technology, learning, surrealism, and music

surrealist poem generator result

Here is one poem created on the Manchester Art Gallery site for online exquisite corpse. This one sounds like a real poem, pretty much.

http://www.manchestergalleries.org/angelsofanarchy/besurreal/poems/complete/61/521

The goblin spoke in stones and pyramids

Wings empowered the lioness to write water lives

unlike others my wings slightly tainted

i must swim to reach your beaches, feet in my dune

and out spilt waves of shadow from nature’s womb

Reflections in the sleeping eye of the one I love

Feet of wisdom travel through lifes depth

his blue eyes pierce my heart, I fall to my knees

I saw a cat eating food

if there was ever any doubt…

Angels of Anarchy

…this proves I must be a surrealist poet.

I’m looking forward to the surrealist women artists exhibit in Manchester!

Gwella launch – Nexus website

On 21 October 2009, we held a launch to announce the new Nexus website for enhancing learning through technology, as well as our other Gwella activity: http://aberystwythuniversity.xwiki.com/xwiki/bin/view/Main/WebHome

Nexus is part of the Gwella projects undertaken by AU, and we are using the site to pull together the various threads of the projects. It includes case studies of good practice in e-learning, annotated resources, news items, good practice guides, and more.

It is a joint product of the E-learning Team at Aberystwyth University. We hope you like it!

Word cloud for the blog – equinox

another poem

Here is another piece that I drafted in August. Maybe still revise it.

Blossom

The future creeps towards you,

the past speeds away.

The world shudders and cleaves,

tears open a void at your back,

black and gaping, a vacuum

that pulls at your coattails

like a hungry child.

Exquisite moments

blossom and melt simultaneously

beneath your fingertips,

at first touch.

New poems

Three new poems. The first two are from a new series called ‘Postcards Made of Feathers’, which feature drawings from life (rather than from the depths of the psyche) presented together with poems that capture the particular moment. The third is the basis of the Axons and Dendrites piece based on a much earlier journal entry. You will notice some threads linking these poems.

This Empty Moment

by Rrose Sélavy, Postcards Made of Feathers series 2009-09-14

The sound of a boiler.

Clink of unseen dishes put down carelessly.

Two alternating notes the only part of the music that makes it through the window, over the wall and down to this empty courtyard on a cooling breeze.

Empty tables beneath a square of empty sky.

A bit of wire on the trellis.

——

In the Gap

by Rrose Sélavy, Postcards Made of Feathers series 2009-09-21

If you are still enough,

behind the long silence

you can hear all the notes

that have been played

or will be played,

arrayed

like leaves on a vine –

opened, unfurling, and yet to be born.

All moments at once

twining through the stillness,

chiming

like jewels.

—

Axons and Dendrites

Extract from the journals of  Rrose Sélavy

28^th August 2007. Aber seafront, sunset.

Intense colour here today.

Strange that he was pretending for so long, hard to imagine what he was thinking.

Look out to sea. Thin strands of desire shoot out in all directions, wafting, attach to nothing, then trail off into wispy clouds.

The landscape overlaid with the inner world.

I’ve been in a box with no walls, need human contact.

Synapses, axons and dendrites, thin tendrils reach toward other brain cells, send a spray across the gap. Neural net buzzes as nodes light up.

The gap and the bridging of it.

The inner world overlaid with the landscape.

Extend the self, merge into the landscape…

The sea’s surface lit up like blazing mercury, wavelets seethe in patterns so complex they look random. Filigree surface, power beneath.

Bridge the gap. Connect connect connect.

Axons and Dendrites

It is hard to describe the evening tonight. We had Dr. T on guitar, Ailsa on cello, Becky on hang, Mick on sax and mixed percussion, and I conducted via dancing. A visitor, Dan, was on cymbals. We also had Jo and Martin, who did some dance and contact improvisation movement in the latter part. The result was magical. It was a very meditational, spiritual-sounding effect.

What does this mean? We held an initial exploratory jam for the Axons and Dendrites piece. We wanted to see how the musicians would work together, and whether they could interpret the concept. We ended up doing one continuous jam from 8.30 to 10.15, when we had to start closing up. This is only the first step in developing the piece, but I am very happy with it as a first step.

The performance will consist of back projection images, with musicians in front and dancers in front of them. I have a full set of images of neurons, to which the musicians and dancers will respond. I also have a draft of the prose piece that will be read out as an ‘extract from the journal of Rrose Selavy’.

The next step is to group the images into three or four sets that will correspond to the movements of the piece. The next time we practice, we will focus on developing different themes to work with in each movement, and how to achieve variation and balance among the voices.

There are one or two more dancers who are out of the country at the moment, so next time we hope to have the whole group together.

I’m totally chuffed!  It was a great session and the real performance will be captivating.

Oh yeah, and we had a lovely jazzy music jam at my flat with Ted, Mick, and Becky.  Cool evening, indeed. 

Brick, poem revised

Just had a go at revising this.  I think it is in its final form.  But then, I usually think that and then find more things to change.  Anyway, would welcome feedback.

Brick

Poem, written 5 June 2009, revised 4 July 2009

eyelids of shops shuttered down
deflect even the gaze
not to mention the thrown brick, the thieving hand
the whole town
has arms crossed tightly across its chest

traffic lights flick from posh to derelict
as you move through the empty avenue
someone or two scurries past, clutching carrier bags
in both hands, eyes averted
evaporates at a side street

the flicker of butane illuminates a face
then just the ember glows
in the gloaming as the figure
turns to silhouette against a silver sky
that tarnishes by the minute

look for illumination, a spark in the eyes
and find only brittle smoke
smoke and mirrors, phantoms
that dissipate and slip away
leaving you standing alone
between shuttered storefronts
and broken brick

Technology Tools

Here are some of the technologies that the E-learning Team at Aberystwyth is currently exploring or using:

• YouTube EDU – special section of YouTube for university channels http://www.youtube.com/edu
• Wordle – word clouds – make a visual representation of the key words in any text document http://www.wordle.net/
• Meet-o-matic – meeting scheduler http://www.meetomatic.com/calendar.php
• Posterous – upload short video, audio clips, images, text, like a blog but no account creation http://posterous.com/
• Wink – screencapture with annotations http://www.youtube.com/edu
• Jing – screencapture up to five minutes http://www.jingproject.com/
• Camstudio – screencapture  Open Source creates either AVI files or Flash files:
  • Download site at SourceForge: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=131922
  • Home page for the open source product http://camstudio.org/ if you get it from here, be sure to click the right download – you want the free Camstudio Open Source, not the commercial product Camtasia.
• Voicethread – online conversations based on images/videos http://voicethread.com/#home
• Flip camera – cheap and easy digital camcorder http://www.theflip.com/
• Prezi – zooming presentation editor http://prezi.com/
• Tweetdeck – integrates Twitter and Facebook feeds http://tweetdeck.com/beta/
• Spotify – listen to music online, search by song, artist, album etc http://www.spotify.com/en/
• Mindmeister - proper mind-mapping  http://www.mindmeister.com/
• MyWebspiration - online version of Inspiration for concept mapping http://www.mywebspiration.com/
• Cmap tools – concept mapping http://cmap.ihmc.us/conceptmap.html
• Papershow – digital flipchart http://www.papershow.com/en/index.asp
  

poem – Brick

I’ve just added a new poem to the conceptual art scrapbook.  It is truly an extract from the journals.  Please see Brick.

Tell me what you think???