The Trajectory of Flying Memories

I wrote 8 poems for my final project and performed them in class.  Here is the first one:

The Trajectory Of Flying Memories

Hand in hand, we stand in line.

One in front of another

Like a row of corn,

Heads bowed

Shoulders hunched

Waiting patiently

In anticipation

Of what we do not yet know.

One by one

The man behind the counter stamps

The watermarked pages,

Crisp clean,

Dog-eared,

Creased perhaps,

Or slightly fraying at the edges,

A history of where,

A record of who.

Weighed down by where we've been

And where we have yet to go,

I cannot seem to see past

The immediate next flight of stairs.

Just then,

A little girl

Clutching her mother's dress

Points to a sign behind us

And I follow the line of intent

To let my eyes linger a little longer.

Silently, I turn to face forward,

Looking ahead

While I tuck my lingering glances

In a safe nook

In the cradle of my heart.

emma's sound project

here

Audimmersion

Hey everybody,

Sorry for the delay. I've uploaded my audio file for my file project to the link below. My project deals with the emotion of isolation, the audio I've recorded exemplifies the effort to combat that feeling. Growing up, I lived in the presence of cars, traffic, and passersby, only to lose them during my move to Providence. I didn't quite know until they were taken away just how comforting those sounds could be, and just how much they could affect my mood.

The track is ideally listened to in the following environment:

• A personal, quiet space.
• On a relaxing piece of furniture.
• With the windows closed.
• With your eyes closed.
• Laying down in a comfortable position.
• At a time right before you lay down to sleep.

Please take the time to listen, I hope you enjoy the experience.

Thanks,

-Jake

jake's final project

AUDIMMERSION

afton wilky on lex-ICON

Lex-ICON

Book Review by Afton Wilky (RISD BFA Painting 2005, Louisiana State University MA in Rhetorical Theory, MFA in Poetry (with distinction), 2012

Rain Taxi Online Edition: Spring 2012

A THOUSAND SEVERAL

Emily McVarish

Granary Books

by Afton Wilky

In A Thousand Several, Emily McVarish explores the space of a book through its relations to cityscapes. As if she has positioned her reader at a busy intersection, each page becomes a place that text and image move into and out of. In this way, the experience of reading A Thousand Severalfeels more like turning the pages of a flip book animation than following a continuous line of text from left to right and top to bottom.

The sense of motion produced by figures photographed in the act of walking, extends McVarish’s earlier experiments with duration and presence. In both A Thousand Several and Was Here (2001), words and images are the empty shells of what has already passed. By rendering the figures as silhouettes, outlined forms, or monochrome cutouts, McVarish calls attention to layers of blankness that accompany forms of representation. Additionally, by flattening three-dimensionality and cutting the figures out of their original context, she produces a page-space at once strange and familiar. On these pages, both image and text float until they intersect with another figure; this intersection cuts and connects at the same time.

It’s these “risk-slits” and “torn encounters” which surface as the subject of A Thousand Several. Once the “thin outer coating” of the book is opened, the “several” of the title becomes “sever al” on the title page, suggesting that the wholeness of words is merely the layer most often seen. “Kept in parts,” and “built in passing,” language and image are understood here as the sum of letters, outlines, and shadows, and as the “byproduct” of what is now over. By these terms, cuts seem to bleed glue.

The hyphen may be the perfect model for this cut/glued condition of language, since it literally “divides and figures . . . streets and open spaces” on the page. Straddling distinctions between text and image, the hyphen can be both a punctuation mark and a line. Here, thousands of hyphens strung together into dotted lines create the cross section of a “street” which cuts across each page.

Often, these lines darken a large stripe across the book, which appears strangely flat in relation to the depth suggested by the floating figures. However, like McVarish’s figures in which there is a range offered between silhouette and outline, a dotted contour also indicates this street. In this way, the street demarcates a space for occasional crossing and for the traffic of words.

Fluctuating between fullness and emptiness, the street refigures a dilemma of language and image—a dotted line fills in space at the same time that it draws the line to be cut along. The street then alternately makes visible and invisible the sedimentation of cut-marks. As can be seen in the second image, if we drilled all the way through this sediment, we would find ourselves in another world, or at least on the inside of a mirror. The implications of these organizations are further compounded when we realize that the cross section of this street might also be seen as the cross section of a book.

What takes shape in McVarish’s work, through the interaction of grounds, forms, and the text itself, is the idea that a word or an image is always a figure in unseen motion. Like a city, A Thousand Several is an amazing trace of its struggle, holding open the space of its passing by.

