Web Cinema

After watching/reading/experiencing Boulevard by Peter Horvath, I wondered how it was much different than a movie trailer. Then I thought, how many movie trailers have I seen that have three screens and poetry? Probably zero, but the piece does have a trailer like feeling which turned me off at first because I wanted to see cinema done in way I had never seen it done before. As I experienced more and more of his work, each piece seemed to enrich and build upon the previous ones; therefore Horvath’s work seems to work better for me when analyzed in context as a group as opposed to individually.

Although Horvath’s work is very visually driven, I was interested in his use of sounds in his projects. The mood is quickly set, if not dictated by music in pieces like Boulevard, Tenderly Yours and Unexpected Launching of Heavy Objects. In Boulevard and Tenderly Yours the music and voice overs are slow, sad and reflective whereas the music in Unexpected Launching of Heavy Objects is first triumphant then eerie. By itself, the music in Unexpected Launching of Heavy Objects would almost be happy and upbeat, but grouped with the images of war and destruction, the tone moves quickly from happy to frightening and sad. The soundtrack of Boulevard and Tenderly Yours on the other hand, fit perfectly with the images of isolated, confused and sad individuals lost in an isolated, confused and sad world. The text and voice over in these two pieces appear in incredibly strategic moments to not only assist in telling the story but to be apart of the story as well. For example, in Tenderly Yours the womans's voice disappears when the woman disappears.

Text in Triptych: Motion Stillness Resistance appears in the title while also acting as labels for the different looping video panels. Unless text appears in one of the semi-randomly generated videos, this is the only text that appears in the piece. It is enough however, to draw attention to how similar motion, stillness and resistance are to each other. In motion there is stillness, in stillness there is motion and in resistance there is stillness and motion, usually in conflict. This piece also uses video and text to expose the arbitrary nature of labels. Had he chosen something like: Nature, Culture and Society, I probably could have made an argument about how these made sense as well. At first I did not see the point in the random and endless looping of the video, but now I see it as relating to this idea of arbitrary labeling in relation to understanding the world.

As far as the other artists go, I had seen the work of YHChang before so I didn’t want to spend too much time talking about it. Unfortunately, the more I see of her work, the less I enjoy it. Mostly because much of the pleasure of Chang's work is derived from the element of surprise. The first time I saw Dakota, I thought the pacing and strange way not every word could not be quite read, was exciting and interesting. Also exciting and interesting were the words themselves, as they are often racy and as unexpected as the motion of the work. Then after seeing the same technique over and over in every piece, it gets less and less interesting. So in a way I see Chang’s collective works to function in the opposite way as Horvath’s collective works.

I will continue my search for additional web cinema this week and post them here as I find them.

I Want It All

In David Streitfeld's Bargain Hunting for Books, and Feeling Sheepish About It, the saddest moment for me was the moment when he described one of my favorite places, Powell’s Bookstore in Portland, OR as an example of an entity that has been negatively impacted by the changing habits of book buyers. I love books. Physical, paper books. But I also believe that technology and the screen not only provide readers with exciting changes in how they can access books but to writers for creating new ones as well.

So as I read these articles I struggled to figure out how I should best resolve this kind of contradiction. I came to the obvious conclusion: I want it all. I want to get my news for free without having to worry about how the journalists and photographers are paid (for example the article linked up above), I want free access to music whenever I want on IMEEM, download songs for free on BitTorrent, to sell my books online, save money on text books, watch Family Guy, Arrested Development and The Office for free and when I want on Hulu and I want Boulder Bookstore, Powell’s, Bart’s CD Cellar and The Video Station to all stay in business.

Is it possible that some of the problems with having infinite choices is that a) we really believe it and b) we have a constant and misguided sense of entitlement to it? When (and I say when because I think this is inevitable) most physical stores go out of business, making way for more and more online markets, some of our choices as to where we can buy music, movies and books are taken away. Maybe the very reason why I find online media access so appealing (the infinite choices, or at least the illusion of such) is the same reason why I don’t want Powell’s to go under. I am so used to getting everything I want that it is unfathomable, unfair and frustrating that a choice could just be taken away from me. I, like David Streitfeld seems to be, am upset that physical marketspace is disappearing but don't for example want to give up my emusic account. The internet has spoiled us. With every dollar, we as consumers cast our vote for where we think goods and art should be purchased, so why can't we just get behind those votes?

