[Here are some old notes I had made last year prior to going to a “thinktank” on electronic writing at the University of Iowa.]

1. Criticism seems never to deal with affective issues of the art — when a piece strikes you as unusually compact, sharply ironic, aggressive (can new media art be truly aggressive in the way limited analog video tapes can be?) the text is not anaylized beyond whether it is more or less suitable for the piece.  New media art is usually positioned as explaining an abstract principle related to other facets of new media rather than experienced. Art is given the task of illustrating a critic’s ideas, which doesn’t leave a lot of room for the artist to create new ideas.  Too much concentration on large works with pretensions of dealing with some large linguistic issue, for example.

2. I don’t care about the relationship of the human to the machine as a theme for work.  Perhaps the romantic approach to art, “subjectivity” that matters rather than the abstract idea of “subjectivity,” is truly gone, but that leaves a whole lot of people who don’t have computers out of the equation.

3. Has the myth of new media adequately adopted the mantle of Surrealism, Existentialism, and homegrown, but hardly philosophical, products like Abstract Expressionism and the Beats?  Or more importantly, Situationism and/or Marxism?  Rather than being a continuous self-critique — new media art being dystopic in the face of proposed utopic program — is new media prepared to be a life philosophy in the way previous paradigms of art tried to be?

4. New media artists should not give powerpoint presentations about their art.  It stands between the artist and the audience, when in fact the goal appears to have been that the audience gets a crack at the artist in his/her presence.  Also, it destroys the enigma.  I think occasionally that the enigma is corrupted by too much explanation, but digital art is often poised as an explanatory process.

This must be a week devoted to writing poems for our about me. I’ve just discovered an odd bit called Brian Kim Stefans (Nebraskan Misfit) at a blog called carton’s book of merz, with the notable line “as shed gecko permutes us.”

I heard earlier in the month that I am included in Kent Johnson’s massive book Epigrammatitis: 118 Living American Poets. It’s 266 pages and “fully illustrated.” I’d buy it except that 1) I almost never buy books anymore, being broke, 2) I suspect that his epigram about me is somehow telling me I’m a weenie even if it seems ok on the surface, or 3) several epigrams directed to my friends are simply telling them they are weenies. Of course, there is also the possibility of 4) severeal epigrams directed at people I don’t like are telling them they are weenies, but there aren’t a lot of people I don’t like, and I’m not sure I’d want to wish a Kent Johnson epigram on any of them.

And earlier today I had three poet friends over for Korean food: Ryan Dayley, Lynn Xu and Juliette Lee (who brought the food) and they got it into their heads to write me an elegy, which appears below. I’m not sure I deserve such, uh, affection? I’m just glad I “excited the cherries” though I wonder if I could be arrested for that. 

An epigram, an elegy and being called a “Nebraskan misfit” in one week must be some kind of record. I feel almost as fulfilled and recognized as a Flarf poet!

An Elegy for Brian Kim Stefans

A cherry grenade, high tops, yellow pads, marzipan.
Between a coover and a morrissey, lies compromise
And then they loved him.  And they embraced him, over the high fences.
As a snowcone in a hurricane then high tide!
Holy rollers, mine bicycle placates my tubular maneuver
And then the fog came.  And then the flowers.  The flaming stroke. 
Softer rocket how. Made up sweeteners, a sleepy eye.
Galant Russian exports, thrust fist German into lunfardo vocality
And then the healers for cooler love, invoked a more radical God.
An out of key panda cub gave it up first. She said.
Plug it in and it gets public
And then they loved him.  And in the vast plains, the braver flames.
Golden monkey, sing it again.
For coin, couldn’t see the cup’s bottom
And in the sex of the players.  And over the bleachers.  Excited the cherries.

People have wondered why I like the poetry of Australian writer Martin Johnston so much. It’s purely because of this photograph:

One of the few poets who can join the ranks of the hairless cat and the deep sea angler as exotic, sepulchral creatures without even trying. But seriously, he was pretty good, and even his novel was ok. There’s a lot of his stuff at Jacket including a not very good article about him by me.

I’m working on creating a piece for Brown’s Cave, a 3D environment here that I don’t feel like explaining now (but if you want to find out about it, check out the Brown Cave Writing class website).

