If I were to lack a sense of humor, I could say that when looking at machine poetry, we must be willing to be McLuhan cool. There has to be a certain measure of willingness for a bot to produce a random number of results. I’m with Scarletwritings; it’s hilarious to think that a machine or a technology therein, could write a poem. Nevertheless, I must confess, I’ve always enjoyed poetry with rhyme. Pentametrons are cool because of the rhyming couplets. However, when the machine makes poetry that you partly create, even accidentally, you are stuck with its changes. I am not a fan of a computer telling me what to do. However, machines interact with my/our papers all the time. If we type something incorrectly, it lets us know. Similarly, when we do not know which word to choose or substitute, we consult a thesaurus. The computer found other words for me. So it is with closed bots and green bots on Twitter (Writing Moves) and the structure of contraintes, or constraints, or strictures. Mr. Walter’s lecture on The Oulipo explained these terms thoroughly and clearly. What is fascinating is that this word is constraint, or a restriction, as if it were a limit. When we look for “potential literature”, there is both a limitation and a freedom that occur simultaneously (Ramsay, 18). N + 7 was rather liberating but a frustrating experience for me when I created variations from my poem and also a rewrite of Damon the Mower, titled, Damon the Moaner. Ones who generate these prompts and are partly dependent upon them do so to look for other meanings– or to move away from them (Lecture). This is expansive. However, you have to accept what the computer gives. One is limited in this way. My Blog, I want you to know, and anyone else, it’s going to take awhile for me to wrap my head around it, right?! What is also fascinating with N + 7 is by limiting the poetry to various nouns or verbs that could be used as nouns, structure, pattern and form all emerge aesthetically. For me, I’m still a meaning pants. I need to discover value and purpose in my writing. If it’s accidental, that’s okay.
Participation Three, Week Twelve: You-phoria
As we have studied digital literature and media from various angles- either critical, creative or threither- critical-creative. One things clear- from I.F. and combinatory poetry to N + 7 and textual intervention and interpretation- WE/YOU manipulate the data. McLuhan is clear- the car is connected with the road and its purposes. We create environments for media to manipulate (marshallmcluhan.com/sayings/mediumisthemessage/1974) . When we say data is manipulated, the computer only generates what we/YOU give it. In this sense, the computer is also being manipulated. I got a YOUphoric feeling when I was about to write what Mr. Walter noticed about Ramsay in Reading Machines: “…we will have understood computer-based criticism what it has always been- human-based criticism with computers. Digital humanities, Ramsay notes, is about what is in our toolbox. Nevertheless, the computer is limited to what we install (84). Digital media does create a chasm between print media in the fact that it builds. While words can be rearranged, digital media DOES something in the interaction. The creators of digital ACTS, such as the separation of words into codified XMLs or GISes (84). The creator, though, is already interacting with the generated response FROM the input we/YOU gave it. When I finally made strides with Scalar the Unscalable, I was able to move, shift, turn things into desired directions. I was becoming involved so YOU could too.
Participation Post Two, Week Twelve: Patacomps, Patacomps
When reviewing the experimental analysis of the machine with a human systematic format, I am struck by the arbitrary nature of the algorithmic process. Are we looking for alternative patterns or incongruency? It would seem that deconstruction principles wish to destroy the obvious. And yet the binary as a potential equal to the dominant theme equally validates the dominant theme. In other words, there is a detectible pattern there. Once again, culture and subculture play their parts and literature is divided according to cultural, social and political constructs. That’s what Ramsay seems to suggest when he observes the difficulty of discovering passages of “sentimentality” (79). And, therefore, the remaining problem remains two sided. There is a critical aspect to such experimentation, because a systematic approach can be discovered in new ways. This is also it’s limitation. Deconstruction looks for patterns, and is therefore equally as limiting and the primary viewpoints. Hence, both are limited; both are valid. Ramsay brings out the valid portion of textual analysis. He notes, “pataphysics is the apotheosis of perspectivalism- a mode, not of inquiry, but of being, which refuses to see the relativity of perspective as a barrier to knowledge” (21). However, critical theory, we must remember, is not incongruent with creative theory. Problems are linked to solutions.
