aisyalam

2007-01-19T17:12:00.000-08:00

NOTICE: I am keeping a 2007 blog on myspace. If interested, please go to http://www.myspace.com/chrisfunkhouser or http://www.myspace.com/2007eleven

Email is the same as always, funkhouser@adm.njit.edu

As'kum

CF

2006-07-28T08:13:00.000-07:00

Today was my last “work” day at MMU, at least for awhile—but I have to put the word work in quotes because it was far more social than laborious. In the morning I met with Dr. Rafi and then Ali—who offered some excellent advice on how to improve the quality of my photographs without a lot of rigmarole. As always I enjoyed my discussion with him. Apparently he and his friend Sheji are still planning on developing an interactive version of the Malaysian poems during the next year. After lunch with Amy and Sau Bin we went up to Forest’s office for some tea and to admire her books, which was pleasant as always. Finally I had about an hour’s time to work, and wrote letters and prepared a package for the library (including the bibliography), and got things ready so that the office could be vacated. Along the way I had chance to talk with a few of the other folks—like Khong and Helena, who was on campus for the first time since the birth of her daughter awhile back—whose company I’ve much enjoyed the past few months. At 4 p.m. there was a “high tea” (or Minum Petang) for Dr. Rafi, which also served as a going away part for me and a welcome party for the new Dean. After Rafi was feted and gave a casual speech, Hal and I were taken by surprise and also prompted to say a few words. I kept my bit short and did my best to avoid triteness, mostly expressing my gratitude and view that the place held a lot of potential (which is true). I look forward to seeing how the FCM develops over the next few years, and hope to be an active participant in the Faculty again. Somebody was telling me that they thought my presence at MMU and introduction of Digital Poetry in Malaysia would have an effect. I don’t know to what extent this is true, but have certainly done the best I can to build bridges, cultivate thought, exchange/introduce ideas, and so on. I did receive a few gifts from colleagues, which was nice, and most of the Faculty was at the “tea” (the chow at which was delicious), so got a chance to see people one time and bid farewells. Alea and Amy came up also (Stella at a sleepover), so it was a really nice affair all the way ‘round. Afterwards Amy and I walked over to the library, so that I could drop off my donations and walked back to the apartment and then went out to dinner. It was another day full of “lasts” but the experience will also totally last by sticking with me and being inside me for a long while. I didn’t feel sadness or melancholy, either, mostly fatigue! The right way to end the activities here, I think.

2006-07-27T08:45:00.000-07:00

Heading down to the wire, and there was a nice write up in KL’s newspaper The Star today about our exhibition, which you can see at
http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2006/7/27/central/14926090&sec=central.
I like that they say the show is full of “mind boggling works,” which I think from a certain perspective is true. The article doesn’t do a great job of describing my work, but glad that it is mentioned anyway. The odd thing to me, in terms of media presentation is that the printed article in the newspaper actually contains twice as many images as the online version—which seems strange and may be an indication that server space isn’t as copious here as it is elsewhere? Amy and I were planning to take our work down mid-day on Saturday (since we’re leaving first thing Monday morning), but tonight the organizer called us and said that he really wants us to keep it all up until Sunday because he has received 100+ phone calls since the article appeared, people telling him they’re going to come on the weekend. So it looks like I’ll run in on Sunday afternoon and take it all down… I haven’t yet had a dull moment here in Malaysia, and it doesn’t look like I will…

A bunch of work happened at the desk today, although most of it had to do with the class I’m teaching. Tough to keep up with students doing a semester’s work in just five weeks, but it is going alright. I seem to have come “full circle:” the first couple of weeks I was working here were spent fact checking, copy editing, etc. my book—a “home” based project, and here I am the last couple of weeks here doing much the same (though a totally different type of work). The best part of the day was probably the lunch hour spent in the company of Amy, Stella, and Dr. Beik. Amy gave us her ideas for the Rumi project, which impressed Beik. Now we just need someone who can build us a holographic Rumi to read the new poems of his we’re going to try and manufacture! Ali joined us for awhile, stewing about his academic situation, and we all did our best to calm him down.

Posted a bunch of pictures from the past few days on Flickr, and took Stella for a walk in the Putrajaya Botanical Gardens in the late afternoon. Family satay dinner in Kajang, and an evening swim at Palm Garden—lovely!!

Tomorrow my last day at MMU for awhile, and it will be a busy one I’m sure. I have a few things to finish up and take care of, people to visit with. I’m glad that there will be a Faculty party in the afternoon—not celebrating my departure, but the conclusion of the Dean’s (Dr. Rafi’s) stint in that position. This will give me a chance to say so long to everyone, and move on…

2006-07-26T08:08:00.000-07:00

After a good workout I spent two or three hours working on campus. I began compiling a bibliography of books I think the MMU library should acquire that pertain to digital writing, graded student works, filed the aforementioned Fulbright letter, made some copies, and so on. Essentially desk work, which will also keep me busy tomorrow. Afterwards, Amy, Stella, and I took the train up to Kuala Lumpur and a taxi to Bangsar, where we had a meeting with the proprietor of Silverfish Books, whose publications we hope to promote in the United States. I also picked up a few publications, including a book of Malaysian short stories, an interesting new collection of poems (An Acre of Day’s Glass) by Malaysian Wong Phui Nam, and a cd of movie soundtracks that I recently read about (eating pomeloes from Tokyo to tamil nadu by Hardesh Singh). From there we went to KL’s IMAX theatre and saw a 3D film Walking on the Moon. This was a new and outrageous experience for us all. The screen—purported to be the largest in Southeast Asia—is gigantic, and the 3D effect really made it seem as though the movie was happening around me. I don’t think this will be the last time we go to this type of movie. It was a short film (45 minutes) so we went over to IMBI plaza across the street and bought a couple of inexpensive SD cards, a new USB drive, and a few pieces of software (mostly audio) to experiment with. We finished the excursion with a great dinner at a fancy restaurant, perhaps our last urban treat of this voyage. We do have to go to KL again to remove our artwork from the gallery, but that’ll be mostly work. So, a mixture of pleasure and play today—which I think was perfectly appropriate.

