REALTY?: String Theory and Art

Posted on July 21, 2006 by Susan

String theory is just everywhere in my paths lately, this art the latest.  I believe I have to set aside some time to understand it a bit better before it actually becomes accepted theory.  (Link thanks to J-Walk.)

Posted in REALITY | 2 Comments

NEW MEDIA: Foreign Exchange

Posted on July 21, 2006 by Susan

Just got back from viewing some film clips that were put together by a small group of high school students in a project offered by Tunxis Community College in furthering efforts of learning different cultures.  Funded by a special grant, the six-hour a day, five days a week, three-week course involved both the introduction to the Mandarin language and to new media methods. 

Under the guidance of two of the New Media instructors (a course I’ve taken there), Steve Ersinghaus and John Timmons, each student produced about a minute of audio reading that ran alongside photo story and enhanced often by background music, all geared to answer a quick Who am I?  Two groups of five students each worked together as a team to produce a similar Who are We? three-minute segment.  Both gave some insight not only into the individuals themselves, but would serve as an introduction to a nice cross section of the American high school student to students in China.  The entire China project is shaping itself as a start to foreign exchange programs that would ease, I’m sure, the exchange by no doubt revealing the similarities in youths beyond their cultural differences.

For me personally, it poked me once more with the possibilities of new media and story.  During the individual pieces, I attempted to separate out the verbal story that I heard read by the student from the visual photos of family and friends (movie clips too!) and realized just how well, together with the music background, they all worked to make it a more engrossing experience.  Some of the writing was exceptional, all was very good.  But taken as a written/read composition, I don’t think they would have been as powerful as the presentation as a multisensory event.  This tells me to get on the stick about learning the software I need that I’ve just been diddling around with so far.  It’s a whole new world and can produce something totally different than text story alone.

Very, very nice work, done mostly in Adobe Premier, with direction and help from the college Media people.

Posted in NEW MEDIA | 2 Comments

LITERATURE: Mrs. Dalloway – Symbolism

Posted on July 20, 2006 by susan

Working within the consciousness of her characters, Virginia Woolf has–I think–brought in some interesting metaphorical items.  This scene, when an old flame, Peter Walsh surprises Mrs. Dalloway at her home while she is mending a dress to wear for her party:

"And how are you?" said Peter Walsh, positively trembling; taking both her hands; kissing both her hands.  She’s grown older, he thought, sitting down.  I shan’t tell her anything about it, he thought, for she’s grown older.  She’s looking at me, he thought, a sudden embarrassment coming over him, though he had kissed her hands.  Putting his hand into his pocket, he took out a large pocket-knife and half opened the blade.

Exactly the same, thought Clarissa; the same queer look; the same check suit; a little out of the straight his face is, a little thinner, dryer, perhaps, but he looks awfully well, just the same.

"How heavenly it is to see you again!" she exclaimed.  He had his knife out.  That’s so like him, she thought.

(…) Here she is mending her dress; mending her dress as usual, he thought; here she’s been sitting all the time I’ve been in India; mending her dress; playing about; going to parties; running to the House and back and all that, he thought, growing more and more irritated (…)  So it is, so it is, he thought, shutting his knife with a snap.

(…) And she opened her scissors, and said, did he mind her just finishing what she was doing to her dress, for they had a party that night?  (p. 41)

We’ve been inside Clarissa’s head for a couple hours and have already learned how she feels about Peter, how he is still in her thoughts.  This meeting then, does it surprise us somehow that they come to it unplanned, and yet fully armed? 

It is, as Clarissa says, so like him, when she sees him bring out the knife.  As a woman, feeling vulnerable, is this why she finds it so necessary to subtly display her own metaphorical weapon, the scissors?

Interesting, very interesting scene between these two.

Posted in LITERATURE | Tagged | Comments Off on LITERATURE: Mrs. Dalloway – Symbolism

REALITY?: Window

Posted on July 20, 2006 by Susan

Sometimes in the very early morning, just as the lid is raised up on the day, it is easy to believe in other worlds, other places.  Where time is not a measure of the passing but of the staying still while life just passes through it, changing in its form of here and there and then and soon.

