Digital Poetry Investigation – Quoth-ing Mendel

I came up with some interesting results while exploring digital poetry in the links provided to us by Ms. P and I wanted to do a little show minus the tell cause’ the words to all the talking, so sit back, Dig on this Daddio and Catch Mendel Quoth-ing some Serenades

Mendel Quoth:

lyrical death by means of ink and paper

That swallowing chameleons makes you blue

we stuck together , our love was the glue

I don’t like chicken noodle or even beef stew

Mendel’s Serenade

lyrical death by means of ink and paper

Robots dance through fields of daisies

You say “pitty-pitty-pat” but disolve into a whisper

In Idaho and surrounding border counties,

Mendel’s Serenade

lyrical death by means of ink and paper

n-dimensional hypervolume is the phrase of the day

You say “pitty-pitty-pat” but disolve into a whisper

But the day-white smell always rips my dreams away

Catch this Daddio:

lyrical death by means of ink and paper

The pseudo-taco was very bland

You say “pitty-pitty-pat” but disolve into a whisper

I can chop off your right hand

Mendel’s Serenade

lyrical death by means of ink and paper

on fiddles Italian or Flemish

You say “pitty-pitty-pat” but disolve into a whisper

or a purple spiderfish

Mendel’s Serenade

lyrical death by means of ink and paper

my eye is full of glimmeries

You say “pitty-pitty-pat” but disolve into a whisper

And chase them across the skies

Mendel’s Serenade

lyrical death by means of ink and paper

tick tock meowed the clock

You say “pitty-pitty-pat” but disolve into a whisper

phil and the bearded clocks

Dig on this:

lyrical death by means of ink and paper

I integrated the flux, and thus refined the mesh

You say “pitty-pitty-pat” but disolve into a whisper

oh that this too too sullied flesh

Surrealist Writing Technique – Veristic Surrealism

I was looking up types of surrealism and came across one of the two more widely known versions called “Veristic Surrealism.” Veristic surrealism,

” brings the viewer face to face with the fantasy world of the painter or writer, and the artist tries not to filter the scene through his or her conscious mind. This means that the viewer is truly seeing into the dreams of the artist, and can interpret the work as he or she wishes.”

Basically put, an artist using a Veristic surrealist style depicts an unfiltered fantasy to the viewer so that the viewer can interpret the work in his or her own individual way.

So here’s my attempt at Veristic style surrealism

When I spit, I spit paint.
my words flow, and into minds I taint

envisioned with vivid murals.

It censorship, they way they seal my lips

the way my hands are gripped
I endure whips and hardships

they forget my kingship

my kinship to nobility, my heirship to the throne

only when I moan, they see my thoughts

it’s only when I groan, and cough up inkblots

cuz they associate me to crackpots and gunshots

them hotshot robots playing slots in their fancy yachts

Conformity, uniformity it’s the automaton of society.

Can’t life just lie to me, instead of flying past me?

My hands dance on its fingertips, and on them I scrawl

as if they marked the walls of Jericho, causing its benevolent fall

they only stall the inevitable.
my loyal subjects will carry on my work preaching with voices of  extreme decibels

I’l deafen the masses, until this facist society crashes

cuz they stole my crown and left me with gashes
those asses just want to cremate the king and dash my ashes

but there isn’t just one of me,

cuz as one of us falls, immediately emerges three

knights will take up my crown and become the next generation of kings

when we bomb the twin towers our acts are labeled as terrorizing

society, and all of it’s predetermined things

if we throwup they automatically toss us into the bin

our words are our sins,  so we wage a war we can never win

So if the pen is mightier than the swords, is the marker stronger than the gun?
the war has begun so I must take preemptive action

I’ll mark my place and erase your face from the human race by defacing it with this marker as my weapon
and of course you’ll retort with your cohorts shooting us up with guns of all sorts

but what you cant take from us is this distort reality

I will always have this mentality

built firmly upon this substantiality

because I spit paint and ink flows from my fingertips

you view my truths as cryptic

but in reality

your just sadistic.

Poet Investigation : Steve Venright

Whenever I think of Steve Venright, I remember his book “Spiral Agitator,” and although I’ve never read it, I can’t help but remember its cover. I’ve always thought of it to portray his “psychedelic” view of things because the cover reminded me of one of those tie-dye shirts hippies wear and get baked in, and after reading a short biography on him, I can kinda see where this idea comes from. Apparently Venright, even before his exposure to surrealist texts, explored deliriomantic states of entrancement in his writing process, which gives me the notion that his writing is definitely abstract. What really confirmed my thoughts on his views of writing is this line in his biography which states:

“My words, at its best, are psychedelic”- Steve Venright

This made really got my brain juices flowing, because I didn’t initially understand what he mean’t by this. After looking into the various definitions of “psychedelic” and “surrealism” I came across the realization that if surrealism is writing based on the subconscious significance of imagery then this psychedelic state Venright speaks of, is the best of his work as a surrealist writer because his writing, being “psychedelic,” is taking the notion of his work being in a state of severe perceptual distortion and an intensified sensory perception fitting the style of surrealist texts in its prime. I wonder if Venright actually got high during his writing process or not, in order to aid him into reaching this “deliriomantic” state, mentioned earlier in his biography. Whether or not if he did, I plan on reading his book, “Spiral Agitator,” just to see what writing looks like if you were either actually high or in a self induced state of high

