In November 2006, Andrew Klobucar notes, barely a year after the popular debut of “YouTube,” the now ubiquitous electronic network for amateur video distribution, subscribers to a much older web service called the SUNY Buffalo Poetics List found the following message posted to their email. Under the subject heading “YouTube Poetry – the crisis in the Humanities,” Australian poet Komninos Zervos entreated writers everywhere to reconsider:
… youtube as a database of oral histories and art
think of it as a dynamic archive.
a dynamic archive that is easily accessible on
computer and mobile computerphone.
a dynamic self-producing ever expanding archive.now think about where the literary archives sit and
think of them as data bases and ask are the
traditional information and knowledge bases of the
humanities being accessed actively?
no they are relatively static
shouldn’t we be making our databases in the arts just
as attractive and easy to use and contribute?feel free to add your poetry to the youtube website.
do it for humanity, ha ha.
Andrew Klobucar goes on to say: when digital formats were confined primarily to CD-ROM or html pages, the formal effect on traditional print genres seemed similarly restricted. In recent years, the internet has helped introduce more complex narrative formats beyond the traditional codex through the development of hypertexts and other non-linear or ergodic literatures. Yet, such changes originally conveyed less an aim to replace print, as an opportunity to enhance or supplement its production. To write electronically meant, for the most part, to upgrade one’s typewriter to a faster, more efficient word processor, and while the computer screen presented a novel medium on which to display and arrange texts, its function remained largely provisional […] Even on a utilitarian level, the screen presented few challenges to the compact, efficient ease of access to information that printed books and magazines had seemingly perfected. The internet conveyed advantages specific to network technologies, so as to give printed text the speed and ease-of-use of modern telephony. However, to imagine entirely new literary genres and forms of criticism developing out of such networks invited a fundamental reconception of the literary work as a cultural object.
Andrew Klobucar / Artifice and Intelligence: New Writing, New Technologies
J. R. Carpenter’s note: In May 2006 I video taped myself laboriously typing excerpts from Gertrude Stein’s “How To Write” on a manual typewriter. I posted the video to YouTube this morning.
I did it for humanity, ha ha.
A Vocabulary of Thinking
“Writing may be made between the ear and the eye and the ear and the eye the eye will be well and the ear will be well.”
Gertrude Stein, “How To Write” 1931.
other islands in this text-fed stream
Comments
This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008 at 3:33 pm and is filed under Andrew Klobucar, EXCERPTS, J. R. Carpenter, MARKUP, VIDEOS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
“Luck affects everything. Let your hook always be cast; in the stream where you least expect it there will be a fish.”
-Ovid
The Lost Dream
by Tatjana Debeljacki
We could have done better
If we had believed in the stories about happiness.
We are loosing strength for the new challenges.
The right on free vote is often lacking.
We considered you an ole
Tired dog, dying slowly
Unable to do change anything
To enlive by the power
Of thoughts, crying eyes.
We should have grasped the depths of the night,
Should have heard the rhymes by Boudelaire and Prevert
In the echoes of your voice of warmth.
When visiting exibitions of paintings,
We would admire shadows.
Paris now looks different.
Your silhouette glitters in every light.
Are There
by Tatjana Debeljacki
Someone is breaking the branches?!
From midnight to the dawn,
The forest is trembling inside me.
My trees are innocent,
Thirsty for milk,
Firm hands, and
The scent of effervesce.
I’m drinking my mint tea.
I’m bringing tranquility without aim,
And flowers for the vase.
When I look at it is never the same.
I’m starting to believe in a fertility of miracles.
Is there the flame, which could turn the heavens
Into the ashes?
Are there any hands to pick up my ripe apples?!
GORD-A-DAN
by Tatjana Debeljacki
THE ROOTS ARE CLAIRVOYANT, GRASPING UNTOUCHABLE WISDOM. THAT IS THE WAY IT STARTS, THE SIGN OF TIMES IS DECEIVING. IT IS THE TIME TO SEE THE DROWNED. DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU ARE READING? YOU ARE BRINGING AS SMALL AMOUNTS AS YOU LIKE TO. YOUR IMAGE IS STILL GROWING AND CRYING. COMING CLOSER AND GOING AWAY, STRONG WEAKNESS. THE WORLD THAT IS SPREADING BUT DOES NOT BELONG TO ANYONE, GIVE SOMETHING FROM YOURSELF THAT COULD BRING SENSE FROM THE THREAD OF WILL. TRY LOOKING WITH DIFFERENT EYES TO THE LIGHT. EVIL IS DANGEROUS, CONTAGEOUS ILLNESS, MOVE OUT OF THAT EVIL, IT MAKES THE CENTURY LONGER.”GORD-A-DAN” THE TEAR RIVERS ARE NOW MURMURING, THE DOG IS WAILING, YOU ARE GONE. BREAK LOOSE I BEG YOU! AND SLENTLY, THROUGH THE OPEN DOOR, COME TO ATTEND THE FEAST OF PRESERVED EMOTIONS, DAYDREAMS, THE HAPPY MOMENTS! DECENT GIFT, HUNGRY CRAVING IN THE BUNK OF FEATHERS, SILK AS PURE AS THE SNOW, WITH THE FORCE OF SILENCE. FLOWERS OF DANDELLIONS LET’S DANCE FROM AFAR WITH OUR LOOKS, WITH OUR BODIES, LET’S TOUCH WITH PALMS ONLY.
TO - HINDS
Arrival he is using as the preparation
Of the future pychodramatic chance.
Imagination is hindering the good old days with its shadow.
The against- will is opening the occasion,
The homeless thoughtfully, satisfied
Reaches and maintains the dependanc, enriches
Harmony with the heat of dirt. Red handed scent of perfume
Neutralized with vodka, taking his clothes off not to crease them.
The jealousy asked him when he had cheated her? Two months ago!
Continuous, permanent betrayal, not concentrated …
Timid, scared, manlike voice in the exclamation mark!
Lust and desire are long-sighted!
Negative because of egoism, from the nirvana of metaphysical lust
Why are you grappling it as a child does to his mother’s skirt!!!
Tatjana Debeljacki