2006-07-25T20:31:00.000-07:00

Today’s performance at IIUM was a real success and probably my best gig yet—no doubt the previous two stage ventures helped to cultivate the presentation of materials. Amidst another hectic day of this and that—running around settling various matters—I made it to Gombak, set everything up without any trouble, and had a large audience who were very interested in what was going on (partially, of course, because their poetry teachers were requiring them to make multimedia poetry, which none of them had experienced before). I started without introduction, with a brief overview of the trajectory of the modes of poetry from an oral tradition to a postmodern free-for-all. I did a brief demo of the eBook to orient them a bit, playing a sound poem, an animated poem, and a poem of interlinked passages. Then I read three poems that were accompanied by animations (“How Fast Can a Zebra Run,” “Why do Durians Smell,” and SPAM poems). The rest of the show was similar to Saturday night’s set of Malaysian poems, except I left out the Cyberjaya/backwards piece and had to stand on a table (in front of 100+ young, impressionable students and some faculty) in order to get the projector to project the images on to me (draped in a sheet). The timing was exactly perfect: the poems, images, and soundtrack all ended at the same moment. The reading was followed by Q&A, which got off to a slow start but eventually the students warmed up and asked about how to approach acquiring and balancing content, the implication of letting the machine create and project emotions, asked more about the historical background of digital poetry. I handed out a number of cd-roms, and a few students took down the url of the “13 States” website (http://web.njit.edu/~funkhous/13states). Now I’m beginning to wonder how the work is going to translate on the other side of the world, and guess I’ll begin to get a sense of that at September’s “BIOS: the poetics of life in digital media” in West Virginia (http://www.as.wvu.edu:8000/clc/bios_flyer).

Afterwards the gig went to a café with my host Tanja, which was nice, and ended the day by attending a lecture by Lee Kian Seng (http://www.leekianseng.com/) at the 153 Gallery, in which he presented an overview of his work from the 60’s onward and discussed the politics and inaccuracies regarding Malaysian installation art in the history books.

2006-07-24T08:25:00.000-07:00

There’s a lot going on in terms of getting organized to leave, administrating expenses, taking care of housing bureaucracy (like today campus security handed me a form about my personal computers that I was supposed to have filled out within 24 hours of arriving), and so on, but I managed to get a full day’s work in on campus anyway. A bunch of time was spent writing a letter of recommendation for a close friend who wants to go on a Fulbright to Australia next year, so had to do a spot-on job with that, but also did NJIT coursework, and a little prep for tomorrow’s performance at IIUM (International Islamic University Malaysia). I also had a nice long meeting with the new Dean of the Faculty of Creative Multimedia, Hal Thwaites, who has a vision and I’m sure will bring positive direction to MMU. Later in the day I also met with Dr. Beik, with whom I further discussed our upcoming “Neuro Net” collaboration (which Amy is calling “The Rumi Simulator”). Anyhow, Beik and I made a plan of attack, which will involve me returning to the US and delving into the four or so Rumi translations I have in my poetry library, while he does the same with some Persian editions. We have to begin by building a vocabulary for the “poet” and then train the software to speak the language. Along the way we’ll probably identify key themes taken up by the poet in order to devise a navigation system. If all goes well, and I see no reason why it shouldn’t, this should be a very interesting project—presuming we can get the machine to talk. And if this scheme works and manages to bring a reasonable facsimile of Rumi back to life, I’m thinking we should tackle someone like Bob Creeley next time. But that remains to be seen.

The gig in Cheras the other night went well. Although the hour was late by the time I got on stage, being there (on stage) with such unusual works in a rather foreign place (it was my first trip to Cheras and did I ever get lost on the way there) brought me back to life. The strange texts I read during the first half (a TRAVESTY text made with “Song of Myself,” an old ZenMOO session, the Durian poem, and a SPAM poem) were fun and matched with good soundtracks, then I switched gears, donned a white sheet onto which 165 of our Malaysia images were projected while a few soundtracks played and I read a few of the Malaysia poems (from beneath the sheet). This setup had a great visual effect, and I will use the same technique tomorrow I think (using some of the same materials). I also brought along a few new (native, handcrafted) instruments, which I jammed on when I thought to do so. I made a new (in)version of the Cyberjaya poem and re-titled it “Backwards poem for Siew Wai” (because the gathering was in part her birthday celebration). Four other artists, including Siew Wai, showed there work, and there was something superb in each performance. Aziz used Max to process sounds (mainly words) live—while projecting his actions with the software on the screen, which was an important aspect of his presentation. Another fellow, Fairuz, improvisationally mixed videos while accompanied by a live musician (also improvising). A fellow named Haron, played what I’d call “intuitive” guitar while chanting a few songs in a language nobody could really understand. Everyone got together at the end and played an impromptu rendition of a birthday song for Siew Wai. I’m still shocked by these art gigs where no booze is present, but everyone enjoys themselves, and projects stimulating art just the same.

After the gig tomorrow I’ll head over to the 153 Gallery to hear a lecture there. We’ve just printed out a bunch of new images—which would have been solid additions to the show that’s up now, but will have to wait to be seen until Amy’s show at Blair Academy in the fall.

Lots of last minute things to do, including seeing people and places that will be missing from our lives for awhile. We nixed the plan to go to Melaka on Wednesday, and instead decided to take in a movie at the 3D IMAX in KL, a nice meal nearby, and some shopping for software. It won’t be the same as Ikan Panggang by the sea, but we can do without the 5 hours in the car (especially since in a week we’ll be cooped up in an airplane for 21 hours)…

2006-07-21T07:48:00.000-07:00

Today was an enjoyable and fulfilling day of faculty camaraderie and artistic practice. I went to a couple of well-attended “work completion” seminars by Masters degree students, and enjoyed seeing how the academic review process works here. Afterwards a lunch was prepared and had a chance to visit with a few colleagues I haven’t had a chance to speak with much lately, and made plans to meet with a few of them again next week. I had a really positive sense of knowing and liking these people. Afterwards reviewed images, and over the course of the afternoon selected 165 pictures to present in animations on various surfaces tomorrow night in Cheras. Made shortcuts on the desktop so that works can be accessed quickly and burned a cd that will accompany the reading of the poems, etc.

