Monday, September 29, 2008
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Concrete? Poetry?
Concrete Poetry, the term, seems to me to be a fallacy. So many of the examples viewed for this class have nothing in common with both prior styles and other pieces in the Concrete Movement that it seems to me that grouping together these pieces and calling them "Concrete" is simply being done to make an easy classification. An analogy would be: you know what dogs are, and come upon critters that aren't dogs, and no matter what manner of critter they actually are, be they deer or birds or fish, you call them cats, because they are strange to you and you choose to name them easily. What have wooden instruments that resemble books to do with posters that refer to a circus, or eyes stacked upon each other? Nada, (two of them don't even seem to use words!) except they are not in any earlier existing style, so they are grouped together.
Something that gripped me was that in Macinaus' work he says poetry must be taken back from Europeans and made so that it is grasped by all, not just dilettantes, critics, and professionals, but does it in a way that isn't very appealing to laymen- classic do as I say, NOT as I do. It seems that the pieces grouped in the Concrete school are so subjective that not only are they NOT easily grasped, but have so many ways of being interpreted that they would serve more to divide than to unite two or more people. (Maybe unite them in a debate/argument over what the "true" meaning is.)
Phooey on Young-The bookforms are not new, nor are they revolutionary. People use one thing as another all the time. And how is this POETRY!!!! AAAAHHHH!!!
Cockburn and Finlay had some good points. It is true that while Concrete poems aren't meant to be in books, that is where they are most often encountered, and that while many terms that refer to poems deal with the spoken word, most poems are read, and Concrete poems certainly seem to be predominantly visual in style (at least the ones I've seen).
No good reasons are given for experimenting with the shape of texts, just subjective judgments upon those that did. How about this: "Do it if you feel like it, and think you can achieve your aims that way." There, that took me sixteen words.
Like Finaly and Cockburn, I think poets must come to terms with evolving technology, just like early man did when he figured out language, how to make music, to make instruments, to put the two together, to elaborate upon other's tales, to write em' down, in words and or pictures, to use printing presses or typewriters or whatever. Tech changes. Its nothing new. What we can do with computers really isn't even that new (pop-up books, 3D art, kaleidoscopes, anyone?).
What's new about computers is that they make animating and sharing our ideas easier than it has been before, just like an organized mail service, roads, the telegram, and radio did in the past. But we are still primarilly reading words that have been printed.
Something that gripped me was that in Macinaus' work he says poetry must be taken back from Europeans and made so that it is grasped by all, not just dilettantes, critics, and professionals, but does it in a way that isn't very appealing to laymen- classic do as I say, NOT as I do. It seems that the pieces grouped in the Concrete school are so subjective that not only are they NOT easily grasped, but have so many ways of being interpreted that they would serve more to divide than to unite two or more people. (Maybe unite them in a debate/argument over what the "true" meaning is.)
Phooey on Young-The bookforms are not new, nor are they revolutionary. People use one thing as another all the time. And how is this POETRY!!!! AAAAHHHH!!!
Cockburn and Finlay had some good points. It is true that while Concrete poems aren't meant to be in books, that is where they are most often encountered, and that while many terms that refer to poems deal with the spoken word, most poems are read, and Concrete poems certainly seem to be predominantly visual in style (at least the ones I've seen).
No good reasons are given for experimenting with the shape of texts, just subjective judgments upon those that did. How about this: "Do it if you feel like it, and think you can achieve your aims that way." There, that took me sixteen words.
Like Finaly and Cockburn, I think poets must come to terms with evolving technology, just like early man did when he figured out language, how to make music, to make instruments, to put the two together, to elaborate upon other's tales, to write em' down, in words and or pictures, to use printing presses or typewriters or whatever. Tech changes. Its nothing new. What we can do with computers really isn't even that new (pop-up books, 3D art, kaleidoscopes, anyone?).
What's new about computers is that they make animating and sharing our ideas easier than it has been before, just like an organized mail service, roads, the telegram, and radio did in the past. But we are still primarilly reading words that have been printed.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Poetry is anything that somebody says it is. It is often thought to have rythm and high-reaching aims, but really anything can be poetry. Bombs falling above your head can be an awful poetry. Structures are said to have a poetry to them. Raindrops falling can be poetic to some. Ballet dancers are said to move like poetry in motion. Now we can animate words and letters to the point that they become symbols whose shapes are manipulated to achieve a stylistic goal. If somebody says it is poetry, fine, cool. I think that the word is too broad to have any useful meaning, unless you specify a type or style or poet. To me, the word "poetry" has as much concrete, desciptive value as the words "big", "bad", and "blue". Without specific context and many more qualifiers, it is too subjective a term to really accomplish much.
