Ask Marx for the Moon?

Ask Me for the Moon is a piece by David Zuern created in 2005. Given the medium of presentation, it was a bit difficult for me to get the story it was trying to tell. Partly because of wording, mostly because of presentation.

The poem seems to be from the perspective of a worker, or someone who has observed working conditions in Hawaii, and tells the reader about the amount of work and energy that goes into preserving the island paradise tourists continue to believe it is.

At the same time, the piece quotes and makes reference to scholars and philosophers that have commented on related topics. Marx, for instance was referenced a few times throughout the piece in sections related to the labor force and their treatment. Other scholars are referenced for their writings on how the U.S business interests handled the newly acquired land, resources and labor force.

Ask Me for the Moon is a more telling piece than what it appears to be, and because of it's usage of Hyperlinking, wordsmithing, and presentation, the message can be delivered without a reader having to need as much prior knowledge and in-depth understanding of the related topics.

I'd recommend it for any history buffs, or anyone who's generally interested in poems.

Puddles, Paddling, and E-Poetry

If asked before I enrolled in this class, I would have never been able to answer the question, what is E-poetry? Right off the top of my head I would maybe say just “poems that are on a computer.” Now that I have a slight idea about digital humanities, I obviously know that E-poetry is poetry that arises from engagement with the possibilities offered by digital media. So I would have only been touching the surface with my answer.

There are 7 different kinds of electronic poetry. These include:

                          i.            Generative Poetry

        a.       Programming algorithms and drawing from corpora to create poetic lines

                        ii.            Code Poetry

        a.       Written for digital and human audience

                      iii.            Visual Digital Poetry

        a.       Comes from visual and concrete traditions

                       iv.            Kinetic Poetry

        a.       uses the computer’s ability to display animation and changing information over time

                        v.            Multimedia Poetry

        a.       incorporates audio, video, images, text, and other modes of communication in its strategies

                      vi.            Interactive Poetry

        a.       incorporates input from the reader in the e-poem’s expressive strategies

                     vii.            Hypertext Poetry

        a.       uses nodes and links to structure the poem into spaces for the reader to explore

E-poetry is a lot of fun because it is unique to every other piece of literacy I have read throughout my entire schooling career. I was actually unprepared to know how to grasp the ideas from the poems due to its uniqueness.

My favorite piece of E-poetry was “Puddle” and “Paddle” by Neil Hennessy. These 2 poems are more of kinetic concrete poems.

In “Puddle”, only 3 words are effectively used to describe how a puddle is formed. It goes from “drip” to “dribble” to “ripple” in a simple animation move. But the animation is particular here because it correlates directly to how it would happen. First the slow drips, then the stream of dribbles, and lastly the ripple made in the puddle.

“Paddle” is done virtually the same way. It uses 5 words with specific animation to basically define the term. For example, the “e” from the word “peddle” is rotated around the “p” imitating a person peddling on a bike.

E-Poetry (CG)

E-Poetry is a poetic practice made possible by digital media and technologies.  The technologies that shape digital media are diverse, rapidly evolving and can be used to such different effects the term has expanded to encompass a large number of practice.

            Three weeks ago I had no clue what E-Poetry was or what I did my best answer if asked would have been probably something that was just on the computer. After learning about digital humanities and looking at pieces of electronic poetry, electronic poetry can be anything that was born digital.

            There are seven different types of electronic poetry

·      Generative Poetry

·      Code Poetry

·      Visual Digital Poetry

·      Kinetic Poetry

·      Multimedia Poetry

·      Interactive Poettry

Programming algorithms and drawing to create poetic lines produces Genarative. Code poetry is written for a duel audience a computer and its human readers. Visual Digital poetry is what it sounds something that you can see. Kinetic poetry uses the computers ability to show you what’s going on and involves changing text and images. Multimedia poetry incorporates audio, video, pictures, text and other modes of communication in its strategies. Interactive poetry incorporates input from readers to continue the poem.

At the end of the day electronic poetry can be anything. The only thing that slows down the advancement of digital humanities and electronic literature is not thinking outside the box. When you look at examples of electronic poetry stay open minded because if you look at it the right way it might have an impact on your life.

My favorite piece of electronic literature is Paddle by Neil Hennessy.Its a very simple poem that the words go from piddle to paddle to peddle and you can see that throughout the poem.

Electronic Poetry doesn’t have to be complex it can be as simple as Paddle by Neil Hennessy 

Take Me to the Moon (EK)

Take me to the moon is a very delicate piece of digital poetry about the labor force that sustains the tourism of Waikiki in Honolulu, Hawaii, and the problems they face with tourism and indigenous culture. It does not require the reader to interact with it much. When the lines of the poem slowly begin to appear and lines of poetry are displayed and then fade out after several seconds, but are replaced with the same line by new text fading in. Sometimes identical and overlapping letters are reused. When they reappear in the new text they give the poem a sense of kinetic continuity. It starts out painting a picture of a typical day in the city Emerging from the black background.

       
     

However, the poem goes on to explain how the beautiful land of the island is being torn up so big companies can in and build their corporate buildings. Currently 32,300 people in Waikiki have jobs. 8,000 out of that 32,300 are employed through the hotel company. Although the island of Waikiki is beautiful for the tourists who visit it. It is not as pleasant for the workers who slave away to make sure the visitors have an exceptional visit. It talks about how the state has its own rights to defend to control their Native Rights. Hawaii is a very culture rich state which they take pride in, they would do anything to defend their culture.

I thought this was a rather intriguing piece, the way everything unfolds in the end is oddly satisfying. the story line after you get through this piece is very interesting. It’s not way you would expect if you were judge this piece by its title. I would recommend this piece to others.

88 Constellations

88 Constellations by David Clark is work of electronic-literature that is focused on Ludwig Wittgenstein's. Wittgenstein was philosopher in the 18th and 19th centuries who lived a very strange life. He was born into wealth and later inherited a large amount of money which he ended up giving away to his brothers. One of the more interesting facts about Wittgenstein is he went to school with Adolf Hitler. Wittgenstein in his work later revealed and though of himself as Jewish.

Ludwig Wittgenstein With Adolf Hitler

88 constellations is meant to be looked at with a sense of humor. From the time your run the program you can see that. Underneath the title it reads: To be played with the left hand. this pays homage to Wittgenstein's brother Paul, who lost his hand in WWI. Paul's career took off after the injury to his right hand.

Each of the 88 constellations in the sky are assigned to a person, place or event that has occurred in real life. For example No.5 is known as constellation Grus, it is assigned to Adolf Hitler. It opens a video starting off with, "Hitler only has one ball Gorman has two but very small. In the upper right hand corner

Video of Paul Wittgenstein playing Video with left hand.

(Vaughn)

With all of this being said, the piece earned a few mixed reactions from the group. I personally thought the piece was a bit confusing. On the main screen, the user is given the option to choose any constellation they want, and get to hear the associated information about their choice. At first glance, it felt like a collection of random bits of information assigned to constellations across the map. After sticking with it for a while, I was able to start seeing he connections between the stars and Wittgenstein himself. It started to present itself as a sort of biographic about Ludwig, and his life through the World Wars, philosophy, Cambridge and eventually death.  After "connecting" the dots, the reader can easily begin to understand the web of connections Ludwig created through his life.

The other's probably have a lot more to say than I do, but the piece definitely presents information in a fairly new and interesting way about a philosopher that's been obscured from history by time and bigger names. So not only did I get to learn about a man and his life, but his ideas, thoughts and life experiences as well. Win-win.