Had nice visits with both the outgoing Dean (who is taking over my office after we leave) and Sau Bin (who is feeling much better) this afternoon. I think I finally have a clear picture of what my role (as an “external consultant”) may be in the future. I’m hoping, needless to say, that it brings me to Malaysia from time to time between now and the next Fulbright (or whatever other opportunity I can create), which I’ll probably have to wait a few years for. That we have to leave is a fact I can handle, but I refuse to see it as any sort of endpoint. In any case, by afternoon’s end I was riding high on good vibes all around, and though packing up is not exactly my idea of a good time, it has to be done.

We’ll print some more pictures tomorrow, and looking forward to the evening gig at SicKL.

The strangest thing that’s happening at this point is that my NJIT email has been down for nearly three days—and it is not the first time this has happened this summer. Because I rely on this communications tool for so many reasons it is a bit frustrating. Life goes on and everything but one would expect that a major research institution would be able to prevent such occurrences from occurring…

2006-07-20T07:44:00.000-07:00

Glad to have a regular-type work day—one of the last 3 or 4 I will have here—but spent more than half of it viewing works by my NJIT students, doing my best to keep up with them.

When I finally got to focus on my own work I worked on the set for Saturday night’s performance (which may also come in handy at IIUM on Tuesday). I began by selecting some non-Malaysia poems (though some of the material was created while living here), and then figuring out what Malaysia pieces would work best in a non-MMU, incomplete context (i.e., this weekend I will have about 1/4 the time I had in last month’s performance). It was a fun constructive exercise. I wanted to build new contexts for some of the sounds and texts, so decided to use one of my old MOO texts (from ZenMOO) with the new rin gong piece, removed the vocal track from the Spam Flash pieces on the eBook, and will show the durian piece before launching into a few of the “13 States” poems. I’ll read a half dozen of them in full, and set the acrostic section of the KL poem to the tune of a Malaysian song that everyone knows (“Rasa Sayang”). I’ll read the “Cyberjaya” poem from end to beginning with a soundtrack (recorded in Cyberjaya) that is also recorded (engineered) in reverse (I don’t know why I thought if reading it this way, but it sounds good). I tried making a multitrack recording of “Negaraku” (the national anthem) using the half dozen free versions of it I found on the WWW, but it only sounded good with the two MIDI tracks included and the software I’m using (Cool Edit Pro) wouldn’t let me mix it down that way (although oddly it allows me to listen to it in full). I have been noodling around on some native instruments that I plan to improvise on during the set, which has also been fun—I don’t even know the names of any of them—and will perhaps be running the non-resonating ones through a delay; this part will be very improv. As far as imagery goes, for most of the afternoon I thought I’d skip out on the picture component altogether but walking back home realized that wasn’t the best idea so tomorrow I’ll pick out perhaps 160 images or so to set up on a loop for this section. I’m planning to wear white and to do some of the gig shrouded in a sheet, so the pictures can be projected onto my body instead of a wall. Baraka’s character in “Bullworth” is always saying “don’t be no ghost” but for some reason such a Halloween-esque costume appeals to me at the moment.

2006-07-19T07:33:00.000-07:00

The opening last night was full of social engagement and intrigue—the hours we were there passed by very quickly. I saw a lot of the art before but not all; seeing everything up and ready for the public was a thrill, and I’m proud to be to have my work included in such an impressive and weird show (will post pictures on Flickr soon). The odd nature of the art (a lot of conceptual installations and a few paintings) seemed appropriate for my first exhibition, and it was perfect to be sharing a room with Amy’s works (& Stella asked/made us put one of her drawings up too!). I’d guess that two or three hundred people walked through the place—which wasn’t really on any sort of beaten path. Anyway, it was quite a scene and fun to hang out with the other artists, although Sau Bin was under the weather with food poisoning (which he was blaming on a durian). We also met some interesting locals, who I wish we’d crossed paths with months ago, and got to hang out with other friends we have made here. Anyway, it was the first art opening I’ve ever been to where not a trace of alcohol was present, and a live turtle (a star tortoise, I think) with a toothpick holding a sign affixed with putty onto its back was delivered for well-wishes to the group (instead of flowers). At least 2 of KL’s daily newspapers were there (one English language, one Chinese), interviewing people, taking photos, etc. I can’t imagine what a review of the event would say…

Beforehand went to a reception to celebrate MACEE’s new offices, probably my last official event as a Fulbright scholar this time around. What a great gig it has been! I met a few new people, took care of some business, had a snack, and met a woman from Rhode Island who has come here to study elephants.

We spent the night in KL and came back in the afternoon and began cleaning out my office of stuff I won’t need in the next few days that needs to get home somehow. I’d planned to do some teaching stuff but all of the NJIT systems were down. Tomorrow I’ll get ready for Saturday night’s performance and review student works.

2006-07-17T05:26:00.000-07:00

I had my first regular work day in awhile: exercise followed by hours spent on campus with a lunchbreak in the middle. But aside from writing a few letters to distribute eBooks (regionally) and plan for future collaborations (it looks like Dr. Beik and I will try to bring Rumi back to life), the work was not really focusing on creative multimedia (although I did have a brief conversation about the performance coming up on Saturday with Siew Wai). We’re seriously winding things down here, just two weeks until we leave, plus I’m teaching an online course for NJIT at the moment—these realities are completely time absorbing. But I figure a day of such work buys me 2 or 3 where attention can be focused elsewhere. At this point I’m going to try to have a few more work days, polishing up some things on the WWW, laying groundwork for other projects, but in many ways my research and output here is complete for now. I do have a couple of performances, on Saturday at SicKL gallery in Cheras, and at IIUM next Tuesday. I won’t be performing at the opening tomorrow but am thinking I should bring the laptop so I could show the database to anyone who’s interested (and hope to give away 100 copies of the eBook). In some ways I wish there were more creative activity to report since plenty is happening—it’s just not about making work(s) at this point but moving them (and the family) around.