What Anderson seems to be getting at in his intro of Long Tail is that art’s move to the online market is giving more choice to the consumer in what they are exposed to and experience as opposed to when there were only six channels and a handful of records. But what about having the choice between browsing, the physical experience of discovering an aura filled object and downloading code that is projected as Ulysses on your Kindle ? There is a clear distinction between physically browsing the ballroom of Boulder Bookstore or the blue room in Powell’s and clicking through titles on amazon. There is something so wonderfully human about physically browsing books, records and movies and I still want that to be available to me; but until I use my votes ($) in the physical world I think I would be selfish and unrealistic to think that I can have something that I only support in theory.

P.S. Ok so I am at work right now and our tech guy just showed me this cartoon on book technology on this gaming site that I thought I would share: Progress

Digital Poetry: Is it good or just a good idea?

Before I really begin my analysis of Stephanie Strickland's 1997 talk, Poetry in the Electronic Environment, I have to admit that there are very few digital poems that I have come across and have actually enjoyed. I know that it is for this reason that I am so fascinated with digital poetics-I see it as an exciting new challenge for writing. Granted, I have only been exposed to a limited amount of digital poems so I am speaking from a humble and somewhat inexperienced standpoint. Either way, I feel I have read/experienced enough digital poems to have formed an opinion and here are some examples of digital poems I am convinced by, or enjoy: Dakota by Young-hae Chang, Dim O'Gauble by Andy Campbell (and other poems on New River) and Lollipop Noose/Hangman (below) by Todd Seabrook.

I suppose I should define what I mean by 'enjoy' and 'convinced'. When I enjoy a poem, or any work of art it is because the work evokes a strong emotional response from me. By convinced I mean more of my intellectual response to the piece. In other words, if there is a small or absent emotional response to the work, I would like there to be an interesting conceptual aspect to it that stimulates me intellectually. Maybe I am a reader response critic when it comes to digital poetics...

In Dakota, I enjoy the pacing of the poem, the simple but strong visual impact that the music and motion that text makes and the lack of reader control. At the same time, I think the writing is the weakest aspect of the poem. In what other form of poetry or writing is it ever true that a reader can say the writing is weak but that the piece is still strong? This is where my dilemma, or my conflict with digital poetics lies. I guess this is why I constantly fight the urge to call digital poems, digital poems. They aren't just poems because poems are words and paper. Digital poems as Strickland details in Poetry in the Electronic Environment have the potential to be much more than that. She seems to take the stand that this is better and in one sense I agree with her but on the other hand, I don't. I agree that digitizing writing carries the potential for creating an intersection between art and text and even text and text that was not possible with just the page, which ultimately can be seen as 'better' than the page. At the same time, I have rarely seen a digital poem that contains writing that is as interesting as the piece is conceptually or technologically. Strickland says in her discussion of hypertext and poetry (keep in mind this was spoken in 1997):

"In general, I think one could say about contemporary hypertext poetry that radical innovation does not reside at the level of the alphabetic text, with the major exception of authors who are themselves programmers. For those using off-the-shelf products, the changes reside in how to structure and divide text and how to accommodate the powerful set of co-players the text has acquired, that make for on-screen reading experiences both more radically individual and more adventurous than page-reading."

It is the last sentence here that really interests me because she slips in that digitizing poetry can make reading more adventurous and radically individual. The potential for the adventurous and individual qualities of interactive textual art is definitely there, I will give her that. The question that keeps badgering me however is, is that what readers of 'poetry' are looking for? What are readers of poetry seeking? Are we interested in the mere idea of a digital poetic more than the actual works themselves? As a poet and a reader of poetry, to oversimplify, I am drawn to poems whose words are sonically pleasing, intellectually challenging and semantically interesting at the same time. I hold the same standards to digital poetics and maybe it is my ideas about this new art form that need to change in order to appreciate it more or perhaps, it is the art itself that needs to come a little further and better realize its full potential.