But it still conjures a specific sensation/idea in my head. Go figure.
Why do people make poetry? Out of words? Out of dancing? Stone? Nature? Nothing? The word poetry is just a name we have given to an incredibly broad set of individual qualifiers. We create a poetry out of Nature's raindrops ourselves, and the melodic verse you hear while they fall may just be pissing on my parade.
But it still conjures a specific sensation/idea in my head. Go figure.
Why do people make poetry? Out of words? Out of dancing? Stone? Nature? Nothing? The word poetry is just a name we have given to an incredibly broad set of individual qualifiers. We create a poetry out of Nature's raindrops ourselves, and the melodic verse you hear while they fall may just be pissing on my parade.
Monday, September 22, 2008
My word idea.
Here's my idea for my next project, and if anyone copies or steals it, then you will get what you deserve (literally and figuratively):(
I'd like to have the word "PERCEIVE" gradually grow distinct from a cluttered background. I'd like to have the letters be the same color as the background, or close to it, and have some of them more distinct than others and scattered on the vertical axis. There will also be other random shapes that obscure and clutter the area. As the letters of the word begin to be visible ( a process which ideally will involve color and minor shape change) the background will fade away, until the word is in stark relief. Then I'd like to have the letters come together on line and change color again. I dunno about that last part for sure. Maybe it will be a pain in the neck to execute, and I'll end up just doing the word "SEE".
I'd like to have the word "PERCEIVE" gradually grow distinct from a cluttered background. I'd like to have the letters be the same color as the background, or close to it, and have some of them more distinct than others and scattered on the vertical axis. There will also be other random shapes that obscure and clutter the area. As the letters of the word begin to be visible ( a process which ideally will involve color and minor shape change) the background will fade away, until the word is in stark relief. Then I'd like to have the letters come together on line and change color again. I dunno about that last part for sure. Maybe it will be a pain in the neck to execute, and I'll end up just doing the word "SEE".
When I am with a crazy poem presented in a crazy manner...
... I have to bust out a paper and pen to make sense of it all.
OK, that above statement will make more sense once (or if) you read "When She is With I" written by Gregory Betts and illustrated/animated by Toke Nygaard, from the 1999 "issue" of Born Magazine. I suggest you go there and read it. (Please, it will make my job here sooo very much easier. No? Phooey! All right then.)
Note: I got a very concrete idea as a result of reading this piece, and write about it accordingly. View it for yourself, and it is quite possible that you will think of an entirely different interpretation.
The artists of this piece try to communicate the experience of existing in a large metropolitan area. The piece overpowers you while it obscures you view of the text, and by doing so confuses your sense of vision and your cognitive abilities at the same time. The artists want the viewer (as you are more than "just" a reader here) to labor to understand their vision of the world, just as they labor to see it and make us realize it. To this end they employ two strategies- on a white screen black text wavers and shakes, and is also covered by a black cloud that covers differing portions of the screen at different times, sometimes revealing all for a fleeting moment. Obviously, if one is to glean the words from under the blackness and shuddering, more effort is required than if the text sat there in Times New Roman on a static page. By confusing the senses the artists engage the viewer to delegate more resources such as time, attention, and concentration in order to understand, or even perceive, the piece in its entirety.
I think that the text and the animation work together in two different but reinforcing ways. First, the text refers to a journey of some sort through an urban landscape, with "time-scraped bridges", "human cave(s)", "light", and "glass", a place, "Where night means nothing, is just the same." When the words refer to the character making drums from bones ( of the city) while "talk-walk"ing "above human caves", in place full of light, so much so the might is as day, I take the text literally and see someone alone trudging through Time Square as the Metro Line chugs along underfoot. The clouds and shaking text are representations on two separate levels. First, the clouds are the crowds in the way of our character's progress through the city, and the shaking text is the hustle and bustle and the shaking of the streets themselves by traffic on and below them. Second, both the black cloud and the shuddering text demonstrate that this view/idea of city life is sometimes evident and sometimes buried beneath the level of conscious perception. The character in the work does not always think of the city in this way. Sometimes he/she just makes their way and is concerned with other matters.
I found myself struggling to make out the words themselves, shelving the "meaning" of the dark fog that interposed itself between my mind and the text until after I had the words transposed onto paper. I realized the function of the cloud and shuddering text right away, as I had trouble reading immediately. But I didn't understand the significance or purpose of these animations until I was able to read the text in another medium, namely on paper, grid paper at that, and then consider the text, animation, and my reaction to the whole affair. In a "gallery" without paper or motivation (in this case, the need to understand something well enough to spout off 500-750 words) I doubt that I would have made the effort to perceive the piece in tis entirety, which I think would be OK with the artists- the city don't care if you know what's going on, or who designed which building- it exists all the same.