2006-07-14T20:14:00.000-07:00

2006-07-14T20:07:00.000-07:00

On Thursday morning I visited the Kek Lo Si temple on the mountainside in Penang, which was as fine a complex of structures I’ve ever seen. In the afternoon flew home, arriving to find two sick kids—not much happened beyond that.

Friday a long day that began by driving over to Melawati to pick up the laminated printouts of my pictures and poems. They weren’t quite ready yet so had some time to pick up some art supplies and eat lunch banana leaf style with Fauzee and Fishie. I arrived at the 153 Gallery (which is literally in the shadow of the Petronas Twin Towers) at about 2. Talk about being a fish out of water! Since the kids were sick, Amy had to stay at home so I had to figure out what to do with her work and my work. It was one of those I needed her help and she needed my help type of situations, but I think things worked out all right in the end. Despite the fact that I’ve done many different things as an artist, I’ve never before installed images on the walls of a gallery and was wishing Ben Polsky, installation wizard, could have teleported in. Thankfully Sau Bin was around, and once he arrived back from having lunch he and I spent the next 5 hours figuring out how to hang all of the works using a tape measure, thread, nails, and double sided tape. After much sweat problems, problem solving, and so on, all was well (and things that are supposed to be straight are). Very interesting to see all of the other installations going up—a lot of unconventional pedestals and objects. The opening is Tuesday night, & I’ll post full documentation on Flickr next week.

I had no idea there was so much process involved, but should have expected it because of the materials: Amy’s work features one seven panel piece (“Curry Politics”) a 50”x 34” laminated glossy print, and another large format triptych. My work (see picture) includes 14 large printouts of poems and an equal number of images—so lots of logistics. It was crucial that Sau Bin was there—I doubt I could have done it without him. Big traffic jam in KL on the way home, and (even though I enjoyed the work there) glad to be back in Cyberjaya.

2006-07-12T09:36:00.000-07:00

Today’s lecture, part of the "Tiang Sri/Center Pillar" series at the Muzium & Galeri Seni was a great success, and in some ways the best presentation yet despite the fact that when I arrived at the Muzium I was informed that I would not have internet access during the presentation. Fortunately, I arrive nearly two hours early and had some time—after meeting and talking for awhile with my host, Hasnul (Jamal B. Saidon)—to reconfigure the materials I wanted to show so that essentially no one would know the difference. Incidentally, Hasnul was part of the first group of students in RPI’s iEar program and it turned out that we had quite a few common acquaintances in the US (not to mention many common friends in Malaysia) like Neil Rolnick, Roberto Bocci, Mike Rose, and others as a result of my years at SUNY-Albany. My sense is that Hasnul is an extremely well connected guy—no wonder he’s running a museum in Penang! Anyway, I think the shift in materials was quite serendipitous for a few reasons. I used materials from The Little Magazine Vol. 21 cd-rom (Kostelanetz, the Monica hypertext), a number of pieces from the ALIRE cd-rom compilation, Augusto de Campos’ "Clip-Poemas," the Revista Cortex cd-rom, and showed John Cayley’s riverisland instead of lens. Maybe it was good for me to be talking about (or introducing) an alternative set of materials, who knows—but it worked. Plus, after introducing the basic typologies of digital poetry, I essentially abandoned the script and just used it as an outline, and comfortably ad-libbed the content, which John Hii (who’d heard a similar lecture at MMU and was in the audience today) said worked better. Since there was quite a large audience (at least 100 people, perhaps nearly 150), I didn’t want to drone on and I think the talk was more lively than it has been before. I also digressed into the relationship between poetry and digital poetry spontaneously, and at the end showed both my database project and did a brief demo of the eBook; this combination worked well, because instead of having to answer questions about why the material was digital poetry, we talked about things like process, the politics of the image, and other matters during the Q & A. The whole thing worked well, and it was great to be in such a cool museum (art and cultural artifacts downstairs, science installations—including a workshop on astronomy—upstairs. And before I left I was handed an envelope with some photos from the session, and a modest honorarium (which I wasn’t expecting)…a good day’s work (& at least 50 people took copies of the eBook home with them)…

Otherwise, spent an hour at a cybercafé on Chulia St. this morning, downloading student works and reading course bulletin board messages, then took a tour of the Cheong Fatt Tze mansion near my hotel. Tomorrow morning will head over the the Kek Lo Si temple before getting on an afternoon plane to KL. A very nice, if too brief visit to Penang, made all the better by taking in some laksa and ikan panggang at a hawker stall type street vendor type place thanks to my friend Rama the trishaw driver. Being in Penang this time is making me think the Penang poem a bit—like that it is unbalanced in its view at George Town as a reflection of the island. Coincidentally the poem and the recording I made on a trishaw ride here (with Rama and Stella) came up first when I opened the database; but this re-thinking is OK: if there’s one thing that’s for certain it’s that the cyborgian poem can always be altered, amended, added to, and subtracted from…

2006-07-11T18:46:00.000-07:00

The research presentation at National University of Singapore went well, and it was a treat to be in Singapore—although it was more than a bit expensive in comparison to Malaysia. I was glad to meet some of the faculty in the program of Communications and New Media, namely my host Sun and her colleague Alex (who expertise is in interactive media, particularly games). Once we made it through the requisite tech hassles everything went smoothly. Unlike my other presentations, the people who attended didn’t wait for the end to start interjecting questions, like when I was showing Loss Glazier’s "IO Sono at Swoon" someone asked, "this is poetry." I didn’t mind the interruptions and the opportunity to address such issues spontaneously, and in general the casual atmosphere suited me well. From what I can tell the NUS program is top-notch—I was glad to be there and will keep my eye on what is going on there for future possibilities. Beyond the digital poetry lecture, I showed them my database project (explaining my long term reasoning behind it) and also described the potential "neuro-nets" project that came up last week, which really interested them.