Participation Post One: N + 7 + Somethin’ Else
Back when I was single in Columbia, there was a girl I was uncomfortably infatuated with and painfully shy toward. It was misery. When I heard the rumor that she was going back to a former boyfriend in her hometown through an unwanted liaison, I vented with a poem titled, Worm (for some reason). With my being new to N + 7, which means taking all nouns in a line of any excerpt and replacing it with the word seventh in the dictionary removed from it), as an experimental and creative but critical analysis endeavor, I decided to manipulate the poem’s first stanza. The original part says:
A worm, a queen, a king
You became a worm when I said,
“I must bury the queen.”
What do you want with a worm?
What do you want with a worm, O queen?
What do you want with a king?
I proceeded to examine not just N + 7 but also N +1 (through +15). Two patterns of interest arose. Problem number one was the variation of these words were rather repetitive. Hence words to replace, worm, king and queen were put in relation to the verbs and so on, rather repetitively. No matter what the words, the pattern still sounded like venting. With the relationship of this girl I flirted with and never could gain enough courage to ask out, I wounded up rather frustrated. And, I put so much energy in building my courage up that I unintentionally idolized her in my fears. Interestingly enough, a few words from N + 4 appeared as clear as a deconstructive ambiguity: “You became a worshipper when I became a question. What do you want with a worshipper? Marry the kinsman, you worshipper. What do you want with a question? Whoa! The question I have is, Is this a valid method? Does it work beyond experimentation and chance? I think the italicized portion answered some of this sophistry (sugar tea). The second interesting aspect was that some of the word choices were downright sexual (sounding). Consider N + 10: A wrapping, a quickie, a kit. You became a wrapping when I said, I must bury the quickie. Ramsay, in Reading Machines, talks about how the “deformative operation”, with treatments of Shakespeare, can become “fraught with ambiguity” (66). Therefore, other themes that emerge from Worm must be considered plausible. In my project concerning the poor, pitiful Damon the Mower (Damon the Moaner), the words to replace “how long the scythe his sorrow was” became, “how long the seaman, his soup was“. (N + 10). As we know, Damon is pining for his beloved, once again in a frustration. In my rewrite from the woman’s perspective, this is what was delivered!
Work Cited
http://www.spoonbill.org/n + 7. http://www.google.com. 14 Nov. 2014. Web.
Ramsay and the Sitting Psych.
In Stephen Ramsay’s Reading Machines, in discussion of “The Turning Text,” the author discusses the difficulty of discerning a computer from human interaction when there was a wall between the two. What was intriguing was the part from the Jewish college student asking advice of whether or not to continue to date the Gentile, irrespective of his father’s rejection. The experimenter answers, “My answer is yes” (61). In my mind, a human ansering, as opposed to a computer, makes all the difference in the world. However, the real question becomes, “Can a human or machine generate a depth of complexity based on a simple response?” Part of the experiment, it was stated, had a way of the person wrestling with the problem and stirring up other questions (61). I could not help but me reminded of my favorite (sarcasm) theory of decomposition. When the student was puzzled by a potentially generated answer (if I am understanding that properly), the student took the problem to another level (60-61). In decomposition, the dominant value sits down for awhile to bring in the other or opposite value. The student was expecting the entity on the other side of the wall no to the question of dating the nonJewish girl. (The dominant thinking might be, No.) The ‘machine’ produces the alternative answer (yes), and hence, surprising the questioner, causing him to reconsider and process it further. In this delay of what is expected, the alternative viewpoint is brought to the surface. I am never a fan of forcing the alternative on a person. However, when conducting a textual intervention of Damon the Mower, I am forced to consider other alternatives and perspectives. I am writing a combination of an N +7 with the woman’s perspective. The result, inevitably, will be intrigu9ing. Ha! The former word was a typo. I think it was somehow no mistake. This brings back week 9. One author discusses the critical creative analysis of manipulating texts methodically and systematically for such experimentation. The analysis, then, allows for the text to turn, as Ramsay would say (58). Ramsay quotes Garfinkel and says, “When answers are unsatisfying or incomplete, the subjects are willing to wait for later answers in order to decide the sense of previous ones” (61). The result is a McLuhan cooling. The simple answer, according to Ramsay, establishes complex thought processes (62). When I apply this to an N + 7, or take a poem and cocnsider it from another character’s angle, very clearly sets up an alternative view, but it is done so beyond experimentation (67). This is rather evident in the pastoral poems, where the beloved pines for the lover and moans for who is missing. The absence is equally as strong as presence. Doggone it, Derrida, leave me alone! For further reading, I recommend
http://0-eds.a.ebscohost.com.library.winthrop.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=19&sid=6e8cf80f-9085-4f17-842e-1e74e3d8cefa%40sessionmgr4002&hid=4205 . If this does not work, it is from Deranty, Jean-Philippe. “Adorno’s Other Son: Derrida and the Future of Critical Theory” from EbscoHost Academic Search Complete, under the subject of “deconstruction theory”.
