Brick

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.

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

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
  

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???

We have held our third Salon Surrealist Sélavy. Many thanks to Ruth and Claire of ::thestudio:: for hosting it at their art gallery in the basement of the Cambria.

We had twelve people seated on blankets in the innovative art space, and ran four short whole-group games after which there was a music jam. The number was about right for that format.  Besides nibbles and bevvies, we nourished ourselves with the following:

• Exquisite corpse in pictures – traditional Surrealist game. Fold a piece of paper four times, accordion-style. Draw something (not necessarily the head of a figure) in the top bit, fold it over so the next person can’t see and pass to your right. The next person draws in the second section of the paper, picking up lines where the previous drawing had left off.  Once four people have contributed to each drawing, open and display.  Laugh copiously.
• Collage – Classic Surrealist game. We cut out words and pictures from the current Cambrian News and rearranged them into surreal sentences, sticking them onto paper ransom-note style. In some cases, it was hard to beat the initial surreality of the original headline.
• Dream investigator – Mark Gidden’s invention. One person is the dream investigator. This game involves interrogation to uncover the content of a dream. In our case, we ran it twice, so I went out with the two investigators while the rest of the group worked on the dream.  During our exile, we generated random words for the next activity using strange dice and a book of stories by Margaret Atwood. One of the dreams involved cellotape and outer space, while the other involved whales and sunflower seeds.  Worked like a charm – many thanks, Mark, for this great idea.
• Parallel stories – Classic surrealist game based on automatic writing. We used the words generated during the previous exercise, which were written on sticky notes. Each person started writing a narrative. At random points, I called out a word from among the sticky notes. Participants have to incorporate that word into their stories.  Naturally there was some confluence but also much divergence.  Hilarious.
• Music jam – A few people left as it was getting late, but the remaining folk had a music jam. Ted on guitar, Ailsa on cello, Becky on hang drum, and near the end I imposed my voice on the eardrums of all present.  Thanks to all of you for bringing instruments and contributing such fine music.

If I can get myself motivated for more typing, I’ll type up and photograph the artifacts and put onto the Facebook group.

Next on the agenda is not a proper salon but a beach party that includes the candle activity ‘Amassing Light’ and music jam.  All are welcome.  The date will most likely be mid-July, once everyone is back from their travels to festivals etc. It will depend on the weather, and so has to be organised fairly last-minute, I’m afraid.  However, I now have a couple of hundred tea lights and some other candles so we have a start.

Virgil and the Accelerators opening for the Fabulous Thunderbirds at the Robin 2 in Bilston.  Check out my new YouTube channel that has some clips taken with the new Flip camera.

There is also a short one of me doing fire poi.

YouTube – msjacob1234’s Channel.

PodcastGlamorgan April2009’s Podcast.

This is a record of the all-day podcasting workshop that was given at the University of Glamorgan in April 2009, organised by AU staff in conjunction with CILT-Cymru.

Virgil and the Accelerators now has a new line-up.  I just came from Rummers, where they played a fantastic gig.  Virgil is amazing with his lightning-fast fingers.  The playlist is mostly new material compared to the old line-up, and they even played a song that they’d just written today.

Go see them!

Welcome – Virgil and the Accelerators Blues Band.

Thanks to Andy McPherson’s animation workshop, I’ve had another go at the signature piece for Rrose Sélavy involving reconstruction of roses.  This was my first proper go at animation.  We used Toki Line Test.

Here is the current version, without sound signature piece (on drop.io, Flash format).

The next step is to get a soundtrack.

Having had the experience of making this, I am tempted to plan a more proper go using a camcorder and better software, perhaps?  Ooooh….I’d like proper DVD quality.  Or maybe that is just because I like things to remain ‘in progress’.

Snap-shot

notes for a possible poem, created 2 April 2009, updated 14 April

I close my eyes

slowly

field of vision darkens

squeezed into a slit.

I open again

slowly

to blood beading on eyelashes

no wound

it’s only a gash of tulips

in the sun

still

it stings

Process notes: Not sure if this is a ‘poem’ or not. The image below was taken with my phone camera, the poor quality of which I perversely like.  I include it here as documentation. Words as poem will stand without the photo, of course.

phone camera image of Cathay’s Park

I haven’t been putting too much new info onto the Scrapbook lately, but have been working out some ideas over the past two months.  Today I have posted the biggest idea so far, which is tentatively called Synesthesia 2.

I’m looking for people who might be interested in exploring this idea of cross-modal, inter-media collective improvisation.  Do click on the link and let me know what you think.