OK, that above statement will make more sense once (or if) you read "When She is With I" written by Gregory Betts and illustrated/animated by Toke Nygaard, from the 1999 "issue" of Born Magazine. I suggest you go there and read it. (Please, it will make my job here sooo very much easier. No? Phooey! All right then.)
Note: I got a very concrete idea as a result of reading this piece, and write about it accordingly. View it for yourself, and it is quite possible that you will think of an entirely different interpretation.
The artists of this piece try to communicate the experience of existing in a large metropolitan area. The piece overpowers you while it obscures you view of the text, and by doing so confuses your sense of vision and your cognitive abilities at the same time. The artists want the viewer (as you are more than "just" a reader here) to labor to understand their vision of the world, just as they labor to see it and make us realize it. To this end they employ two strategies- on a white screen black text wavers and shakes, and is also covered by a black cloud that covers differing portions of the screen at different times, sometimes revealing all for a fleeting moment. Obviously, if one is to glean the words from under the blackness and shuddering, more effort is required than if the text sat there in Times New Roman on a static page. By confusing the senses the artists engage the viewer to delegate more resources such as time, attention, and concentration in order to understand, or even perceive, the piece in its entirety.
I think that the text and the animation work together in two different but reinforcing ways. First, the text refers to a journey of some sort through an urban landscape, with "time-scraped bridges", "human cave(s)", "light", and "glass", a place, "Where night means nothing, is just the same." When the words refer to the character making drums from bones ( of the city) while "talk-walk"ing "above human caves", in place full of light, so much so the might is as day, I take the text literally and see someone alone trudging through Time Square as the Metro Line chugs along underfoot. The clouds and shaking text are representations on two separate levels. First, the clouds are the crowds in the way of our character's progress through the city, and the shaking text is the hustle and bustle and the shaking of the streets themselves by traffic on and below them. Second, both the black cloud and the shuddering text demonstrate that this view/idea of city life is sometimes evident and sometimes buried beneath the level of conscious perception. The character in the work does not always think of the city in this way. Sometimes he/she just makes their way and is concerned with other matters.
I found myself struggling to make out the words themselves, shelving the "meaning" of the dark fog that interposed itself between my mind and the text until after I had the words transposed onto paper. I realized the function of the cloud and shuddering text right away, as I had trouble reading immediately. But I didn't understand the significance or purpose of these animations until I was able to read the text in another medium, namely on paper, grid paper at that, and then consider the text, animation, and my reaction to the whole affair. In a "gallery" without paper or motivation (in this case, the need to understand something well enough to spout off 500-750 words) I doubt that I would have made the effort to perceive the piece in tis entirety, which I think would be OK with the artists- the city don't care if you know what's going on, or who designed which building- it exists all the same.
Excruciating Diarrhea of the Pen - or - Damn, that was hard to read, both for my eyes, and for my mind.
Aragañaraz, Aragao, and de Campos seem to be, umm, terrible writers. I'm not saying I'm any good, either, but as I tried to grasp the concepts they were elaborating upon, I couldn't help but want, then need, then SCREAM for: an example of this style of writing or struggle that they referred to so often. Duh! After reading Aragao's statement that words and images are, “transfigured by their interaction until they from an ambiguous and enigmatic communication, which rearranges art,” I couldn't help but think, "YOU didn't even need images, beyond the text on my screen, to make your whole article ambiguous, you asshole." (This guy got under my skin. It was like he was trying to be ironic and show that text all by its lonesome can confuse and cause difficulty when one is trying to figure out what is truly being said in a work.)
These guys believe that writers should experimentt with art to either use a "new" medium to create a "new" art (Aragao, as if the TV isn't just a play whose stage is our living room, or thge internet isn't just a quicker form of pen-pals or bulletin boards), or/and to reach people on an objective level and act as a voice of revolution (Argañaraz) or as a bastion against collectivism and subservience (de Campos).
They seem to be in agreement with Maso that the arts need to stir up the mind and cause action, which is okey-dokey, and agree that new forms that cast off the rules imposed by insitutionalized language and presentation are valuable.
*When de Campos writes communication may not be language's first function (!?), I almost quit right there, but I would have missed a gem that came soon after. "Poetic statements are no more actual statements than peaches in a still life are actual dessert." Brilliant, because you can't really feel a breeze that somebody is describing in a text you are reading, you only imagine it, and imagine it in a way unique to yourself, no matter how concrete and universal the poet has attempted to be. Later on I saw some serious hypocrisy/ failed logic in her article, though. She maintains that poetry is not utilitarian, but later says that poets are dikes against the degeneration of language. And while she writes that Concrete Poets stray outside the norms to demonstrate and defeat the limits and strictures imposed upon them by institutionalized language (and, therefore, institutionalized minds), by identifying their modus aparandi and attributing to it a function, name, and purpose, she transforms it into yet just another movement which will be subsumed, and become the norm.
