diagram poems, intergrams

Leonardo

Diagram Poems, IntergramsAuthor(s): Jim RosenbergSource: Leonardo, Vol. 24, No. 1 (1991), pp. 90-91Published by: The MIT PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1575489 .

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Described visually and verbally in the Book of the Dead, the deceased, after being given permission to enter the Judgment Hall of Osiris, is stand- ing before the 42 divine ministers who help Osiris examine the souls that come before him. This dead person enumerates 38 specific sins that he or she has not committed during his or her lifetime. The declaration is called the 'Negative Confession' or, more simply, 'Declarations of Innocence'.

After the judgment has been passed successfully, a picture of the scene must be drawn in color on a new tile of earth upon which no ani- mal has trodden. This accomplished, the living family left behind will flour- ish and the deceased will never be forgotten, living on the food of the gods, able to travel anywhere in the otherworld. Immediately, I was struck by the similarities between the Nega- tive Confession and the Ten Com- mandments, the fundamental laws proclaimed by God on Mt. Sinai and transmitted through Moses to Israel. The tile and tablet formats also share a commonality.

The resultant artwork, From Osiris to Sinai, is a scroll that hangs 2 x 7 ft. It is a diazo print in which the black line has been colored over with prisma color.

The piece begins with a list of five commandments, those similar to the confessions in the Negative Confes- sion. They are in color-coded English: Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain (blue lettering). Thou shalt not murder (red-orange lettering). Thou shalt not commit adultery (green lettering). Thou shalt not steal (violet lettering). Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor (yellow lettering). The He- brew translation follows in the same color code. The similar Negative Con- fessions follow in hieroglyphs and English translation both in the same color code. The Egyptian section is bordered by drawings of 18 of the 42 gods to whom the confessions were addressed.

The layout of From Osiris to Sinai was pasted on 147/8-x-11-in computer forms. This was enlarged to 2 x 7 ft on vellum by a Xerox 2080 copier. The vellum master was put through a black line blueprint process called





The layout of From Osiris to Sinai was pasted on 147/8-x-11-in computer forms. This was enlarged to 2 x 7 ft on vellum by a Xerox 2080 copier. The vellum master was put through a black line blueprint process called





The layout of From Osiris to Sinai was pasted on 147/8-x-11-in computer forms. This was enlarged to 2 x 7 ft on vellum by a Xerox 2080 copier. The vellum master was put through a black line blueprint process called diazo. This final print was colored with pencil crayons. diazo. This final print was colored with pencil crayons. diazo. This final print was colored with pencil crayons.

EARLY PROGRAMMING: AN INTERACTIVE INSTALLATION

Sara Roberts, 4188 Greenwood Ave. Apt. 18, Oakland, CA 94602, U.S.A. E-mail: sroberts@r2d2 !pixar!ucbvax

Early Programming is an interactive character sketch which includes Margo, a talking computer com- pendium of maternal sayings, and a video monitor that shows segments that set up the context for a variety of typical conversations held with the computer at a kitchen table. The conversations are typical "Why do I have to?"-"Because I say you have to" ex- changes, like folksongs, not written so much as arranged. They are organ- ized around events that happen over and over in childhood: leaving the house, going to sleep at night, eating at a table. There are 18 different top- ics of conversation, and about 1,500 phrases spoken in different tones of voice depending on Margo's mood. There are also a number of caution- ary tales. An example starts out, "Don't sit so close to the TV, it gives off rays!"

Each conversation is introduced with a short video clip of a typical childhood experience. These are shot point-of-view style from a child's per- spective: a grown-up hand reaching back to take ours before crossing the street; the rubble on the floor of our rooms; watching our hands playing in the rush of air out the car window; staring into the forbidden deep end of the pool. Margo chimes in with clas- sic remarks such as "You're not com- ing out of there till it's picked up", "Get your arm back in the car, do you want to lose it?" and "No swimming, you just ate!".

