Itch Away blog

kaput surprise squirm sing-along confessional

sequence bully

needy celebrities twist alpha

beats sanguineous nerve centre

pseudo-Springsteen

Another round of draft work with parallax effects (click on the image to open):

Resize the window to effect the effect.  I’m trying to work with phyisical aspects of web interaction, scrolling, resizing, etc. — I guess as some kind of parallel to the thought processes behind some bookart practices which explore the phyisicalities of the medium in non-trivial ways.  I’m obviously only at the start here - the example I’ve upped here needs tweaking (currently works best from very small, expanding slowly outwards) but gives me a pretty good idea on what changes I need to make in order to get a more effective interface working.  Next, expect, animated gifs in the mix.

and see Jeremy Bentham’s real head.

I’m not sure what you guys are drinking but I’ll have some pls, kthx.

I can’t go cuz I’m ill.

———-

The next Openned Night will take place on Wednesday 23rd July at 7.15pm in The Foundry, East London. Keep checking the site for updates.

Admission is always free.

Confirmed readers:

Sascha Akhtar
Sean Bonney
Frances Kruk
Scott Thurston
John Wilkinson
Others TBA

Occasionally, I am a government in which

fine print ignition idiot footsie

splutters above eyes

smells of dead ego preposition

pull the punitive festival

oil task force

indicative superporno

the money stinks

of structures and flesh

eat back

commodity deficits, metaphorical

loophole sexy enough for

office

forcing motorists

to jizz

so what you like

middle age destroys

the West

two mumbling ears

gearbox / totality / vinaceous / long-distance / harl / fag / written / organ / machinic / syntax / organs / spleened / in / sixths

[...T]here seems to be a necessary hope that pointing to language itself (particularly the language of war, media, and politics) is a first step toward action and change. But in what ways is that pointing poethical?¹

In this essay from Jacket 32 (part of the “Pressure to Experiment” feature from the issue), Osman weighs up differing approaches to realising formally procedurally composed texts, prompting questions of the aesthetic and formal (intrinsic to) social placement of poetic ‘found’ texts.

Cecilia Vicuña’s statement that

The media and the [political, social, and economic] powers have found a way to speak about democracy as if it were a given, something that is already here. That’s a substitution of reality. It represents a desire to see an image instead of what is real.²

is interesting given the differences of approach she has to Alfredo Jaar’s work:

I don’t see the point of utilizing the language of publicity to go against publicity. For me, his visual approach simply gets absorbed by the current system of knowledge. Shiny photos of pain do not question pain.³

I’m not so sure I agree entirely with this statement.  Jaar’s images present stark dichotomies with fairly easy-to-interpret implications as a result.  For want of a better word, there’s no ‘trick’ here, which could use absorption to point towards the substitutions of reality Vicuña has discussed.

Can formal and aesthetic contexts too be treated as ‘found’ material in the same way as textual material?  In addition to stripping context (Goldmsith’s ‘nude media’ approach) or creating overtly opposition formal situations, a tweaked kind of détournement comes to mind as another alternative, in which the passive consumption through the aesthetics of new-media-based texts might actually be advantageous when placed in tension with its content. A method of drawing one into the pointing.  Straightforward reactive statements, decontextualised / recontextualised news bytes are all very good, but how might certain levels of subtlety, inviting a culturally specified form of reading, be more effective precisely through a level of formal and implied textual transparency, a (largely false) return to a tradition, as a site for reinterpreting a text in a digital context where collage-based approaches to reading are common, and where one might point to the transparency from within transparency? I wonder how this might too constitute a poethic approach.

1. Osman, Jena, “Is Poetry the News?: The Poethics of the Found Text,” paragraph 8, from Jacket, 32 (April 2007). http://jacketmagazine.com/32/p-osman.shtml (accessed 17 July 2008) [↩]
2. Ibid., paragraph 23 [↩]
3. Ibid., paragraph 27 [↩]

I just uploaded the new website for author Jewell Parker Rhodes, which I programmed.

http://www.jewellparkerrhodes.com

If you like it, why don’t you consider hiring me?

Ryman’s hypertext version of the novel is a very good example of cross-media writing in which one instantiation is more than a mere re-presentation of the other.  From the intro:

Do you sometimes wonder who the strangers around you are? This novel will give you the illusion that you can know. Indeed, it can make you feel omniscient, Godlike. This is a pleasurable sensation. But please remember that once you leave 253 , you are no longer Godlike. The author, of course, is.

Not forgetting to read the important announcement of which this is a part:

253 uses the miracle of information technology to ensure that you can follow the main themes and relationships that link the text. Without even having to remember who the characters are!

Excellent, sign me up.

Regular readers of the blog will know that I’m not exclusive to poetics when I consider hypertextual work. There is a lot of pretty irrelevant hypertext fiction out there — work which barely - if at all - makes use of the hyper of its text.  This work is a great example of somewhat complex narrative interactions, produced simply, which actually evoke interest through the text itself and seamlessly harness the simplest and most straightforward of web technologies to do the job.  This is no mean feat - it’s a gripe of mine and of the students I’ve taught in the past that while interesting on a basic conceptual level, many hypertext fictions simply don’t warrent their digital presentation.

With 253, I found myself addictively invading passenger’s thoughts, and feeling most satisfied when relationships with other passengers - internal or external - manifested themselves (take a look at the interaction between passengers 20 and 21, for example.  Trying out surrounding passengers for their take on the exchange, we find that passenger 18 - directly opposite - has links to two other sections of the carriage, etc. etc.).

Fundraising Event for Royal Holloway Theatre’s Edinburgh Fringe
production of Darning Jilly by Aerin Davidson (see details below)

Poetry spoken by Marianne Morris & Frances Kruk
Books on sale
Visuals from Kristen Kreider
Films from Sophie Robinson
Riot Grrrl Disco to follow
& other as yet undisclosed wonders from the world of female artistry

The Downstairs Room @ The Betsey Trotwood
Friday 11th July
£5 entry

Royal Holloway Theatre presents ‘Darning Jilly’ by Aerin Davidson
Directed by Sophie Robinson & Thomas Pinhorn

Darning Jilly: A young London woman has committed a series of brutal
murders. She must prove herself not to be the monster the world makes
her out to be. A dark and surreal modern reworking of ‘Jack the
Ripper’, incorporating multimedia, physical theatre and poetry.

http://www.darningjilly.blogspot.com/

LONDON PREVIEW
Sunday 20th July
7:30pm - 9:00pm
The Chisenhale Dance Space
64-84 Chisenhale Road
London, United Kingdom
Tickets £5, purchased through the box office (0208 9816617) or on the
door.

EDINBURGH FRINGE:
30th July - 25th August
2.30pm
Venue 348
SoCo Building
Chambers Street
Edinburgh