Traffic

Kenny Goldsmith is a master at taking something that I will call every day, some might classify it as the mundane, and taking it to the extreme and making it comical. He accomplishes this in his piece “Traffic.”  Goldsmith takes a simple interview with the notoriously reclusive Andy Warhol and repurposes into a minute by minute exaggeration. These pieces that he does, always border on the line between offensive and funny without ever really crossing the line to offensive, but always having his toe on the line. Doing this not easy, because it is incredibly difficult to not really care if you offend a small portion of the public, while still be mindful of the majority of your audience.

Soliloquy

“Soliloquy”, has a very frenetic feel to it as you drag your mouse across the screen and receive numerous responses to the same question at the top of the pages, until you move down the page in the same direction, than it becomes an instant message or text conversation between people. This was a disorientating experience for myself. However, having met and seen Goldsmith perform his work, this feels more authentic to my experience on both of these occasions I had the pleasure of sitting in the audience.

The confusion and disorientation I felt reading “Soliloquy” was something I had expected and was more than a little surprised when reading “Traffic.” This is not to say that I didn’t feel disoriented while reading “Traffic,” it was just a different feel. In “Traffic” it was more of a barrage of text in a minute by minute transcript. While in “Soliloquy” it is a what will happen if I do this feel. Both these methods are challenging.

Uncreative Writing

Goldsmith does a great job in this essay of explaining his work and the reasons for this trajectory. I had never heard of Marjory Perloff before this, or her idea about the extinction of the romanticized idea of the isolated genius who emerges from isolation to present a masterpiece of literature or original thought. Unfortunately, the proceeding generations as a whole will never experience such an idea. It is most definitely time that we embrace this and find a way to use this hyper connective of the digital age to benefit humanity. In the process if writers can make an honest living doing this, than we should, keeping in mind that what we put out there is important and will affect people in some way.

J.R.Carpenter

I had never heard of, much less read any of J.R. Carpenter’s work. That being said, I have to say, I was very much challenged by it, in a profound way. When I first clicked on the link, it was an interesting interaction between image, text, and technology. In my first read through, it was not incredibly impressive to me, but I kept having this nagging feeling in the back of my mind that I was missing something. I could not shake the feeling, until I went back through each piece a few more times.

I began to feel more than a little unsure of what was going on as pieces I had read moved around the screen, almost as if they had a mind of their own, or possibly alive in the same way other mechanical things are alive. This moving feeling never subsided, in fact as I kept leaving and coming back to the texts, I found myself faced with different experiences each time. I made five separate attempts and had five different experiences. These experiences left me thinking about the writing process, storytelling, and the acquisition of knowledge.

The knowledge we have gained as individuals comes in many forms and from multiple sources, many times from more than one source at a given moment. How do we as educated individuals deal with this? This is a question I struggle with on a semi regular basis, as like all of us, I interact with people in many different situations. I struggle with shaping the message for a particular audience, while allowing enough space for people to feel comfortable entering a situation at any given moment. This is I how felt in my numerous attempts. In my first attempt, I felt very comfortable reading each text.  However, as I went from one text to the next, my feelings of control went away.

Chris Mott

Chris Mott makes many compelling arguments for  the teaching and usefulness of electronic literature. For someone like myself, this is a huge compliment. I agree completely with with him when he mentions the practicality of it in the current moment. “The first reason to teach electronic literature is practical: digital media are the most rapidly growing forms of communication, and they will only grow in their influence and pervasiveness”.  I understand that this is indeed the reality of what we as future college professors are up against. It makes a lot of logical sense that we need to become more and more familiar with this new form of communication.”Further, many teachers find themselves attempting to improve their students’ understanding of academic discourse by bridging the gap between the academic world and the world of popular culture”. This idea of bridging the gap between worlds, is the main reason I become a writer and than decided to continue on and pursue a doctoral degree and help people in two ways. The first, as a poet/ performer I attempt to tell my stories in away that allows a kind of freedom for myself and the audience to feel each word and inspire them to tell their own stories and help others in their own way. Lastly, the study of critical theory, the hardest part of the process of showing value in the study of literature. “Surely, we in the humanities who have taught critical literacy all along are the best equipped to shoulder the responsibility of helping our students not only to understand and use, but to evaluate and create in and through electronic media”.  All of these things are valuable to us and if we do our future jobs, can become a valuable and a life line for our students.

Thoughts on Vicuña

Introduction

Rosa Alcalá’s introduction was helpfully and insightful for me on a number of different levels. First, as humans we all love the idea, whether consciously or subconsciously, that others who have experienced something we have, have felt the same feelings we did. None of us wants to feel alone or inadequate. If you have never had the pleasure of experiencing a Cecelia Vicuña performance, you will feel both of these in the beginning. Because, as Alcalá tells us in the introduction, Vicuña is very much a performer of her work, or to use a cliché Naropean phrase “she embodies her work.” She takes many things into consideration as she prepares for a performance; however, she is such a master of her own preparation that it feels like she is just making things up as she goes along. This is not true in the traditional idea of what we in the United States think of as making something up on the spot. However, what she does take into consideration is the venue, the geographical location, and the audience.

The one and only time that I was able to experience a Cecelia Vicuña performance was in Boulder, CO at a Naropa University Summer Writing Program the summer of 2012. In this particular venue, one of the things I noticed was her use of every noise at her disposal. She raised and lowered her voice, which not only had this effect of being pushed and pulled, it also brought forth the hum of the recording equipment (everything at Naropa is recorded for the archive), her whispers allowed be to hear the background noise of the leaves and animals coming through the open side door of the gym. These I could tell were things that she knew would be available at her disposal, having been coming to Naropa for years.  

Space between Performance and Page (Collaboration)

I do not envy anyone who attempts to take on the enormous challenge of trying to put these performances into book form for people to study and enjoy. It is not only a challenging task, but as we enjoy the fruits of this labor by both performer and transcriber, must consider both perspectives. Because from a performance aspect, everyone should feel something different as they view Vicuña in the specific venue and bring their own expectations with them. These expectations we as the audience come in with are shattered in the process of viewing such performances, especially if we are thinking it’s going to be just another reading.

The collaboration as I see it, has four participants, in regards to this book. The first is the performance presented by Cecelia Vicuña, the second is the venue, the third is the transcriber, and lastly the audiences of both the performance and book. All four are very important and view the works of art in different ways, none of them are inaccurate, even if they don’t ever come together in some sort of concrete way. This is consequently Vicuña’s greatest accomplishment and greatest challenge. It is clear to see, especially as an audience member attending one of her performances that some people are pushed too far out of their comfort zones and won’t be returning to another performance. Some will even leave in the middle of a performance. All of these reactions are valid and expected when you are pushing the boundaries.