Who can know what is when using only what we’re given, when morning coffee steams and melts it all to now.

Posted in REALITY | Comments Off on REALITY?: Window

WRITING: Submitting

Posted on July 19, 2006 by Susan

Ya know, sometimes you do it just to feel like you’ve done something as a writer.  So yes, Gazpacho has been sent out to a fine literary journal because they just happened to be taking submissions and they take them via their website, and because I really, really, really would love to say I’d been published in their journal and I’ve been working on this story for two weeks and think I’ve taken it as far as it can go.

And of course, the doubts come out of hiding and giggle the very instant that "Submit" link has been clicked.  Shouldn’t I have had someone read it through for me again?  One last time?  Did I fix those rough spots?  Is there really a satisfactory resolution?  Are they going to get past the first two paragraphs to reveal my depth as a writer?  Are they simply going to shake their heads and just as easily as I submitted, click the "Reject" link?  You never know until you try it. 

Posted in WRITING | 5 Comments

LITERATURE: Mrs. Dalloway – A Thinking Free-for-all

Posted on July 19, 2006 by susan

Just spent a few minutes in Regal Park inside Mrs. Dalloway’s head, as well as the heads of everyone else who happened to be there.  An amazing concept.

Remember the movie with Mel Gibson (What Women Want?) where he gets electrocuted by trying out a woman’s hairdryer and gains the ability to read the minds of everyone he passes by?  Well, that’s what this passage was like.  It also reminded me a bit of the famous Jimmy Stewart Christmas movie where the angel takes him around to view what life would be like if he managed to commit suicide.

But the writing of it must have been both taxing as well as a helluvalot of fun.  I’m going to try it some day soon; sit in a restaurant or mall somewhere and just try to figure out what people are thinking.  Woolf uses some props to keep them tied together: an airplane that starts to skywrite above the park.  It’s hard to include an excerpt here, since Woolf’s sentences are about a page long sometimes, and in fact, the pages are turned simply because the reader doesn’t really have a good cutoff point in the reading. 

But I am enjoying this novel, appreciating the prose, and while it’s not my favorite novel so far, I am learning much from Virginia Woolf in stretching limits of creative abilities. 

Frankly, between Mrs. Dalloway and the PBS special on String Theory that’s been vibrating in my mind, reality doesn’t seem so for-sure anymore.  More soon.

Posted in LITERATURE | Tagged | Comments Off on LITERATURE: Mrs. Dalloway – A Thinking Free-for-all

REALITY?: String Theory Revisited

Posted on July 18, 2006 by Susan

Made another attempt to watch this PBS program tonight, and I stayed awake, but due to weather conditions had to keep wandering out to cool off.  But even had I stayed and seen the entire program, I’m not sure I would have understood it all that well.  There are some things I did catch, and one that hooked me is the possibility of several dimensions.

In my own unprofessional, illogical way, I tend to like the idea of a ten or eleven dimensional world, and can rationalize it in like manner.  There are sounds that are inaudible to the human ear.  There are things we cannot see–India is there, or so I’ve come to understand, but I can’t see it from here.  And the time problem; they’ve solved the rather awkward situation of midnight occurring for some folk at nine a.m., just by coming up with time zones.  But c’mon, we know it’s midnight.  And finding that the earth was round before gravity was clearly understood, well, if it had happened in my lifetime, I’d have made a beeline for the north pole and held on tight. 

No, there’s a good possibility for string theory and more than height, width and depth to our world and a single time frame that we have to fudge to make it work.  Need more proof?  Where do you suppose those missing socks are?

Seriously though, as way-out as something like string theory sounds, and what it demands that we denounce and replace in beliefs, there are always new things to discover, even when we think we’ve already got it all figured out.