Quotation Investigation :P

“Okay, let’s make one thing perfectly clear… in spite of what you may have heard, Recordism is not “an entirely new way of eating cheese.”"
- W.A Davidson

“My mother used to say that children, poets and schizophrenics all use language in a similar way”
- Gil Adamson

“The lack of skull, the absence of boundaries.”
-Stuart Ross

Writing Style Investigation

There are various forms of writing in modern day culture, one which is often overlooked being Rap. When someone thinks of rap, they usually think of music from the hip hop culture, but the lyrics to a verse follow a rhyming scheme making the writing of a “rap” or “rap verse” in itself to be a writing style. Rap music is created when the vocalization of rhyming verses are incorporated with a beat, therefore freestyle rapping without music can be labeled as spoken word poetry and the pre-stage of this, being writing rhymes or raps in a rhyme book, a writing style. I always thought of real rap, being music with content, meaning and not just repetitive hooks and verses, to be a form of musical poetry so the idea of battle raps or freestyle raps equating to spoken word poetry didn’t come as an unfathomable thought to me. What I do find unfortunate is the fact that today’s music industry makes it difficult for rap to be portrayed as anything more than music and the lyrics in these raps hold no meaning making its lyrical worth, to me, be next to nothing. What I wonder is why spoken word poetry and its correlation to rap is not acknowledged and why raps can only serve the purpose of musical entertainment in this day and age when some of today’s greatest lyricists are also its amazing poets. Rap to me is almost an epitome of poetry in the sense that music is the poetry of sound and raps consist of rhyming verses equating to poetry, therefore rap music is the music of poetry or if you do the math, poetry². The writing style of writing raps or simply rhyming verses, is a style of writing I definitely want to do more of and explore to a greater extent and depth. By analyzing the verses to a rap and deriving meaning from it, maybe in the near future I can compose my own raps.

Jeff Noon Investigation

After hearing Jeff Noon’s poem called, “Metaphorazine,” I knew for sure he would be an interesting person, so I decided that if I had to be marked on researching a poet, any poet, it would have to be Jeff Noon. So I looked up his bibliography. What i really found interesting was his idea of a classic childhood as he described “retreat[ing] inside himself, build[ing] his own inner world and throw[ing] away the key.” To me it kinda sounds like: a) he is describing all children as antisocial beings, b) he believes all children visit never-never land until post puberty or in extreme cases, a little longer or c) he believes children love to live in their imaginations. I’ll assume it’s a mixture of the three. After reading the personal biography of Jeff, and not the Press release version, it gave me a relaxed and almost humorous underlying tone which I felt Jeff Noon was trying to portray to his readers, especially the part where he describes growing up in a town called Droylsden as “not the sort of place to grow up artistic, unless a) you don’t mind getting beaten up and b) you’ve got serious plans of escape.” Jeff mentions his artistic talent specifically in painting, being exposed to Picasso at a early stage in his life yet he turned out to be a writer. I wonder why he didn’t pursue a career in visual arts if he was interested and skilled at it and instead chose to pursue writing. Being introduced to the poem “Metaphorazine” really opened my eyes to figurative writing/language; its depth and limits which I want to put to the test in the future and maybe if I take a trip to never-never land achieving this goal will be all the more easier

Graffiti Investigations

Freight train bombing done by early graffiti trendsetter dondi white

Initially, I believed that graffiti could only be seen as two things: a form of vandalism or modern street art. As I did some background research on the topic i came across the history of graffiti and more or less its roots. Apparently it dates back to more than 30 000 BCE which came as a huge surprise to me since i always thought the graffiti movement started in the 1960′s making it a more modern form of art. This took me by surprise since i figured it was the early Hip-Hop culture which gave precedence to graffiti as a form of art although this didn’t seem to be the case.
To me, graffiti has always been more than just a form of art or expression, it almost serves as a gateway into the imagination of an individual. It has no boundaries, not even the edge of a sheet of paper can limit it possibilities, and there is no specific way to create it. It could be words or symbols, drawings – even scribbles could be presented as someone’s graffiti and although there are popular styles such as wildstyle and flava sava, graffiti is loosely based on an individual’s style or preference and therefore anyone can create their own style making graffiti an ever expanding form of art.
Some previous knowledge I had about graffiti, being the hierarchy of classes (Pawn, Knight then King/Queen) made me wonder:
1) how would one achieve this status?
2) how would other artists know to acknowledge statuses

3) how would artists enforce who gets to crown their tags?