Each conversation gives the user is given a different button menu of re- sponses ranging from cooperative to belligerent. The user's choices both directly and cumulatively effect Margo's mood, which can vary on a scale from hilarity to rage. There are other hidden factors for mood change as well, to manifest a certain unpredictability. Her mood is shown on-screen as a rectangle that changes size, shape and shade. The smaller and darker the rectangle, the grump- ier are her replies.

My intention with Early Programming






My intention with Early Programming






My intention with Early Programming was to present a familiar, intimate, mundane relationship in a way that would allow a sort of dual focus. I wanted to shift those familiar expres-

was to present a familiar, intimate, mundane relationship in a way that would allow a sort of dual focus. I wanted to shift those familiar expres-

was to present a familiar, intimate, mundane relationship in a way that would allow a sort of dual focus. I wanted to shift those familiar expres-

sions from being emotional gestures that we know without hearing to simple words with meanings. It's something that certifiably nonhuman char- acteristics, in a curious way, allow us to do. Margo says intimate things with a voice that is not human and has an expression that is not a face. Like text on a page, the things that Margo says are much more clearly words.

Early Programming runs on a Macin- tosh II computer with Hypercard soft- ware. Margo's voice is generated by a DecTalk voice synthesizer. A video- disc player with a serial port (opti- mally, a Sony 1000A) and a video monitor are also needed. The installation has been exhibited at the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, the Richmond Art Center, and at the Works Gallery in San Jose as part of the 1989 NCGA Exhibits in the U.S.A.

DIAGRAM POEMS, INTERGRAMS

Jim Rosenberg, R.D. #1 Box 236, Grindstone, PA 15442, U.S.A. E-mail: [email protected]

As an undergraduate I was exposed to the idea of tone clusters in music. This sounded enormously exciting; I knew immediately I had to begin ex- ploring how to do the same thing in

poetry. This at once led to a difficult problem. Syntactic information is partly provided by an individual word and partly by its context. What will happen to syntactic information when 'word clusters'-words or phrases juxtaposed to occupy the same space, physically and logically- replace words as the terminal nodes in the syntax? The juxtapositions in a cluster would interfere with classical syntax. To paraphrase Cage's old ob- jection to the 12-tone system, classical syntax is a vocabulary of structural de- scription with no zero in it: there is no way to have elements that have no structural relationship among them- selves but that participate in a higher- level structural relationship. The way out of this difficult dilemma was to separate syntax from semantics and provide a separate channel for syntax. Thus began in 1968 a long series of Diagram Poems that has continued to the present.













As these works evolved I became more interested in the diagram nota- tion than in the original concept of word clusters. Diagram Series 3 and Dia-



90 Words On Works 90 Words On Works 90 Words On Works



grams Series 4 were published as ad hoc circulations, with Diagrams Series 4 available on-line electronically on the WELL through the ACEN (ArtCom Electronic Network) conference.

After an intervening period of doing simple linear poems, I felt a strong desire to do something interactive and began working with bit- mapped graphics. (Diagrams Series 4 and earlier works used character- mapped graphics only.) While experi- menting with a drawing program I re- alized that with a mouse in an interactive bit-mapped graphics en- vironment, phrases could be overlaid, rendering them mostly unintelligible. But as the mouse was moved across a cluster, all but one of the phrases could be hidden, allowing juxtaposi- tion at the same point in logical and physical space while still preserving legibility. This has led to my current series of works called Intergrams. These works are implemented at the mo- ment as HyperCard stacks. Intergrams 1-7 have been integrated with a tu- torial stack and a button menu. It can be run on any Macintosh with 1M of memory and a hard disk.

In these works the card metaphor of HyperCard is used to show a level

grams Series 4 were published as ad hoc circulations, with Diagrams Series 4 available on-line electronically on the WELL through the ACEN (ArtCom Electronic Network) conference.