Posted in REALITY | Comments Off on REALITY?: String Theory Revisited

WRITING: More Meandering in The Tunnel

Posted on July 18, 2006 by Susan

There was a doorway and within its recess, a door, locked against him. He found a ring of keys inside his pocket and tried them one by one until he heard the silent clicking of the tumblers. He pushed it inward, wide and wider, as he would open up his mouth to eat a sandwich, the kind he used to daily get for lunch at Vonetti’s down the street from the brewery. He opened it with all the learned patience of a two year-old and hurried in and closed it tight behind him.

First draft, rough, straight from the little guy in the brain who snuck it by the Editor.  But it’s going somewhere and it has a place in my protagonist’s ending life.

Posted in WRITING | Comments Off on WRITING: More Meandering in The Tunnel

REALITY?: Art in its Visual Form

Posted on July 18, 2006 by Susan

I must direct you to an artist’s site, work done by Sima Chakamian.  I came to it by a comment made via e-mail by her daughter, Sanam who noticed my book lists and asked if I’d ever read any Ayn Rand.

The artwork is phenomenal, especially to one like me who appreciates the skill in realism.  She does however, with her artist’s eye, take it beyond.  I admire too the nature of the medium, and especially as in several cases here, that of water color.  Not the easiest medium to work with and get such detail.

Check it out, I think you’ll be amazed as I was at the talent here.

Posted in REALITY | Comments Off on REALITY?: Art in its Visual Form

WRITING: Time Travel

Posted on July 18, 2006 by Susan

This is what I’m currently working on, these are the first couple sentences:

George DePaoli was clearly dying and it didn’t matter much, but it was taking longer than he’d thought. His final hours had dragged on through the night and into the next day and he only wished for one thing now, that Marcia would stop yelling in his ear.

Not the most brilliant opening lines, but the concept of the story opens up a lot to me in development of a small cast of characters and plot without relying upon a great deal of backstory and obviously, little future.  The title of this piece so far is The Tunnel, but I’m not sure of that being the most effective means of time travel for my purposes, or that it is not too cliche and obvious because I mean to go beyond the normal perceptions of the process.

There is a plan of sorts in mind, snuck in by that editor that hides within a room deep in my brain and overrides some of the shenanigans that the free-er creative spirit employs, refusing to follow any mapping out of plots or setting goals and such mundane niceties as purpose.

I am excited by the possibilities.  The only thing I know about the unknown is that it is.

Posted in WRITING | Comments Off on WRITING: Time Travel

REALITY?: Heating up Reality

Posted on July 18, 2006 by Susan

He calls me early morning from work, within the cool corporate headquarters and I am not.  What’s for dinner? he asks.

Ice cream, I answer.

Posted in REALITY | Comments Off on REALITY?: Heating up Reality

WRITING: Hardcopy

Posted on July 18, 2006 by Susan

I’ve learned to keep away from the print function when writing.  Though I do, I will admit, save all the wasted copies, tear the sheets in half and use the clean side as scrap paper.  Another writer, I’ve noticed at the latest workshopping session in our group, saves the full sheets and prints out on the other side.  Another good idea.

For there is nothing like the printed page to show up errors, to settle into story, and to inspire anew.  So my new rule is, don’t print out until you’re pretty sure you’re done.  Then print that story out and find out where you’re wrong.

Then, of course, tear in half and make a pile of scrap paper, or flip the whole sheets over in the printer tray, ready for the next attempt at being done.

Posted in WRITING | Comments Off on WRITING: Hardcopy

INTERACTIVE FICTION: Book and Volume – Lure

Posted on July 17, 2006 by Susan

Just when you’re about to give up, something draws you back to the game.  With me, it may be my absolute obsession to leave nothing undone.  A fool’s dedication, but satisfying in some small way.

And reward for the effort is almost immediate; It is hinted that I’m hungry and I enter the nearest pub where an acquaintance gives me some intriguing information that sounds like an additional and important task beyond the pressing of red buttons on the servers.  When I leave, a decision to start at one end of the city brings me within a couple steps of the final server and I complete that task to bring the original five servers complete. 