We saw an interesting exhibition earlier in the day at La Salle College, an art school on the edge of downtown S’pore. One installation especially interested me, by a Taiwanese artist who had thoroughly documented one of the islands off the coast of Taiwan. He had taken a lot of pictures and made recordings of sounds, like performances by indigenous singers and ambient sounds, and had a couple of chairs set up with headphones in front of a tv on which the images were projected on dvd. I thought the setup was effective, and that doing the same thing with my Malaysian works (with the addition of putting the poems on the wall) would be a great way to present the work. We also visited a couple of other galleries and art spaces, like the Red Dot, which were slick and inspiring.

Tonight—after traveling much of the day by train from S’pore—I’m off on a late flight to Penang, where I’ll be making a presentation at the Museum at USM tomorrow afternoon. So this is a bit of an Southeast Asian Island Digital Poetry tour, presenting my research and distributing the eBook to a few people who are interested in such stuff…

2006-07-06T08:57:00.000-07:00

I didn’t think it would be such a busy day, but when you least expect it….

Since it is my last month here for a while, a lot of people want to talk—which is cool. The first meeting was with Ali and Shaji—we discussed many ideas about re-contextualizing the Malaysia materials. Many possibilities! We talked about producing an interactive website, or a movie, and other approaches, but the one I liked best was making a cybertextual database where users could add their own materials. The main difficulty/issue then becomes how things can be interestingly presented. Shaji wants to figure out how to make a Flash movie write itself! Now there’s a farout concept…

I spoke with Lydia for an hour, about her research on mood and music, and building a taxonomy for the principals in multimedia. Reading her work made me think about things and look on the web for things I’d never considered before. Good scholarly exchange, and I hope to be involved with her future academic endeavors.

Finally I had a visit from a brand new acquaintance, an Engineering professor named Dr. Beik, who my friend Mohammad brought to the office. Beik, whose field is artificial intelligence, had caught wind of my studies in digital poetry, had attended the performance a couple of weeks ago, and wanted to talk. We had a nice discussion, then began to try to think of ways poetry and AI might successfully merge with one another. Before long we though of a project to work on, which involves using “neronets” to make poems. I don’t have the time to describe the process in detail, but like many interactive tools, you train it to do something, give it stimulus, and see what happens. So, if our idea takes off, we may try to see if we can get a computer to write verse that emulates the tone and style of a few dead poets. I think this would be an interesting experiment, and would diverge from the usual algorithm + database = syntax approach that most computer poets have used the past 45 or so years.

So I’d planned to use the day to get organized, do some teaching work, but for various reasons those things didn’t happen. But soon…

We’ll be visiting Singapore over the weekend & I’ll be making my presentation there on Monday. Should be able to file a report after that.

2006-07-05T07:53:00.000-07:00

First order of the day was an early meeting with Dean Rafi, with whom I had a good conversation for well over an hour, showing him the database, discussing my future as a consultant at MMU, and talking about a wide range of topics related to Malaysian culture. He encouraged me to go see a new exhibition about ghosts that is on display in Shah Alam (sounds good! we will probably will go). Afterwards I polished up my lecture, which I proofed and slightly revised in transit between Putrajaya and KL in the afternoon and evening—next week’s sessions should be the best iterations of the presentation yet.

In the early afternoon made my way by train to Melawati, the home of Manggis Productions, the media production company operated by my friends Fauzee (Nasir) and Fishie (Nazura Rahime). The purpose of the visit was to print out the Malaysia poems in large format for gallery display. After we figured out what process to use (copy .doc files into Adobe Illustrator), Fauzee’s assistant Fami and I spent about four hours getting the documents formatted and printed. It was an interesting process, and the results were fantastic. Manggis has a 1440 dpi color printer that can make A1 prints, so we were able to make printouts that were nearly four feet long; since they’re going to be on a wall, I figured best to enlarge the font to 18 points. Great (and unusual) to see poems printed out so big! All of the texts got printed, although we did not have enough time to laminate them (saving that part for next week). Fifteen images are also getting printed at A3 size. I’ll finish up the work and collect everything at the end of next week and head over to the gallery to put them up before the opening on the 15th. I was thinking of trying to put all of the texts and images up on the wall, fitting them together like a big (8’x 8’) puzzle but I don’t know if it is going to work out that way. We’ll see what happens.

Tomorrow my last day on campus for awhile, need to clean the desks up and get some things organized; also meeting with one of the students I will potentially be advising and my middle eastern friends who want to work on a movie with me. Should be a much more easy going day…

2006-07-04T06:32:00.000-07:00

Began the day by reviewing the Malaysia poems for a while, then recorded all of them in the studio with Ajoi. Ali came along and videotaped the session, not focusing on me but the papers and who knows what else. The readings were pretty good—maybe a couple of little mistakes—Ajoi and I eq’d some of the bass out of the voice and I think everything worked out well. We’ll see what, if anything, becomes of them material. Mainly I’m glad to have a good audio document of the work.

In the afternoon I finished preparing the syllabus for my soon-to-be-started NJIT course, which also turned out well and is now posted at http://web.njit.edu/~funkhous/2006/605/. Class starts tomorrow, 9000 miles away. I teach this course online at home all the time but for some reason it feels different being over here.

The only other activity I had time for today was to begin a revision of the lecture (“The Components of Digital Poetry”) I’ll be presenting in Singapore and Penang next week. When I was in Bangkok, Eric Curkendall gave me some good feedback on the lecture, and I’m incorporating some of his ideas and tightening the thing up in general. I should be able to finish this up tomorrow, no problem.

