—————————- Original Message —————————-
Subject: Re: RHIZOME_RAW: Apple Basic from 1987
From: steve.kudlak@cruzrights.org
Date: Mon, June 14, 2004 7:08 am
To: "Geoffrey A. Huth" <geofhuth@juno.com>
————————————————————————–


Yes! Yes!

That sounds exciting! I mean so exciting, working half tired I
closed the wrong browser window. I should remember when I am
tried I have lots of memory and clutter won't throw away thoughts, whereas
excessive parsimony will.

If there was a way you could present enough code with a descriptiom so we
could get an idea of what you were doing, that would be really really
need. What I wanted was a more richer and interactiv e walk collage video
through a city where views of sight-lines, birdseye views, satellite views
would intermix. One would see building and axes drawn through streets and
it would interact to produce sort of a visual
poetry of space, and words, signs, images, information about building,
different points of view etc. would appear. Bizarelly I vaguley thought I
was the only one who thought this way and my exposure to flash and
interactive tools were via snarly "we get paid for this animators"., I saw
one think vaguely in the same vien called Jurasalem Sky Look at:
http://cartome.org/jerusalem-sky/introduction.htm
but I wanted to be interactive. I dunno if I ever sent author of that
project anything or if she deigned to answer me.

So when I saw your work on your web site it reignited these ideas
in my head. The memory and writing thing. I just thoguth with Flash
you/I/whoever could be much more interactive. Walls of moving text
flashing through writing systems etc. I dunno but I thought it was all
pretty interesting and well worth investigating. I wanted to do with
images a more complex and intwerlinking way that people like Burroughs
did, although I don't think I'd be as bold to say things categoricaly
like: "If you cur up the present the future leaks out." But yeah I think
looking for these things and pulling them out of whatever mothballs and
trying to reframe them might be a good idea.

Have Fun,
Sends Steve




> Folks,
>
> Thanks for helping me think about this (and I just wrote a brief note
back to Steve). Here are a few bits of clarification, mostly to point
out that Jim has it right!:
>
> 1. These are not interactive pieces. They run through their steps and
and complete themselves. However, I wrote two sets of these: a. "Endemic
Battle Collage" and a set of kinetic visual haiku. (Many of these were
based on old concrete poems of mine, but the best are moving walls of
text.) The pieces in EBC were designed to link together in an infinite
string unless the viewer stopped the process–so there's a tiny bit of
interactivity, I suppose.
>
> 2. I have the code printed out and I have a soundless NTSC VHS videotape
of the EBC files in action. These were my simple solutions to
> preservation as I was moving from an Apple //e (operating system:
ProDos) to a Mac Centris (and some version of the Mac OS) and then
finally to Windows, where I now reside.
>
> 3. There is little use of sound in the piece, but the program tells the
computer what simple beeps to make as the pieces run through.
>
> 4. Most of the code is quite short, and all of it is simple. It consists
mostly of telling the computer where on the screen (at
> vertical/horizontal gridpoints) to set the text.
>
> 5. I can rekey the code for you guys to look at or I can scan, OCR and
QC the code. My question is, Will this be useful to you? Is there some
way to port or convert this code to some other language? I've no idea.
>
> 6. My preference is to make these pieces portable digital files again,
tho I might try to save them as an audiovisual file as well. I do want
to be able to post these on the web. Of course, this throws me into the
same problem I began with: maintaining access to a file in an unstable
file format. But I think there's a better migration stream out of Flash,
etc., in the current computing environment than out of Apple Basic and
ProDos back in 1987. (Much of my real work deals with discussing
preservation of electronic records, so I've been quite worried about the
preservation of digital art in general.)
>
> So tell me if you'd like me to send you some sample code. I might be
able to send you a simple set of it this afternoon before I leave for a
work-related overnight. (Travel for work always slows these projects of
mine down.)
>
> Many thanks, everyone, for your interest and help.
>
> Geof
>
> On Mon, 14 Jun 2004 04:16:53 -0700 "Jim Andrews" <jim@vispo.com> writes:
>> Thanks, Steve and Geert!
>>
>> I imagine there are a few possible approaches. One is to port it to
flash or
>> director or java or something like that. What he has left of it is a video
>> (without sound) and printed copies of the code which may or may not make
>> reference to the sound, I'm not sure. I don't think it was
>> interactive; I
>> think it was basically like a film in this sense. So another
>> approach could
>> be to work with the video to add sound to it and whatever other stuff is
>> relevant, if you're interested.
>>
>> Which approach is best is not clear to me. Maybe another one.
>> Transferring
>> it to flash or director or java may set up expectations that it doesn't
>> fulfill, like interactivity. but the filesize is generally lower there
than
>> for video, so it would be more easily stored and viewed on the net, if
that
>> is geof's intention…whether it is to be treated as historical
artifact or
>> contemporary net.art or poem qua poem or… it gets a bit
>> confusing.
>>
>> Maybe all that needs to be done is talk it through with Geof, like what
>> approach he should take. Or maybe you and he will want to take it
further in
>> some sort of collab. I've cc'ed Geof on this, so you can reply to all
if you
>> like and we can kick it around between the four of us.
>>
>> Geoff's email is geofhuth@juno.com
>>
>> ja
>>
>>
>> > I'd like to see it too. Perhaps I could help porting it to
>> something
>> > more contemporary.
>> >
>> > Geert Dekkers
>> >
>> > (Apple/Mac fan, programmer, random art type – http://nznl.com)
>> >
>> > On Jun 14, 2004, at 6:05 AM, steve.kudlak@cruzrights.org wrote:
>> >
>> > > I'll check out his blog and ask to see the code. It should be
possible to re-cast it into something else. It would
>> interesting
>> > > to look at the code and see what it does. Since for a long time
artists and programmers were seperate lots (groups) programming
languages were never designed to accomplish art taks. Some
>> things
>> > > are powerful but there is a high overhead to learning them. Others
are easier but don't let one have the level of
>> manipulation
>> > > that real programming languages do. I dunno how easy it would be
>> for
>> > > a random art type to learn Java, I remember a friend who wrote
>> all
>> > > these neat little Java things with sound effects and all. She
>> had
>> > > train whistles, lion roars, seven second cuts from Xena the
>> warrior
>> > > Princess, so I could imagine all sort of stuff couldbe done in
>> Java.
>> > > I missed picking up Visual Java for $2.00 in a trift store
>> once.
>> > > Drat!;)
>> > > Anyway I'll ask around
>> > >
>> > >
>> > >> But why wouldn't he proceed to get that working using a 1987
Macintosh??
>> > >>
>> > >> Geert
>> > >> (http://nznl.com)
>> > >>
>> > >> On Jun 13, 2004, at 11:14 PM, Jim Andrews wrote:
>> > >>
>> > >>> There's a terrific long-time visual poet from Schenectady
>> named Geof
>> > >>> Huth
>> > >>> who did some computer poetry in 1987 using Apple Basic. I'm
>> wondering
>> > >>> how he
>> > >>> might proceed to get at least part of that working now. He
>> does have
>> > >>> the
>> > >>> code. Apparently it was full screen and involved sound and
>> kinetic
>> > >>> poetry.
>> > >>> Suggestions? His blog, by the way, is
>> http://www.dbqp.blogspot.com
>> > >>> and
>> > >>> is
>> > >>> well worth checking out.
>> > >>>
>> > >>> ja
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
> Geof Huth
> dbqp
> 875 Central Parkway
> Schenectady, NY 12309
> www.dbqp.blogspot.com
>
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