I must remember to e-mail the boss and let him know that the mission is complete.  But is it?  There’s a hidden helmet that the acquaintance has said I will need.  So that’s my next move. But first, I must stop and say hello to Leonard Nimoy who is standing 3 feet above ground wearing jeans and a black turtleneck.

Good.  The story is becoming fun again.

Posted in BLOGGING, CODE, CURRENT AFFAIRS, EDGAR AND I, EDUCATION, HYPERTEXT, INTERACTIVE FICTION, LITERATURE, NEW MEDIA, People, POETRY, REALITY, REVIEWS, Self Analysis, STORIES, Storytron, TECHNOLOGY, WRITING | Comments Off on INTERACTIVE FICTION: Book and Volume – Lure

LITERATURE: Reading Progress

Posted on July 17, 2006 by Susan

It could be the weight of each that come together now and overwhelm.  Or the heat and three-day headache, or the two years of stress that just doesn’t want to go away.  But the result is that I’m making little progress on my current reading.

Barthes is just so far beyond my brain I’m having doubts about my sanity.  Hypertext 3.0 is not an exciting read for an exciting subject–and that is not its fault, but mine.  Ethics makes a lot of sense, even in its opposing arguments, but sense is basic, and while the book is very interesting and enlightening, I am not awed.  I’m lost in nTopia in Book and Volume, loster still in Storytron directions.  I’ve read the certain parts of Afternoon, A Story at least a dozen times and yet I’m sure I’ve never even touched upon its greatest portion.  And yes, I am afraid of even Watchmaker as far as interactive gaming goes.  I’ve lost my killer instinct, my taste for blood, and worse, there is a sense of being alone within a crowd of cartoon characters.  I need, I think, a group of living folk to talk to about these journeys.

But writing-wise I am excited about a new piece I’m now working on.  Still straight text, but layered linearity to overcome its innate restrictions.

And Mrs. Dalloway?  The woman’s beginning to make a lot of sense.  I recognize her brain patterns as familiar.

Posted in LITERATURE | 1 Comment

LITERATURE: Love in the Time of Cholera – Final Finale

Posted on July 17, 2006 by susan

I’ve upset Mark in my finale review of this novel, and realize that I didn’t truly give adequate time to the novel in my post.

Perhaps I should have made it clearer; sex was not the be-all, end-all of their relationship.  In fact, it’s not all that important to them, even to Florentino, who has dreamed of this all his life. 

What Marquez relates is that the withered body parts are not a turn-off, but accepted as fact.  Fermina and Florentino have become accustomed to the changes brought in aging.  Marquez has prepared them–and us–for the obvious by granting little expositions of their physical and mental maturity.  Florentino is shaken by the sight of seeing Fermina trip on a stair in the church.  He realizes as well that he may die before her, that his whole life plan can easily be thwarted by death. 

Their joy in each other is surprisingly found in their conversations, their sitting silently hand in hand. This is the way they take off into the sunset, on a riverboat they see as their freedom from demands, yet knowing full well they will return home and marry.  The future, what is left to them, is willingly looked forward to in spending such days together.  This is what their hearts yearned for, though they didn’t realize it enough to seek it from past relationships.

Many passages in the novel reflect their ties to their environment, even while they can see it for what it is, decaying and ravaged by weather and war and man’s abuses of the land, they choose to see it better than it is–just as Florentino sees Fermina through the years. 

Why I believe that Marquez has brought these characters to a higher level is that had they married in their youth, Florentino’s determined efforts to win her and his ultimate personal success in business and life would not have been his way of life had he been with her.  Fermina would not have matured into the full and loving woman she’s become.  They would not have been happy together for those fifty years, I don’t think, but with what they’ve learned from life in that time, they will be.

Posted in LITERATURE | Tagged | Comments Off on LITERATURE: Love in the Time of Cholera – Final Finale