After an intervening period of doing simple linear poems, I felt a strong desire to do something interactive and began working with bit- mapped graphics. (Diagrams Series 4 and earlier works used character- mapped graphics only.) While experi- menting with a drawing program I re- alized that with a mouse in an interactive bit-mapped graphics en- vironment, phrases could be overlaid, rendering them mostly unintelligible. But as the mouse was moved across a cluster, all but one of the phrases could be hidden, allowing juxtaposi- tion at the same point in logical and physical space while still preserving legibility. This has led to my current series of works called Intergrams. These works are implemented at the mo- ment as HyperCard stacks. Intergrams 1-7 have been integrated with a tu- torial stack and a button menu. It can be run on any Macintosh with 1M of memory and a hard disk.

In these works the card metaphor of HyperCard is used to show a level

in the syntax diagram. Navigation of levels in the syntax diagram is done through clicking buttons. As you move to a higher layer, an entire screen is replaced by a rectangular button showing a much-reduced image of that screen; return to the lower level is achieved by clicking that button. Moving the mouse cursor across a phrase cluster hides all but one of the phrases, revealing a different phrase in turn. Because the phrases of a cluster occur in the same space, they must not be constrained in time; thus Intergrams are not performable.

ARTENGINE

Fred Truck, 4225 University, Des Moines, IA 50311, U.S.A. E-mail: [email protected]

ArtEngine is a program, for Macintosh Plus, SE or II personal computers with 2.5 megabytes of random access memory (RAM), that embodies the processes I use in making art. To run the program, text files are loaded into the memory of the Engine. These files are not only processed by ArtEngine but also formulate its struc- ture-visual memory and associative

in the syntax diagram. Navigation of levels in the syntax diagram is done through clicking buttons. As you move to a higher layer, an entire screen is replaced by a rectangular button showing a much-reduced image of that screen; return to the lower level is achieved by clicking that button. Moving the mouse cursor across a phrase cluster hides all but one of the phrases, revealing a different phrase in turn. Because the phrases of a cluster occur in the same space, they must not be constrained in time; thus Intergrams are not performable.

ARTENGINE

Fred Truck, 4225 University, Des Moines, IA 50311, U.S.A. E-mail: [email protected]

ArtEngine is a program, for Macintosh Plus, SE or II personal computers with 2.5 megabytes of random access memory (RAM), that embodies the processes I use in making art. To run the program, text files are loaded into the memory of the Engine. These files are not only processed by ArtEngine but also formulate its struc- ture-visual memory and associative

memory. Visual memory contains procedures that draw a graphic image on the computer monitor. The object represented graphically is also described in associative memory in the form of a brief text statement.

ArtEngine creates new images by syn- thesizing similarities between texts and objects-by comparing two text descriptions of objects in memory as well as by considering the geometric properties (such as size) of the graphics. The process begins when a text is loaded into the Engine. The text can be a novel, a critical essay or a newspaper article and can be of any length. The text is analyzed according to previously created lists, and further analysis results in recommendations concerning the size, color and me- dium of that described object. The analysis is stored in a special form of associative memory called a 'frame', which is accessible as a descriptive text report written by ArtEngine.

The application places emphasis on creating links between visual memory and associative memory, thus becoming an interactive application and giving ArtEngine the spark of life and the potential for surprising behavior.

memory. Visual memory contains procedures that draw a graphic image on the computer monitor. The object represented graphically is also described in associative memory in the form of a brief text statement.

ArtEngine creates new images by syn- thesizing similarities between texts and objects-by comparing two text descriptions of objects in memory as well as by considering the geometric properties (such as size) of the graphics. The process begins when a text is loaded into the Engine. The text can be a novel, a critical essay or a newspaper article and can be of any length. The text is analyzed according to previously created lists, and further analysis results in recommendations concerning the size, color and me- dium of that described object. The analysis is stored in a special form of associative memory called a 'frame', which is accessible as a descriptive text report written by ArtEngine.

The application places emphasis on creating links between visual memory and associative memory, thus becoming an interactive application and giving ArtEngine the spark of life and the potential for surprising behavior.

Words On Works 91 Words On Works 91



diagram poems, intergrams

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