Tomorrow I’ll also be meeting with the Dean about the possibilities of future involvement as a consultant at MMU, and will take a ride over to Melawati and work with my friend Fauzee to print out pictures and poems (in scroll form) to mount in an exhibition that goes up in KL in a couple of weeks.

2006-07-03T08:20:00.000-07:00

I spent the first hour of the day in a lengthy discussion with my friend Ali, who continued (respectfully) to let me know just how disappointing (even boring) he thought my performance was. Naturally I agreed with much of what he said, and countered with plenty of reasonable, friendly, defensive rationale. The major difference of perspective boils down to the fact that my emphasis in preparing for it was on the content of the poems and the synergy of poetry and media elements whereas he and his cronies wanted more spectacular media; in part this is a generational issue, and a healthy one at that. What was most important for me, ultimately, was that I learned a lot from both the event and all of the feedback that has come (both negative and positive) since then. Then next time I present the materials I will do so differently, in part because Ali and a friend of his are going to re-version the images in a more animated mode. We’re also conspiring to make a collaborative movie out of my raw materials, which could be very interesting. To that end, I’ll be in the recording studio tomorrow morning recording all of the poems and he’ll be there making a videotape of me reading them.

In the afternoon I spent some time preparing the syllabus for an NJIT graduate course (Elements of Visual Design) that begins in two days, and talking briefly with Sau Bin about our upcoming art exhibit in KL. Then I spent two hours in a dialog with Sau Bin’s Creative Studies students, many of who were collaborators (by way of making installations) at the performance. This turned out to be mostly a discussion of my process, much of which I have told in this blog (although I went in to more detail about how the poems were constructed in a cyborgian fashion by making use of the Google Poem Generator). I also made the first public demonstration of the database project in the session. The students came up with some good questions about retaining inspiration (write it down, I said, and develop a discipline, etc. etc.). Despite the fact that I ended up doing too much of the talking, it was a good session.

This evening we (Amy, ConStellation, Aleatory, & I) went to a gala party thrown by the US embassy in Kuala Lumpur, to mark the 230th anniversary of “our” “independence” from England. It was a rare occasion, and probably the least Malaysian thing we’ve done in seven months, but we had a very nice time. Many of the other Fulbright scholars were there, we met the vice president of MMU, Amy chatted it up with the US ambassador, and so on. The event wasn’t held at the embassy but at a swanky hotel, and although our kids were the only children there I didn’t get any sense that they weren’t welcome; Amy explained that we’ve just finished reading a bunch of the Laura Ingalls Wilder books with Stella and 4th of July was a family event so we had to bring them. I passed out a few copies of the eBook and enjoyed the good vibes and food.

2006-06-30T07:15:00.000-07:00

At last I finally have a working prototype of the database I came to Malaysia to create, a fact that pleases me immensely. Keh Siong, without whom it wouldn’t have happened, came to my office with a cd-rom of working contents in the early afternoon. There are some minor imperfections, like odd carats ( > > > ) at the beginning of each poem, and the display “cell” for the poems are too small, but otherwise I’m relieved and happy to have something—an example of the type of textual organism I’d like to develop in the future. A lot of effort, a lot of process, and much technical know-how that’s new to me went into it, and a working poetic mechanism has emerged. I spent all afternoon trying to get the online version of the database to work, to no avail: the sound files (all less than 6 megabytes) simply will not load. All of the files (.doc, .jpg, .mp3) are online and can be read/seen/heard as stand-alone works, but the device that brings them together as one is not working correctly. I’m not sure what’s wrong with the coding and organization, but some flaw somewhere in the complex is preventing it from functioning properly. The presentation begins at http://web.njit.edu/~funkhous/13states/ - I do need to write a readme file, and do some other touch-ups, but the thing is off the ground and will continue to be nurtured and refined (for instance, eventually I will widen the presentational area so that the poems—particularly the acrostic sequences at the beginning—appear correctly). When I get back to NJIT I will begin to look for programming collaborators, and am open to working with anyone who has knowledge in database operations. Originally I’d planned to learn how to do it on my own, but as Prof. Somnuk (an IT professor at MMU) advised, it is better that I focus on content and let someone else handle the functionality (with my input and direction, of course). In any case, if you happen to take a look and have concrete ideas about how to make the present device work better, or want to get a cd-rom copy to tinker with, let me know and I’ll be happy to send one.

I’ll have nearly a full schedule of work next week, including a two hour session with the Creative Studies students whose work was part of my show last week, before heading to Singapore to lecture at the National University there (which is immediately followed by a trip to Penang to make a presentation at the USM Museum). Though I’ve completed most of what I set out to accomplish during this other-worldly adventure, there are still a few things to do—like refining the lectures, and preparing documents for an art exhibition (poems & images on display) that opens in KL on July 15 and two other performances. Apparently, some of my friends/students are going to make an effort to produce a video of the materials I presented in the performance last week too—it’ll be interesting to see what becomes of this possibility.

2006-06-29T05:55:00.000-07:00

We're back from a great trip to Thailand, where not a whole lot happened besides seeing some great sites, visiting with friends and family, and eating excellent food. I did post some pictures of last week's performance up at http://www.flickr.com/photos/the_funks/sets/72157594180173995/. Phuket's a nice place to visit and fairly photographic - but didn't lead to poems of any sort. We watched a cool movie, Syriana, which didn't make me feel at all proud to be an American.

Tomorrow back to work, hopefully finishing up the database project.

