Published on the Web (online journal)

Favoring statistical innovation, discovery, and transformation of material more than subjectivity, my presentation for TRICKHOUSE, “book review: not a b (pdp remix),” is a software experiment that brings together multiple projects, interests, and themes. This reflection, in part an autobiographical exercise in creating multimedia poetry, does not effectively simulate the more extensive synthesis of related materials I have elsewhere assembled (featuring additional videographic, performative components, and many more poems) but is a decent representation of what I have been working on in 2008. The animation is the latest and longest (approximately 22 minutes, give or take) of a series of text-movies I began creating with Flash in early 2007. Slow scat, and sometimes random juxtaposition, of anagrammatic text derived from the title of a book I wrote, is spontaneously plotted (with assistance from the Internet Anagram server (http://wordsmith.org/anagram/). Works by mIEKAL aND, John Cayley, and Brian Stefans have inspired me to such poesis. Shorter instances of text-movies can be seen via my homepage (http://web.njit.edu/~funkhous/) and YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/user/ctfunkhouser). The soundtrack includes a non-linear mix of guitar tracks I recorded under the influence of Weezer’s Video Capture Device, using Stephan Said’s old pink guitar, at Girassol, December 07 (mixed January 08). Three of the one hundred “cancellation” poems I’ve completed in the “book review” project, recorded at Girassol April 08, are read.

These soundpoems are interactive phonetic poems. Minimal abstract poetry. Games for sampled voice.

(Source: Author's description from Electronic Literature Collection, Volume Two)

An interactive fiction written in Inform and running on the Z-Machine, Book and Volumes simulates an eventful day in a near-present factory town. The interactor is not offered adventure, monsters to defeat, or treasures to find, but a chance to perform the routine tasks of an information-technology worker. As Brian Kerr wrote, "It's about a sysadmin in the weird, charming cyber-Gotham of nTopia who spends the last working day of his/her/its life rebooting servers and reacting to frantic pages from an unseen supervisor. ('Net extremely hoseled. Engine team being hideously masticated by this outage. Demo rapidly approaching. Get to the cages. Reboot the servers. Hasten. Do not rest. Please. All five of them.') What’s the game really about? Knut, a resident of nTopia, pegs it: 'Reality. Illusion. Theme is reality versus illusion. Must discern reality. And illusion.

(Source: Author's description from the Electronic Literature Collection, volume 2)

A binary meditation on the work of a pioneering Canadian poet contemplating digital poetics from the early sixties to the present. All texts are from the work of Lionel Kearns except where noted.

(Source: Author's abstract at Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 1)

about nothing, places, memories, and thoughts: robert creeley (1926-2005) and patricia tomaszek in a cut and mixed poem-dialogue

This work leverages the unique potential of digital media to bring together a death-voice (Robert Creeley) and a life-voice (Patricia Tomaszek). Each time the user clicks the mouse, both poets create - reading back and forth - a computer-generated poem that blends surprise and repetition to create a range of unique (dis)harmonies. In total, 98 selected lines from the authors recordings serve as the raw material from which vast a # of 8-10 line poems - the average length of both poets' works - are created. Simple algorithmic rules determine each outcome; a number of openings and closings are pre-selected while the body of each composition is generated computationally via a probabilistic grammar. The work began with a series of response poems, penned by the author, to the poems of Robert Creeley. These poems where then recorded with each line as a separate sound sample. Crucial lines from Creeley that inspired the responsive writing process were then subjected to the same 'cut-up' procedure. The final set of lines, restricted by the availability of Creeley's audio recordings, were selected on the basis of their cohesion with the selected themes: places, memories, thoughts, identity, loss, absence, and nothingness.

The Cape is a short work that engages the history of visual print-based authority by combining impersonal, government-created images with a purportedly personal story. Carpenter animates decades-old black-and-white photographs, illustrations, and maps, adding to these a few laconic caption-sized texts to extend an exploration of "place" that digital space evokes.

(Source: Electronic Literature Collection, Vol. 1)

Author description: Arteroids is a literary shoot-em-up for the Web, a work of software art and various odd literary devices. You use the arrow keys to drive your blood-red id-entity word ‘poetry’ or ‘desire’ (or whatever word you choose) around the full screen and use the ‘x’ key to shoot blue and green texts that assail you at various velocities and densities as you play. It is the battle of poetry against itself and the forces of dullness.

The main part of the Nio project is an interactive audio piece done in Shockwave. It consists of two "verses." In verse 1, the wreader layers audio and lettristic animations. In verse 2, the wreader both layers and sequences them. Verse 2 is a little sequencer. The Nio project has other parts such as the source code (requires Macromedia Director 8+); the (Shockwave) Song Shapes, which are audioless and use the same animations as in Nio; an essay on the poetics of interactive audio for the web; an essay on audio programming in Director, which is now part of the Macromedia documentation; still visual poetry drawn from onion skins of Nio animations; and an interview by Randy Adams with me about Nio.

(Source: Author's abstract: Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 1)