Assignment 2: Sound

Re-translation of a a recording of one of my original poems, 'Aqua', into an evocative space of sound.


AQUA

Andrea on Ingold

"He takes a one dimensional term and constructs a four dimensional idea."

Sneaking Into Pantone HQ

slate.com

How color forecasters really decide which hue will be the new black.

Yellow Iris, Lemon Zest and Solar Power, some of Pantone's shades of yellow

Courtesy Pantone.

Lines

"This book is shocking, in a way.  Conceptually it introduces a new idea by highlighting the obvious ... 
It is shocking to open a book to find an interesting unfamiliar idea -- and then have it applied to ALL THINGS."  (Sophie)

"Tim thinks line can change the world." (Jennifer S)

Reading Lines will inevitably affect my sight until the book is out to rest.  I am sitting in this room, seeing all the lines I never saw before.  Of course I have seen them all before, many times, but it isn't until now that they come into focus and have new purpose.  I am trying to imagine how Tim Ingold must feel.  In a way, lines must be a disease for him; a plague which he cannot escape.
(Note: If I had to have any plague, I would most definitely choose the line plague, so I sympathize with Ingold)

I don't think this book is proving any kind of argument, but rather offering a showcase for all the lines which are overlooked or generally unknown.  (Anna)

around risd

Love Song: I and Thou

BY ALAN DUGAN

Nothing is plumb, level, or square:

     the studs are bowed, the joists

are shaky by nature, no piece fits

     any other piece without a gap

or pinch, and bent nails

     dance all over the surfacing

like maggots. By Christ

     I am no carpenter. I built

the roof for myself, the walls

     for myself, the floors

for myself, and got

     hung up in it myself. I

danced with a purple thumb

     at this house-warming, drunk

with my prime whiskey: rage.

     Oh I spat rage’s nails

into the frame-up of my work:

     it held. It settled plumb,

level, solid, square and true

     for that great moment. Then

it screamed and went on through,

     skewing as wrong the other way.

God damned it. This is hell,

     but I planned it. I sawed it,

I nailed it, and I

     will live in it until it kills me.

I can nail my left palm

     to the left-hand crosspiece but

I can’t do everything myself.

     I need a hand to nail the right,

a help, a love, a you, a wife.

Alan Dugan, “Love Song: I and Thou” from Poems Seven: New and Complete Poetry. Copyright © 2001 by Alan Dugan. Reprinted by permission of Seven Stories Press.

Source: Poems Seven: New and Complete Poetry (Seven Stories Press, 2001)

titles

Lines: A Brief History


The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales


Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth, and Art


The Black Paintings of Goya


Frida Kahlo: The Painter and Her Work

first paragraphs

Iannis Xenakis: Bridging the Gap between Music and Architecture


The possibility that there is a connection between music and architecture is a topic that has been widely debated throughout history.  The topic has no concrete answer, for it is an area that is still being constructed, defined and questioned.  Because architecture and music function on two different planes it is an interesting opportunity for thinkers to discover the potential links between the two art forms based on similarities in their basic structure and principles.  This desire for the connection of two very different mediums is in essence poetic.  the great musician and architect Iannis Xenakis set out to try and bridge this gap, and in the way created some amazing examples of visual poetry in the form of architecture.  This essay is an attempt to understand how there could be a link between music and architecture, and why acknowledging a potential connection could be of great importance to the world of material poetics. 


The Movement of Medium and Meaning: An Eye on the Migrations of Fascicle 16

How often do we consider the visual stimulation of the written word?  We read words; we hear in our heads how each word sounds, but how conscious are we of the connections between the way a word looks and how we perceive it?  A handwritten word has more character and emotion than a printed word, and in turn, the digital word has a nature entirely of its own.  The way we perceive and digest written language is directly connected to how it is presented to our eyes.
The progression of Emily Dickinson's Fascicle 16 exemplifies the linkage between the character of a poem and the way in which it is displayed.  Each of Dickinson's fascicles is made up of individual handwritten poems, which she grouped and bound.  These primary sources are scripted gems, personally marked with intention and emotion.  In time the fascicles have been published in many different forms, on paper and on the web.  Taken out of their original context, the poms lose the gestural qualities they once possessed, and the sense of meaning given by the author's penmanship.  However, sometimes what is lost can be regained.  In attempt to revisit handwritten qualities, Jen Bervin, an artist of both text and textile, made a series of embroideries based on the marks made in Dickinson's original poems.  These embroideries bring us back to the attributes of their source, but offer something entirely new.  the shifts between the hand-bound fascicles to print, to the web, and then to Bervin's interpretation, demonstrate a system of filtration.  The original qualities and meanings shift and distill from medium to medium.

library references

Bettelheim, Bruno.  The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales.  New York: 
   Knopf, 1976.

