www.michaeljmaguire.com Creative Technology & Technological Creativity

I wrote and sent the raw draft poem below to my ‘Sure I’m no feckin’ poet’ friend of mine this morning, I got his almost by now usual response – i.e. “ It might be alright –  when/if you finish/edit/burn/make/bin it, poetry is about what anyway, have you a title yet, why did you write it like that – where’s that tenner you owe me?"

Personas part of the Metropath(ologies) exhibit, by the Sociable Media Group from the MIT Media Lab, uses natural language processing and the Internet to create a data portrait of one's aggregated online identity. In short, Personas shows you how the Internet sees you. Like walking past a large mirror, human nature, vanity or both made me want to peek in. Most of you will surely want to check yours too.

Made using an old version of 3D studio Max, a white background version of my original clevercelt logo - each 'C' was to represent culture, comedy and various other words beginning with C - after many iterations and hacks of the site, losing it contents many times (without back-up) my original 'can't perceive the 'vision' for all this seeing' idea became ultra frustrating and time consuming - sometime around 2000 it got shortened to 'Never Content With Content'. I now mainly use the site for work bearing the name of my alter ego - clevercelt

The following is a version of a comment I offered in response to Joseph Tabbi’s recent article regarding his reflection on 300 works of digital literature.

I suspect Joseph Tabbi’s excellent article and the many subsequent intelligent replies, taken in the context of the current economic climate, surreptitiously suggest moot questions of cultural hegemony, exclusivity and potential unrest among future digital natives. Should I comment directly on the kernel of his original questions, i.e. Can I know if models of reception and commentary will conform, if these digital works will actually ‘work’ in a sense that is comparable to accepted or traditional literary understanding / criteria ? Erm.. no..I can only offer my own messy mispredictions below to mirror his lucid reflections above.

The image above is the only known non-copyrighted image of ‘heliopod’ the Armenian syntax smuggler – master of disguise supposed real name: Clause Von Gerund – also known to Interpol under several pseudonyms and identities including the infamous digital poetry kidnapper Mr. Jason Nelson. Although unconfirmed reports mention his recent involvement in any number of releases, officials still advise caution and at least two stanzas of William Carlos Williams before approaching.

I'm really enjoying the netpoetic site, Jason Nelson is a generous, entertaining and somewhat enlightened guy, I will confess I also identify with his sense of humor - check out his videos - if you'd like to learn abit about him and get entertained en route. I will certainly play around with the net poetry / digital lit / interfaces he's developing. I downloaded everything to play with it and while I was playing with his Song generator, some strange ideas popped into my head.