These guys believe that writers should experimentt with art to either use a "new" medium to create a "new" art (Aragao, as if the TV isn't just a play whose stage is our living room, or thge internet isn't just a quicker form of pen-pals or bulletin boards), or/and to reach people on an objective level and act as a voice of revolution (Argañaraz) or as a bastion against collectivism and subservience (de Campos).
They seem to be in agreement with Maso that the arts need to stir up the mind and cause action, which is okey-dokey, and agree that new forms that cast off the rules imposed by insitutionalized language and presentation are valuable.
*When de Campos writes communication may not be language's first function (!?), I almost quit right there, but I would have missed a gem that came soon after. "Poetic statements are no more actual statements than peaches in a still life are actual dessert." Brilliant, because you can't really feel a breeze that somebody is describing in a text you are reading, you only imagine it, and imagine it in a way unique to yourself, no matter how concrete and universal the poet has attempted to be. Later on I saw some serious hypocrisy/ failed logic in her article, though. She maintains that poetry is not utilitarian, but later says that poets are dikes against the degeneration of language. And while she writes that Concrete Poets stray outside the norms to demonstrate and defeat the limits and strictures imposed upon them by institutionalized language (and, therefore, institutionalized minds), by identifying their modus aparandi and attributing to it a function, name, and purpose, she transforms it into yet just another movement which will be subsumed, and become the norm.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Monday, September 15, 2008
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
The Letter "L"
Ok, so it appears the the "L" has been around in some form or another since the dawn of phonetic writing, which is who knows when. According to the shape analysis, the capital letter is quite harmless because it consists of a right angle, which means it is objective and even tempered. I find it strange that according to these methods of analysis, the lower case "l" is more virile and aggressive than its upper case brother, and more powerful, as all it does is unite the Earth and Sky, but maybe it has a Napoleon complex or something. The "L" may have initially represented apprenticeship, education, science, but that all seems goofy to me. I guess that the Earth-Sky, human angle, virile stuff could represent man's attempt to explain the existence of himself, so that might work, but it all seems like trying to use phrenology on a unit of text- a big scam, like pet astrology or doll-house feng-shui.
In any event, my OWN research consisted in closing my eyes and letting the letter "L" inspire me, so here's what popped in my noggin': "lust, lick, luscious, lascivious, libido, lesbian, letter, leave." Ok, I guess that experiment proves I'm a man- I didn't think "lipstick" or "letch". Anyway, I'd like to have the words listed morph from one to another, with the "L" in upper case and in a different color from the other letters, but I believe that to be beyond my abilities. INstead, I'll have the letter "L" move around the screen in a clockwise motion, changing color and font, advancing, if you will, the "L" from archaic fonts to the modern ones. It's simple, but then so are my skills.
PS An "L" word that I associate with Minnesota- LOSERS sweet
In any event, my OWN research consisted in closing my eyes and letting the letter "L" inspire me, so here's what popped in my noggin': "lust, lick, luscious, lascivious, libido, lesbian, letter, leave." Ok, I guess that experiment proves I'm a man- I didn't think "lipstick" or "letch". Anyway, I'd like to have the words listed morph from one to another, with the "L" in upper case and in a different color from the other letters, but I believe that to be beyond my abilities. INstead, I'll have the letter "L" move around the screen in a clockwise motion, changing color and font, advancing, if you will, the "L" from archaic fonts to the modern ones. It's simple, but then so are my skills.
PS An "L" word that I associate with Minnesota- LOSERS sweet
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
(I hope I'm doing this right). The letter "L" and me.
The letter "L" inspires positive associations. There's: libidinous, like, lust, lick, love, loose, lull, linked, and, (at last) leave. I guess "limp" works in there, too. "L" isn't a bad letter to have to animate. A capital "L" would be the mode I'd choose to mess with, as in this font, and in many others, a lower case "l" looks like a "1" or a capital "I", or just a stupid line. A capital "L" could fly around the screen like a boomerang, or be made by two converging lines that fade away, only to leave the "L", or two "L"'s could act like legs. In a pinch, I suppose a lower case "l" could pierce a line and rise up, or a capital "L" could shrink and the lower bar could turn green and fall away. All in all, the "L" is luscious.
Umm, here goes...
I never thought of myself as being desperately lonely and terrifyingly angry enough to blog, but I guess the joke's on me.
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