Hyde, Lewis.  Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth, and Art.  New York: Farrar, Straus, and 
   Giroux, 1998.

Junquera, Juan José.  The Black Paintings of Goya.  London: Scala, 2003.

Kamvar, Sep, and Jonatham Jennings Harris.  We Feel Fine: An Almanac of Human Emotion.  New 
   York, Scribner, 2009.


Prignitz-Posa, Helga.  Frida Kahlo: The Painter and Her Work.  New York: Schirmer / Mosel, 2004.

Lines 2

The relations to textiles  represents the great analogy that fibers have to lines.  Textiles are an architecture within a 2D element.  Complex crossing, knotting and structure make lines into forms.

Joe + Anders

The trace and thread belong together and must exist alongside each other.  One is an active exploration, the other a record, but the lines can become both in many circumstances.  Surface, for example, stems from this.

Lauren, Esmé, Emily


-- more physical, tangible subject matter in this chapter.
-- Ingold still seems to tackle too much in one chapter.
-- more a study of the nature of people than the nature of lines.
-- looking at people through the line.
-- the line is a method to understand humanity.

Kyle, Josh, Anna, Wesley, Jen

-- You could describe almost anything in terms of lines.  As such, Ingold's taxonomy of different types of line seems arbitrary, and not necessarily useful.  The question then is whether or not line is a useful metaphor.  we think it is.


-- We are interested in the way threads come together to form surfaces, and vice versa.  This is a good metaphor for culture.

Emma, Tracy, Hania, Eric

Lines 1

-- How would you express sound without lines
-- translation of sound into line
-- four lines of the staff -- created a concrete wall separating sound and incanting.  People can "see" sound as if was conceived without ever needing to hear it.

Wes, Jen, Anna, Josh, Kyle

-- meaning of words are supposed to lie behind the sounds
-- sound cannot belong to language
-- all writing speaks, we read to listen
-- the surfaces of lines might be similar, but their nature often differs, e.g., language and music
-- the fundamental change in our experience of final project lies in moving through verses looking at.
-- only experiencing end product obscures journey and the authors.

Avery + Aaron


-- We think that Ingold is too quick to dismiss the importance of tone and inflection in speech.


-- We think the distinction between sound and meaning is a Western one.  Take Chinese, for example, where tone is essential to meaning.


-- There seem to be many exceptions to this rule, i/e/, script for plays -- written words that denote how speech is to be performed.

Emma, Tracy, Hania, Eric

The silence of the written words is a modern convention that has not always existed in language.  By silencing text, we lose the journey of the voice and the emotion within lines that once was so essential.  Poetry perhaps contains the key to this lost richness.

Lauren, Esmé, Emily

Lines (Introduction)

Lines need not be straight, strict dividing lines. Lines can connect, trace, and weave. We're interested in Ingold's defense of the humanity of lines. We're not sure about calling a dotted line a series of moments. isn't every line an infinite series of points? In elementary school art class, they told us that a line was a dot that took a walk. STRING THEORY! 

 Emma, Tracy, Hania, Eric

The best part of the book. (It) offers what we need. "Everything is a parliament of lines." Favorite parts: Darwin + the dotted line. Arguments: Inconclusive Style: Linear, parallel, not meeting, oposite to cover illustration, parallel circuits, they do not conclude. 

Jen, Wes, Anna, Josh, Kyle

What is linearity?  Is it straight?  On a more critical note, is it what he claims it is: rationality and logical progression of reasoning?


Everything is a "parliament" of line -- made up of them and ruled by them.


Why are lines "static" and not associated with all things in the way that things really are -- continuous and connected?

Avery + Aaron

What is not line cannot be defined tangibly, digestible to our logic.  Humans are linear thinkers.  Color equals otherness, vague, ill-defined.  So homophobia is a good parallel when dessecting the notions of what "otherness" is.

Joe, Anders

new rules

sit as close as you can

as close to the front as you can

help yourself to coffee

if you need anything else

say what you need

do what you like

those are the rules

where does authority for the rules reside?