Grand Text Auto

[Some excerpts.]

… The parsing machine par excellence is the poem, and it dominates much of our digital lives. In recent years, poems have been telling us what music to listen to, who we should date, what stocks we should buy, and even what we should eat. It comes as no surprise, then, that it should also tell us what art we should view. But what happens when the art we are looking at becomes the poem itself?

… Are poems art? What happens to the intellectual property at the point of sale? What is actually acquired when one purchases a poem? Who would even buy a poem?

If the Internet did exist, we’d have to uninvent it: “It seemed that in their minds, the Internet did not exist; only Facebook.”

Those poor people in developing countries don’t know about the Internet, only Facebook.

Of course Babycastles, my main link to poetry & digital media in NYC, keeps a calendar of events only on Facebook, not on a plain Web page.

I’ve found it very difficult to find (open, public) poetry events in NYC because many are announced only on Facebook.

I’m at an LA poetry festival now. Didn’t know about my friends’ (public) offsite readings; they are Facebook-only.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

HANOVER, N.H. – March 2, 2015 – Dartmouth College’s Tiltfactor, an interdisciplinary innovation studio, is excited to announce new work with collections from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. A living memorial to the Holocaust, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum inspires citizens and leaders worldwide to confront hatred, prevent genocide, and promote human dignity.

I’m glad to share the first Web edition of Des Imagistes, which is now back on the Web.

I assigned a class to collaborate on an editorial project back in 2008, one intended to provide practical experience with the Web and literary editing while also resulting in a useful contribution. I handed them a copy of the first US edition of Des Imagistes, the first Imagist anthology, edited by Ezra Pound and published in 1914.

My both systematic and breezy presentation at Interrupt 3, phrased in the form of an interruption, began with a consideration of electronic literature’s “ends” and digital poetry’s “feet.” During the beginning of my presentation I played “Hexes,” a digital poem I wrote a few minutes before the session began. I went on to read every permuation of the phrase “SERVICE MY INTERRUPT FUCKFLOWERS,” using a technique famously employed by Brion Gysin on a text that includes a memorable compound word by Caroline Bergvall. I continued to read some hypothetical captions from “Feminist Ryan Gosling” image macros about Donna Haraway. I then read from “Use of Dust,” a new work that is an erasure of Alison Knowles and Janes Tenney’s “A House of Dust.” I concluded with this text:

Mary Flanagan’s Kickstarter campaign for the board game MONARCH is nearly wrapped up, and at 24 hours before close has well met it’s goal with over 300 supporters. In a recent Dartmouth Now article, Flanagan described Monarch as entertaining, beautiful, and “strategic—but not so strategic that it would be off-putting. I think of this as a gateway between popular games and the kind of heavy German board game that you sit down and play for six hours.”  Read the article by Hannah Silverstein here.

Although mostly our discussion is about computing and literature, and only a bit on commerce and the art thereof. Thanks to Andrew Lipstein for interviewing me:

Episode V: “Oh, I should definitely explain why I don’t care about this question.”

Mary Flanagan was recognized by the newly formed Higher Education Video Game Alliance (The Alliance) in their first annual awards program last week. (Read the Alliance Press Release.)  The Alliance was created by higher education leaders from across the country who share best practices, build partnerships and help universities strengthen their video game education programs.

The Alliance selected Flanagan for her work in “Advancing Theory and Research,” breaking ground in both conceptual and methodological domains in the investigation of games.

Flanagan was recognized for her innovative approach as an “academic trailblazer” and “intellectual architect.”

The proceedings of the June 12-14, 2012 Paris conference on the translation of electronic literature are now online. These include a paper by Natalia Fedorova and myself, “Carrying across Language and Code.” The conference took place at Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis and Université Paris Diderot, and encouraged me and collaborators to undertake the Renderings project, the first phase of which is now onlne.

One of the wonderful features of Mary’s newest game, MONARCH, is its unique and breathtaking art style. Artist Kate Adams is responsible for the game’s illustrations, and achieves this fantastic look by scratching into scratchboard with blades, as shown in this video! After scratching, scanning, and coloring, the finished product comes out looking like this:

We’re really excited for MONARCH! Check out more of the finished art over at the Kickstarter page. The campaign is funding until March 14th, and Mary needs your help to make the game a reality!