The complexity of the whole hierarchy definitely leaves me speechless since it’s a concept I’m still trying to grasp although it also puts some negative connotation on graffiti as an art since it implies graffiti artist thrive to boost there renown instead of tagging or bombing for more aesthetic reasons. Others would argue that beyond beauty, some graffiti is done to damage or deface property and i wouldn’t disagree with these claims for certain graffiti forms such as throwies and tags but I would disagree with murals being considered as vandalism since it is a graffiti artist’s representation of thoughts, ideas and expressions in the most refined way possible. In the future I plan on trying out different graffiti styles, even experiment with the use of spray paints on canvases or walls but for now, practice makes perfect

Yoko Ono – Cough Piece

As I viewed ubu web for different sound artists and their sound pieces, I came across one with an interesting title, “Yoko Ono – Cough Piece.” Out of curiosity I decided to click on the link and check it out but in all honesty, my first impression on the piece was that it was useless. I didn’t quite get Yoko Ono’s point – if any, of coughing for a good half an hour was about. The sound piece basically consisted of coughing along with an amazingly annoying echoing/rumbling sound which seemed to serve as white noise in the piece. The piece I will say nonetheless was interesting enough to keep me wondering what she was gonna do next – other than cough. Among the coughing there was the ever-constant echoing rumble coupled with the occasional tapping on a glass or the sound of an stone object being scraped across the sidewalk. I found the piece to be intriguing enough to listen to the whole half an hour because other than coughing Yoko Ono threw in random sounds which I didn’t quite expect & I tried to figure out the point of the sound piece which Yoko Ono was trying to display, but i didn’t actually enjoy the piece as the repetitive pattern proved to be quite annoying to listen to especially for such a length of half an hour. If I could ask one question to Yoko Ono, it would be what was the purpose of the cough piece, or if it had a purpose at all, and if not, why make the piece then? Although I could not figure out any meaning to the cough piece, I plan to continue to explore this certain piece and maybe try to answer my question without actually asking Yoko Ono herself.

Shhhhhhhh by Maja Ratkje

First pre and post impressions on Maja Ratkje’s video was that as I began viewing the video, I was expecting to hear a techno-induced voice, somewhat like a mashup of trance with gino beats but as I left the video I carried a completely different thought, almost puzzled, lost and confused. Maja Ratkje created a very interesting piece that had a lot of questioning sounds which resulted in my puzzled state as I finished the video. When I read some background information on her, I read that she was an active singer/voice user and electronics player which automatically led me to believe electronics + voice = techno/trance. Although I did not get what I was thinking of, I did enjoy the artists work as it seems she is trying to induce this feeling of curiosity or uncertainty with the sounds she creates with her voice. One thing I wonder is if she created a list of sounds she could make which gave this impression of uncertainty or did she randomly make sounds out of impulse using her voice to create this piece and if she could give this impression of uncertainty towards her audience, could she create a different emotion using her voice, which would effect us, the audience. I definitely intend of looking into whether she has other sound pieces which effect other moods in the future but until then, I’d suggest you view her puzzling voice – just as a teaser http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=GB&hl=en-GB&v=LaUaElAyjZY

Amy Yoshida – Thereness of a Voice

The first thoughts which came to my mind when watching this video were the high pitched yells you would hear from traditional Japanese music, the ones that kinda sounds eerie but at the same time very serene, but as soon as the voice performers began to buzz and make sounds similar to an didgeridoo, my thoughts of forests filled with bamboo stalks dissolved into a hot desert plain similar to the ones in Africa. The sounds again drastically changed depicting the image of a woman in a kimono preforming on a tatami floor because of the slight singing which could be heard in the background of the sound-piece. As i listened to the various sounds each woman was singing in harmony with the others, my mind was filled with different images depending on the sounds each woman was creating with their voice. About 2-3 minutes into the video, i just closed my eyes to help clarify the images in my mind. After watching the video again, i got the images of a bamboo forest, hot desert plains, a woman in a kimono singing, an apparition in the bamboo forest with the woman in a kimono, the forest ghost getting angry, an empty bamboo forest followed by the cries of the woman, the woman singing to herself once again in the bamboo forest – this time filled with distressed animals, the woman humming a tune to herself, the woman’s humming accompanied with some sort of mantra, sounds of the woman’s voice dying out and a pitch black screen, the piercing cry of a woman, a woman singing followed with footsteps down a staircase, piercing cries again with the low grunting of some sort of monster running after her, more footsteps up a staircase and finally the woman silent singing to herself with slow movement. From these images i can almost create a story of a woman which was killed long ago, her voice still haunting a forest. The forest apparition being the woman who’s cry’s never cease throughout the piece, whose job was a performer and flees a beast which was able to eventually kill her, her spirit resting in the forest. The mantra sounding humming could be a exorcism of the forest from which a previous spirit rested which the woman was able to escape from initially. The beast could be an animal driven by the original forest apparition to slay the woman, her death resulting in the replacement of his spirit in the bamboo forest. From this 8 minute sound piece i was able to form a story – without words. I then asked myself if stories could actually be told without the use of words and instead with sounds to create setting, character and plot. I believe it can be done and hopefully in the future i can make reference to a story of sounds rather than the conventional story of words