2006-06-23T07:03:00.000-07:00

Not much to report about. I took care of some busy work in the morning, tidying up a few things after yesterday (like returning Khong’s projector), rapping with colleagues (John Hii stopped by and gave me a bunch of pictures and some movie clips of yesterday’s show), and so on. It was Stella’s last (half) day of school (where she rec’d a “Head of the School” award) so we all went up to pick her up & out for lunch. In the afternoon met with Keh Siong, some confusion about the database and filetypes, trying figuring out how it is all going to be presented—either WWW or CD-ROM (answer: hopefully both), but he needs to re-work part of the applet because it was made for the .wav files, which are prohibitively large and take much too long to load. So, not quite there yet—hopefully in a week’s time will be complete (we meet again next Friday to finish it). After seeing Keh Siong, a bit of time to get some things organized in the office, do some database chores, and then met with Lydia, Forest, and Koo for a long tea time (and delicious dried coconut cakes) discussion. They were enthralled by the show yesterday and wanted to know all about it—how I managed to write the poems, what inspired me so much, how I was able notice profound little details captured in the pictures, and so on. I explained that I’d had great teachers, and other influences that really helped, like Blake, and friends who steered me away from mathematic abstractions and toward artistic ones, the importance of the “minute particulars” (which led to talk about the impossibility of real objectivity), the importance of invention, and a lot of other things. I’m going to miss all of these people, and such fun, friendly meetings, for sure.

I compiled the Malaysia poems into a single .doc file, 30 pages. I am planning to post all of the materials soon, but figure no harm in sending up the text tonight, as I am looking for feedback. Take a look at http://web.njit.edu/~funkhous/2006/13states.doc and send me an email about them (funkhouser@adm.njit.edu) if you’re inclined—I may take this file down when the database materials are uploaded, but for now the poems are there.

I’ll probably be off-the-blog (though not offline) for a few days, as we’re heading to Thailand again for a family holiday (love that beachside wireless). Time for a little conventional pleasure! My 42nd birthday comes on Monday & planning to celebrate (over a few days) with elephant rides, snorkeling, and a few massages. There’s some work to be done, like prepare a syllabus for my NJIT graduate class that starts the first week of July, but mostly taking it easy before a whirlwind July or lectures, performances, and finishing up stuff here in this wonderful country formerly known as Malaya…

2006-06-22T07:58:00.000-07:00

Though imperfect, we managed to conduct a grand event on campus today. Grey clouds rolled in about an hour or so before the show, as I could tell they would this morning, and it started to rain shortly thereafter but nothing at all like yesterday. At about 4:30 or so we started setting up and by 5:30 things were happening and quite a few folks—curiosity seekers, colleagues, students, friends—were hanging out wondering what the commotion was about (indeed it did get very noisy). We put all the gear on tables in chairs in case the sky completely let loose, and it did rain and thunder a bit during the proceedings but just lightly (and only loudly when I mentioned Mahathir in the Terangganu poem, lah!).

Glad to report that no serious tech problems were encountered—everything worked alright, although sorry to say it wasn’t all applied perfectly. Quite a few people commented that the quality of the sound(s) could have been better. To me, everything sounded alright at the time (and on the MiniDisc recording the words and sounds tussle a bit with each order) but given the cavernous indoor/outdoor space, I knew that this could be a problem. In hindsight I’d’ve turned the speakers around to face the area where most of the audience was. Siew Wai was a terrific accompanist, adding just the right amount of accentuation, and though the crowd noticeably thinned as time went on (the Malaysia poems take more than 45 minutes to read through), the gig was a real success in practically every way. The students I have been working with had quite a few comments to share, including expressing some disappointment in that they wanted more activity in the performance, which made me realize that I had spent so much concentrating on the texts, sounds, and images that I hadn’t put enough a lot of focus onto actually performing. I did make some gestures towards performance (wearing different hats and an oversized pencil around my neck, spontaneously picking up and walking around with a durian, and so on), but could have done more with movement, spent some time having images projected onto me, had other voices come in (they suggested having someone sing the Koran at various points), but will have to do that type of thing another occasion. All good food for thought. One thing that may emerge from it is that the students may try their hands at producing a studio version of the works, so that everything “can be controlled” and here’s hoping they follow up on that idea/possibility.

In all, the reading of the poems, in conjunction with the sounds and images went well. I’m proud of all of the work and believe that less than a handful of words are out of place at this point (no problems with the sounds or images). That the words were muddled a bit during the performance I can live with, and even though the presentation wasn’t flawless (had “ups and downs” as Sau Bin put it), it was totally worthwhile, as it has already—as soon as the show was finished—opened up instructive dialog about both digital performance and multimedia art and presentation. There’s no other way to make this happen besides experimenting and putting work out there. It was a nice scene, afterwards, with all of the family and a few friends there—the students opened up the perfectly in-season Malay durians and we all stood around eating them and talking for awhile after the gear was put away.

This was really only part of the day’s significant activity. In part to distract myself from the weather, and in part to be moving forward, I used the earlier part of the day to finish as much of the database interface as I could. I re-worked the opening page, created the basic index (for readers who want to consume the work in a straightforward rather than random way), and a production credits section. If all goes according to plan tomorrow, I’ll have the java program, the .txt files, and will be able to have the beta version of the project ready shortly thereafter. Even if the (inter)active version of the database isn’t immediately ready for the WWW, I plan to post all of files it contains within the next couple of weeks. I’m also anxious to begin showing the manuscript of the poems around a bit too, and am considering putting together a limited edition cd-rom of the database for those interested in such things…I may have just enough time to do that in the few weeks we have left here, but maybe not; we’ll see…

2006-06-21T07:32:00.000-07:00

When I arrived at the Faculty this morning, a little late as I had to pick up some cables at the Alamanda Putrajaya mall, the place was abuzz—at least in the area where my performance was scheduled to take place. Sau Bin’s “Creative Studies” students were building ornate, decorative, installations given the theme “East Greets West.” Lengthy batiks were hanging from the first floor to the ground, museum-like dioramas of songket weavings, local flora and fauna, and domestic settings were being constructed on site (I’ll post the documentation to our Flickr blog later). This I did not expect or anticipate at all, and to be honest I found the whole scene rather exciting and flattering. It was kind of odd—I’d spent many weeks preparing the materials for the gig and getting ready for the performance and found myself with little to do while all this other event-related activity was going on. In fact I couldn’t do much except watch the scene develop. It was nice to have the sense that something was really going on—everyone who passed through the building stopped to check the scene out, and was aware that something different was happening.

