Interview

Jim Andrews is one of the pioneers of digital poetry.Indefatigable contributor to early list-servs, agile practitioner of algorithmic art, instigator of dialogs and diatribes, provocateur and poet of machinic potentials. His web portal vispo.com/ continues to provide a hybrid dose of poetry, visuals and spoken word conjoined by code.Jim is a poet who studied formal programming for 7 years and continues to call for the necessity of programming at the core of digital poetics.His work has been exhibited internationally; he currently resides in Vancouver where (among other gambits) he teaches mobile app development, JavaScript, Phonegap, and HTML. He's also the organizer of The Group of X, a Vancouver-based group of artists and scholars involved in computer art.

Interview 2012-07-08 in Vancouver.

(Source: David Jhave Johnston, Vimeo)

Jichen Zhu explores narrative using artificial intelligence to explore subjective fluid aspects of human emotional experience. Her research is informed by cognitive science research into analogy (extending foundations associated with Michael Mateas, Noah Warddrip-Fruin & Fox Harrell).

Jichen's aim is to explore the expressive potential of algorithms as aids to the constructions of narrative; in her view, algorithms do not necessarily replace human writers, but augment expressivity. She is working toward the possibility of AI narrative engines which develop stories unique to the architecture of computation. This provocative possibility is not easily implemented, yet operates as a lure, instigating research into modes of creativity inherently different from human authorial intent.

(Source: David Jhave Johnston)

Jeffrey Shaw has been exploring and defining the limits of Future Cinema since the 1960s. In many of his works language operates visually. Currently he invests in large-scale custom software architectures that permit him to explore systems of dynamic fluid moving imagery in immense immersive spaces.

In this brief excerpt from a longer conversation, he discusses 'Points of View' (1983), which significantly predates his well-known navigable language work 'Legible City' (1989). In Points of View, Shaw adapted early flight simulator software to build 3D scenes of hieroglyphs which operated as protagonists; audience members were given dictionaries to understand how to read the emergent relations as they navigated. The cosmology of the work is thickened by spatially distributed voices (readings) which mixed 16 channels thru a stack of 8 stereo cassette-decks using voltage-controlled amplifiers mechanically influenced by a light source on a joystick modulating light sensors. 'Points of View' exemplifies an interactive multi-channel spatial sound-language installation constructed before the maturity of physical computing.

(Source: David Jhave Johnston, Vimeo)

Jason Nelson is a renegade geographer of glitch labyrinths: irreverent and lucid, his net-art poetry-games ( secrettechnology.com/ ) have enchanted (and annihilated) millions of (daunted and demented) surfers.In Nelson's poem-games, language coalesces into ricochet gif-licking flash-taunts which challenge poetry's traditional layout, rhyme, sanity and meter. Each reader must writhe and compete in order to unlock new verses and levels.These interface contortions obscure an ambivalent misanthropic visionary, which is a mere overlay to a deeper humanity, engaged with the tragedy of the lost human, adrift in a universe of demands, pressing buttons like a bitter rabbit hunting stars.

Interview 2013-06-21 ELO Morgantown.

(Source: David Jhave Johnston, Vimeo)

Jason Lewis is currently engaged with mobile apps and POEMMS created specfically for tactile ios devices. But he began programming experimental text interfaces and custom software for digital-language art-installations in the late 90s while completing a Masters at the Royal College of Art. Subsequently at Interval Research, he created "It's Alive" a text animation engine. And then in the early 21st century started OBX Labs which creates custom typographic engines.

(Source: David Jhave Johnston, Vimeo)

Jeneen Naji has taught digital media in Dubai and now in Dublin. Her research transposes traditional poetry critiques onto digital poetry. In doing so she uncovers the distinct modalities of digital practice and develops intriguing neologisms such as CREADER to replace: "creator viewer user reader".

In 2012 she completed a phd dissertation "Poetic Machines: an investigation into the impact of the characteristics of the digital apparatus on poetic expression."

Interview 2012-06-21 at ELO Morgantown.

(Source: David Jhave Johnston, Vimeo)

Florian Cramer's thought is justly (in)famous. From early provocative studies of combinatorial language's roots in antiquity and alchemy ("Words Made Flesh"), Cramer has segued into a concern with DIY culture.For Cramer, DIY is the natural extension of utopian renegades, social and cultural outliers whose play was not formal but utopian.Any renovation of language constitutes a renovation of cognition and subsequently culture itself; even as the possibility for everyone to publish through networked media questions the notion of the literary. Furthermore, 4chan image memes are digital poems, language transformed through practice with the aim of transforming practice.Consider yourself expanded.

(Source: David Jhave Johnston, Vimeo)

Erik Loyer created the canonical early net-art pieces 'Lair of the Marrow Monkey'(1998) and 'Chroma'(2001). Not content with those genius works, he went on to creative direct the avant-garde net-journal Vectors, and designed the activist documentary Webby-award nominee 'Public Secrets'.

Throughout Loyer's works there is a persistent synaesthetic edge: a concern with tactility and synchronized audio-visuals that gives his work abiding engagement. He thinks of himself as an instrument maker, and this tendency is apparent in his recent works: the best-selling 'Strange Rain' and a recent immersive graphic novel app "Upgrade Soul" which incorporates modular music mapped to gestures.

Interview 2012-06-23 at ELO Morgantown.

(Source: David Jhave Johnston, Vimeo)

David Clark approaches art with the instincts of a philosopher, the sensuality of an animator, the conceptual rigor of an installation artist, and the dexterity of a manic-yet-sane compulsive-conspiratorialist. His works are sprawling labyrinths that inoculate the viewer against facile distinctions between metaphysics and eye-candy. Complexity and raw grace conjoin.

In epic iconic works such as 'A is for Apple' and '88 Constellations for Wittgenstein (to be played with the Left Hand)', interfaces become ideological abstractions which guide the viewer through conceptual passages, animation functions as play; choices operate as abstractions; and audio (which he often composes himself) amplifies idea.

Interview 2012-06-13 at ELO Morgantown.

(Source: David Jhave Johnston, Vimeo page)

Alexandra Saemmer is associate professor of information and communication sciences at University Paris 8 and vice-director of the « lab of excellence » Arts-H2H. She has authored several books and is concerned with the semiotics of networked surfaces, games and discipline, rhetoric in mediated contexts, icons, interfaces and ephemera. Her works include Etang and Tramway.

(Source: David Jhave Johnston, Vimeo page)