Work Cited
Deranty, Jean-Philippe. “Adorno’s Other Son: Derrida and the Future of Critical Theory.” Social Semiotics 16.3 (Sept. 2006). EbscoHost Academic Search Complete. 13 Nov. 2014. Web.
Form and Function: Participation Post Three, Week Eleven
Twelve Blue is intriguing. I quickly understood it was not my task to understand it first. I give that to the birds, or is it Birds. Like the Birds Singing Other Birds’ Songs, it was an experience. It wasn’t till I clicked on all eight sequences, or strands, I was also supposed to click on the strands. However, toward the end, in eight, the directions to 9 were alternative possibilities. This reminded me quite a bit about Forking Paths and the interactive stories, where we determine, in sorts, the outcome. And when I highlighted the blue line on the blue screen, it was as though I was shining a fashlight in the dark and reading under a sleeping bag. Therefore, over the course of this very busy semester, I have come to appreciate the form of good art from an usual story. A good storyteller will tell a good story by the way in which the story is told. Such is the case with Twelve Blue. What are your thoughts?
Participation Post One, Week 11: The Dialog of Analog and Digital
We are making process with purposeful technology. I would not necessarily call N. Katherine Hayles an interesting ‘read,’ as the pivotal term. However, she terms digital media along simple yet meaningful terms. For example, on page 45 of Electronic Literature, she defines today’s literature as “computational”. That part is simple and helpful information. She continues to explain the complex relationship between digital and analog methods. The reason that digital literature is better than simply analog is how the digital and analog compute or combine efforts to produce digital media, liking it to DNA and molecules (46). To me, Hayles is not difficult reading due to big words. Rather, she is difficult because she explains the how of the how it works. Hayles causes the reader to slow down and look beneath the computerized hood and show the complex intricacies (the mechanization) of how it works. However, there is the why component that is so vital to our understanding this. In her explanation of how this works, I can see how this is the second wave of rapid compositional reproduction. In McLuhan’s The Mediumi is the Massage, the noses and the planes, and the ditto words repeated all serve as the static demand of books. Here, though, digital composition allows the writer and the reader many more options to broaden the educational experience, for pedagogical or entertainment motives. In so doing, Hayles has amazingly demonstrated that the how affects the why, reminding me that writers who utilize digital media are not primarily doing so to show off their cool toys- cool, in terms of McLuhan-like participation. We must remember our roots. As is explained in her analysis of Twelve Blue, there is always a starting point. The first automobiles “were seen as horseless carriages” (60). Remember the Industrial Revolution. The printing press was created in conjunction with the railroad, all because readers wanted to read gifted writers and hot, McLuhan hot, propaganda magazines. The below video explains this tight connection. It is the crux of my Scalar project. Now, having said that, I am a wee bit giddy about adding an image and a link. Ha!