Then, about an hour before we were supposed to set up the sound and projection equipment it got really dark outside. Though it was a beautiful morning I knew that it would eventually rain because of surrounding clouds in the distance. But it didn’t just rain, it poured and poured and poured. We get rain almost every day, but usually for less than an hour, and usually not at this time. Today it rained for about four hours, two of which was extremely heavy. The adverse whether essentially transformed the performance space into a big, slick puddle and there was no way any electrical gear could be set up, so we ended up postponing the performance until tomorrow. Dr. Rafi, the Dean of the FCM, had warned me about this possibility when I proposed using this space for such purposes, and he was totally right. It was a bummer that it couldn’t happen, and though it didn’t stress me out too much I did get a bit of a headache for some reason. I was looking forward to doing the show in the environment that the students had labored to set up, and perhaps the headache was one of disappointment? Fortunately some of them are planning to come back tomorrow and put their work up again, so here’s hoping that the skies are clearer.

When it became obvious that the rain would not subside I did delve into some work in the office, making a prototype of the interface for the database project in .html which features flags of each Malaysian state. This part of the project is easy, but needs to be done of course. I received word from Keh Siong that he has built the applet and it works but that the file sizes are too large so it loads slowly, a problem that I should be able to fix without much trouble.

2006-06-20T07:35:00.000-07:00

Practically all day was spent preparing for tomorrow, and everything is in order on all fronts. After burning an audio cd of the second set soundtracks, I rehearsed the second set (Malaysia poems), for the first time reading them all aloud, with all of the images up on two screens and the sounds playing. I learned that the timer on one computer is slightly slower than the other, which means that the span of time between the projection of images will gradually grow longer as the presentation progresses. I also made notes on areas where some images needed to be removed, but in all I was pleasantly surprised at how well everything worked together.

After lunch I worked on the first set, outlining how the tech would work, finding the poems that accompany the animations (sometimes revising them in the process), and read all of them aloud. The sounds and poems are all a bit carzy—I’ll be interested in hearing what people around here make of them.

The tech “rehearsal” (we didn’t really rehearse, just got the gear organized) went well, although I need to acquire (at one of the local malls, hopefully) a headphone to quarter-inch plug adapter, so that sounds can be played from the laptop onto the PA. The other odd thing that I’m hoping to rectify is that one of the projectors projected white as yellow—I don’t know if this is because there’s mildew on the bulb or what, but I’m also going to try to borrow another projector for the show. In general, the projections were light, as it is an indoor-outdoor space, but that’s OK. What’s really awesome is the sound in the hall. The atrium is a narrow six story cavern, which gives a great reverb but prevents the sound from bouncing around too much. What we were able to play through the speakers (voice, instruments) sounded totally great. In all, very encouraging. Good to have the work organized, and to have the tech mostly ready to go too.

Afterwards, Siew Wai and I went up to her office to rehearse the second set together—she’s accompanying me on a variety of instruments: whistles, didgeridoo, bells, harmonica, and other percussion. The reading of the poems went even better than in the morning, although the two cups of teh terik I had earlier in the afternoon didn’t help my voice much. It was good to go through the material with Siew Wai, good to hear the sounds she is working with, and have another chance to review the poems. Sua Bin sat in for a bit of it but left so didn’t get a chance to get his impressions. I’m pleased with how everything has turned out, will make a few minor adjustments (to images) tomorrow, and wonder what everyone else will think.

2006-06-19T06:36:00.000-07:00

I worked on organizing images Friday night and some Saturday, but took Sunday off completely, to enjoy some relaxed time with family instead. Back to the images this morning, and finally have them all together and sequenced; the final tally is 554 (which at 5 seconds per means I have about 6 images too many, no problem). The most tedious part came this afternoon, renaming them all 001-554, then had a little trouble transferring them from one laptop to the other (cyclic redundancy error messages) but eventually managed to do so. Just as I’d finishing Ali and a friend of his showed up—I’d emailed Ali last week asking to help me set up an animation for the images but he hadn’t received the message until yesterday when he reviewed his bulk mail folder (why .edu messages, ones that aren’t sent to more than one person, end up in bul mail is beyond me). Anyhow, I told him I was resigned to using a slideshow approach now but we had a thorough discussion about other possibilites, including Flash, Powerpoint, Premiere, Dreamweaver, and so on, and even tried a couple of methods out to see how difficult they were. This was an interesting, unexpected meeting at which I learned a few things even if in the end I decided to stick with the original plan out of simplicity’s sake. Ali did take a cd of the images with him and may make something of them but I’m not expecting him to get too crazy over it and told him so.

The other thing that happened during their visit is that my eBooks were delivered, about 1,050 copies in 3+ heavy boxes, and I’m glad to see them at last. I like how the packaging came out, and when I finally had a chance to review briefly a copy tonight I was gratified by the contents and am very pleased by the project as a whole. Close readers will find a few strange errors in the texts but otherwise the thing works and is a reasonable output of the ground I’ve covered in recent years. The little typographic errors (some of which I have no idea how they happened) are minor and are no cause for discouragement. I’ll be proud to circulate them and have already started to do so on campus.

The day whizzed by (I also sent out some publicity emails, printed some posters and final versions of the poems); the only unfortunate thing that happened was that the tech setup for Wednesday’s performance that was supposed to happen was cancelled at the last minute because a foreign dignitary from Vietnam showed up on campus and the place that the big meeting (red carpet, President of the University type of affair) was happening was in the FCM office, just above the atrium where the show is going to take place. So we had to postpone it again, until late tomorrow afternoon. In the scheme of things this shouldn’t be a problem, though it means a long day tomorrow because I also have to rehearse with Siew Wai as well. Beforehand I have to script the whole thing, outlining what computer does what and when, but should have plenty of time to work all of that out no problem.