Basically, the idea is that you would maneuver around an environment that kind of felt like the International Space Station, or maybe a small solar system. Machines made of words would revolve around you, and as you moved past them, you’d hear bits of audio that suggested what these little poem machines had in them.

Here’s a little Maya demo movie of this first part.

Once you clicked on a poem, it would unfold before you, and you then had the ability to cycle through the subpoems, little surreal things that were written based on where the letters fell when you moved the lines about. Like the below (click on the words to move to next poem).

The full proposal can be found here: Ouija Poems.pdf. Well, I think it’s a cool idea.

[Some responses I wrote this evening, in a semi-drunken stupor, to Mark A. Cantrell, who wrote asking me about my setting of Christian Bok’s Eunoia. Nobody’s really asked me about this in the past, so I thought to post them, why not.] 

Thanks for contacting me on this. I’m always surprised that people have been so interested in my setting of that part of Eunoia because I actually never thought it that successful, though my favorite part of it is that part you pointed out, the fact that the text goes downright woggy after you hold down on the button. Let me just address the few initial questions:

> First, do you or did you ever have any plans to create settings for any of the other chapters of Eunoia? If not, was there a particular reason why you chose Chapter E?

I did think of doing all five chapters but I realized that with each chapter I’d have to come up with something quite original, and I frankly didn’t have the time, but also, I wasn’t sure that it really added anything to the text. Unlike with Bembo’s Zoo (which you should Google) to merely add an animated interactive dimension to the text didn’t seem to be enough.

Also, to do a justifiable animation to, say, the “o” chapter would have required doing something different with every “o”, not just fade every paragraph into the next, and I didn’t think it was worth the effort. If I had time at a later date to do each chapter, I would, but then I would have to redo chapter “e” because I didn’t think it was that successful. If I had done something amazing with chapter “o” (for example) I would have had to go back and redo the chapters I had already done (which is what happened with “The Dreamlife of Letters,” which took me 6 months).

No particular reason why I chose chapter “e”. Perhaps that’s what Christian sent me. Frankly, I don’t remember. Maybe it was the longest chapter (certainly at that time, see below) so it was the most obvious choice. I don’t remember at all. >I noticed that your setting combines the Chapter E of the book with the part entitled “Emended Excesses.” Was this your decision or one made in collaboration with Bok? What were some of the reasons for this choice?When I did the piece, that part of the book was part of Chapter E. Christian later moved it to the appendix.> Finally, do I understand correctly from the 2001 date on your site that the Flash setting was made available at approximately the same time that Coach House Books published the book version?

The idea was inspired by two things: 1) a visit last semester by David Lynch in support of his new Transcendental Meditation / World Peace foundation, and 20 the “Frankie Says” t-shirt campaign that happened in the eighties centered around the band Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Perhaps Apple’s “Think Different” campaign was behind this also.

My idea was to attract students from many different disciplines to the class, so I used major figures in various genres to throw their weight behind us. For good measure, I included Frank Sinatra and a splat of paint.

If you ever get the urge to proselytize for electronic writing – and I know you do, frequently – these are easily printable, so you can poster your campus, office or local coffee shop. Click to enlarge.

 

My Dad… I’m proud of him! (Now I have a new place to publish my Ron Silliman editorials… ONLY KIDDING.)

John Stefans, a former reporter for The News-Review, is returning to the newspaper as its editor, succeeding Denise Civiletti.

Ms. Civiletti said she is stepping down as editor in order to devote full time to her duties as co-publisher of Times/Review Newspapers, publishers of The News-Review and three other community papers, The Suffolk Times, The North Shore Sun and The Shelter Island Reporter.

Before joining The News-Review as a reporter, Mr. Stefans was editor of the Traveler-Watchman of Southold. He moved to South Jamesport full-time six years ago after retiring from Chase Manhattan Bank, where he was senior vice president and director of corporate communications. He attended Fordham University and served on active duty for three years as a U.S. Army correspondent. After leaving The News-Review, Mr. Stefans worked as an assistant to Riverhead Town Supervisor Phil Cardinale from July 2004 to May 2005.

“John’s leadership abilities, reporter’s instincts and accessible writing style make him a perfect choice for us,” Ms. Civiletti said. “John has a passion for the Town of Riverhead and its people. He takes great pride in his community, and that’s important to us.”

Mr. Stefans and his wife, Karin, now live in Riverhead. They have five children.