http://marshallmcluhanspeaks.com/sayings/1974-the-medium-is-the-message.php
De-cisio-sition! Week Eleven Personal Post
With digital composition, which seems like a fine umbrella term, is described as an “arsenal,” coming from the mixed metaphors of dockyards and toolboxes (para. 39-40). There seem to be three camps: one who says that arsenal is an appropriate term; those like Mr. Walter who do not like the word (Lecture on Price, para. 3), ; and the third camp- those who are dumbfounded that in all our epistemology that we have not yet determined what an appropriate word for it is. I fall into this third party. However, my house is made of glass. I don’t have a better word for it either. However, having said that, I thoroughly enjoyed the essay. Through this terminology, I run the risk of not sounding professional and having a little fun with these terms. In-sition- a cutting into a text, a popular, classic work, such as Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, to see if it is done enough. If it is a bit raw or rough edged, we’ll exclude it from his main body of most popular works (Price, paras. 4, 10-11). Pre-sition – running the text through a cultural or subcultural filter before our accepting it, to see if it can acceptably be remade to our taste, and thus, to see if it is accurate enough. And the last term, de-cisio-sition– The choice of taking the original author away of any say in the matter of a final edition! (aka, translation) I am making light of the situation. Hoeever, as one who came from an Anthropology background, and having spent time overseas, it was fascinating to see the different versions of Leaves of Grass, particularly the Hispanophone version of the translation. We used to say, “If you want to know the culture, know the language.” This holds true in a certain aspect of a line or two in Leaves. However, I was intrigued to hear about the difference of meaning with certain words from other cultures (Price paras. 10-34-37). Connections can be made in the Paraguyan interpretation and translation of just a few lines, dealing with church, women and slavery- sensitive areas in American culture. Price is quick to pounce, and rightfully so, from an American perspective. However, when judgments fall with textual interpretation across cultures, they likewise fall across cultural lines– not universal boundaries or values. Hence, the question is not a moral one exclusively, but also one of cultural determinism. Hence, I beg the question, perhaps without fully grasping the idea of textual intervention: Are translations, interpretations and measured, subcultural readings textual interventions? I continue to struggle against the notion of cutting out certain stories, poems or novels and fitting them into certain schools of thought. However, if I interpret any reading of my own, is it not a textual intervention? What did Whitman say of his own cut-ups? He was not vexed my multiple meanings in the rearrangement of his own work. Why should this bother me? Please intervene here. Let me know your thoughts on this.
The below link may not be a link at all. I’ve got to master these ‘cuttings’! It is from Webb, Allen. “Digital Texts and the
New Literacies.” The English Journal (97.1): 83-88. JSTOR. 05 Nov 2014. Web. for further reading.
http://0-www.jstor.org.library.winthrop.edu/stable/pdfplus/10.2307/30047213.pdf?acceptTC=true
Participation Post Three, Week Ten
There is a reason why science fiction is said to be “really out there.” When one imagines a conglomeration between a human and a computer, the emphasis has to be on the computer. If we want to know what it would be like inside the computer or the machine itself, we limit ourselves and exalt the machine! However, here is where the object is the subject. Of the three short stories, I enjoyed “The Girl Who was Plugged In,” best, followed by “Burning Chrome” second. The least enjoyable one would have to be “Lobsters”, revised version. However, each fit the description of the Bond and Inspector Gadget elements with a strong connection to the city, or its condition, and the in-your-face-isms described my Mr. Walter in his lecture, Imagined Futures para.3). The reason I can appreciate, “The Girl Who was Plugged In” is because there actually seems to be a moral, with Alice Sheldon’s strong connection to body image, obesity, rape and suicidal tendencies and the need for shallow image and conformity to society’s occasionally soulless sexual standards. While The Girl” is similar to “Burning Chrome” in the fact they both explore exploitation of women, or woman as machine or object, even worse, Sheldon’s story portrays treats one plaintively; “Burning Chrome” is more typical of chauvinism, irreverently. However, if the novum (a new thing that is foreign or slightly foreign made foreign) (para. 11) is created after the human condition has failed (para. 1), why should we not see it as something to improve our feeble culture? However, in “The Girl who was Plugged In” caused me to reflect on women being exploited from a new perspective, since she was part object. (para. 11).
Delphi, the Humachine
The Girl Who was Plugged In is rather intriguing. In the early going, the thin plot of the girl in the city seems typical of cyberpunk- some’one’ on the outside of society. P. Burke is an overweight concoction of “meldings of flesh and metal” (Tiptee, 80). She is disconnected; there is no community- a certain distance exists between the cold city and her. However, underneath it, there seems to be a stronger connection ) reflection to the society we live in, particularly now. The future she was referring to is certainly one we can recognize, between connections and disconnections between body, image and importance. And, therefore, Delphi, the lovely girl, the alternative identity, is certainly confronted with the question about branding and advertising. To this point, the only message being advertised was one of a peep show (76). Now, Mr. Cantle interrogates, (badgers?) the ‘humachine’ about product advertising (84-85). There is a connection between what is manufactured and what is shallow, and on the surface. And yet we look at a so called distance, like the distance of the city, and watch the ‘girl’ die as she dreams of her different body. Please let me know if I am on or off base with this. To me, there is a sad commentary on how we’re wired over the things we have or the things to which we are attached!
awolewel 