of them. Dakota is the best one, both for story and music. The idea of having words projected is pretty interesting. It kind of brings to question their value. some words are skimmed over and others are really focused on. The story still comes across though, which is interesting because I thought that each word would be more necessary than it is in the end. Also, I wonder if this story could work as straight forward piece of pros or if the music and the projection are giving it more strength.

Also, this looks cool.

Both help motivate me to make some mediocre film. WHOOO!

Sure thing, Man. Or SURE THING MAN!

Side Note: Text in red was taken from, Dovetailing Details Fly Apart-All Over, Again, In Code, In Poetry, In Chreods. By Stephanie Strickland and Cynthia Lawson Jaramillo

For a traditional poet, there is a comparable need for awareness of historical, etymological, dialectical, regional, class-based, craft-based and musical aspects of speech and writing. Most poets begin with their mother tongue. Exceptions occur if they are natively multilingual like Gertrude Stein, or have chosen the language of their non-native home, like Beckett in French, or are writing in an ambivalently hated colonial tongue they aim to change from within, like Kamau Brathwaite or James Joyce. But a programmer chooses a language like a composer chooses instruments, for the things it does well or quickly, for its affordances, those fundamental properties that determine just how a thing could possibly be used. The code will only go as far as the programmer pushes it. Expert coders attain effects that artisan coders marvel at, not realizing until then that such work could be done in that particular coding language.

I completely agree with this. I further do not think pertains solely to the written be it in code or literature or art. Walking down the street there is an innate awareness in every human of the culmination of not only their history but of social history as a whole.

I do not agree with the idea of a programmer choosing a code like a composer chooses an instrument. I think that a composer chooses an instrument exactly like an author chooses a language, because of personal knowledge and desired effect. I don't think it relates to efficiency really.

This imperceptibility is referred to as 'transparence'. Interfaces called transparent allow us to interact/do what we're supposed to do without being aware of how the effects are obtained. We should perhaps speak instead about their opacity, given that we cannot see through them to the machine.

How does this relate to poetry? The idea that a reader does not see the length of time that has gone into a line but that they only see its end effect? I think that if a poem is written well, the length of time taken will come out, along with all else that went into it. In this way I do not see a correlation between poetry and code. There are many other places I do, but not here.

Though we have spoken, indeed, metaphorically of the 'life' of the program, it is not only metaphor. Mind enters world, not contained within skin, but as a circuit-loop feedback operation. [12] The living, and all living functions, are indissoluble from information-driven environmental loops which alone serve as units of survival. Animal mind, protected from 'real' impact by the physical world, negotiates its circuits by abstract, non-physically locatable, information.

Wow! I just think that's fucking amazing to think about. The idea that thoughts are not real until they are expressed. I would agree completely. The same exists with ideas not being real until they are tangible. It's all abstraction until it is able to be put into language or into code.

just man justices / just man just is, is

This just reminds me of something my friends and I do with the word "man." For example;
"That's a real drag, man." Or, "That-A-Real-DragMan!" Stoner speech can very easily be turned into really inventive super hero names.

As with poetry, syntax is not enough to keep code going. When code is compiled, it is read through by the compiler and checked mainly for syntax mistakes, but it is only in execution (the behavior, the running, the performance) that the programmer can tell if the code written is, indeed, accomplishing its intent. Only the original coder will be able to judge this, as the code may quite effectively be doing something else. It is the goal-oriented approach with which code is developed that ultimately drives a system of envisioning-thinking-writing-compiling-executing.

But Poetry does not always have a specific intent. It is sometimes an experimentation in interpretation or an experiment with multiple intents. The then layered notion of a programmed poem functioning it’s initial intent of looking correct (to the author on the screen) and it’s artistic intents of interpretation by an audience are two different things. Then again, how is this different from writing a poem with a desire for a certain aesthetic appeal? With line breaks in certain places or spaces in specific places. This can be difficult in a new interface or with a new program. For example, when I have tried to write poems in photoshop I don’t have as much success because I am not totally comfortable with the program and the code. I suppose this is the same I would feel trying to express my non-real creative intent in another environment such as painting for example. The same inert idea contained, for the author, in one medium may be impossible to display within another.

This is where translation, for example, fails.
El acento me pende del zapato;
Does not mean,
The accent dangles from my shoe;

Even here, in a very literal translation, intent is lost. Cultural reference is gone, as is language. Language choice, is intentional. To write within one code versus another is a choice based on the vernacular prowess of the author. This is also true within a language. While one might not contain the vocabulary of a Vallejo or Bulgokov or Leyner they can still completely express themselves. After all expression is done so with language and its manipulation. The extent of one’s expression is the extent of one’s ability to understand and manipulate the languages and tools at their disposal at the level of their understanding.

If one cannot function within a language then they will have a hard time existing in it. They will lurk in their thoughts, in code, unable to display themselves as tangible, as an interactable user face. In the same way, “Animal mind, protected from 'real' impact by the physical world, negotiates its circuits by abstract, non-physically locatable, information.”

This is not to say that one will not physically exist, they will. Don’t worry. But without the ability to communicate and without the ability for an author or artist or programmer or advertiser to express what is inside then there is in an improvable sense the notion that there is nothing to express.

In the same way that a child cannot express themselves, becomes frustrated, gives up and throws a tantrum so do we trying to express our art within a new program, perhaps without the tantrum. It is even frustrating for someone to truly be themselves, say, at a new job or in a new setting. One must, not to sound to punny, learn the code of conduct and how they can function within it.

Where innovation occurs in this is with the ability to conquer new codes and languages and settings and circumstances and be able to not only thrive within them but be able to use these things to express that next step. That place that before such language used to produce it and to make it affable or real (not just a lingering notion within the unreal mind) did not exist such ideas could not be actualized.