WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.450 align:middle line:90% 00:00:04.450 --> 00:00:08.740 align:middle line:84% I did a series of anti-war poems, created 00:00:08.740 --> 00:00:11.560 align:middle line:84% by taking rubbings with lumber crayons 00:00:11.560 --> 00:00:14.230 align:middle line:90% off of public monuments. 00:00:14.230 --> 00:00:19.810 align:middle line:84% I was raised that silence is complicity. 00:00:19.810 --> 00:00:21.970 align:middle line:84% And I had a real problem, as a pacifist, 00:00:21.970 --> 00:00:28.060 align:middle line:84% with monuments to war and violence, 00:00:28.060 --> 00:00:31.720 align:middle line:84% because the language on them, I felt, was speaking at me. 00:00:31.720 --> 00:00:33.640 align:middle line:84% And I wasn't comfortable being silent, 00:00:33.640 --> 00:00:35.360 align:middle line:90% because silence is complicity. 00:00:35.360 --> 00:00:37.360 align:middle line:84% But I also have a lot of respect for the choices 00:00:37.360 --> 00:00:38.860 align:middle line:84% that other people make, and I didn't 00:00:38.860 --> 00:00:43.180 align:middle line:84% want to do anything that was disrespectful of the fact 00:00:43.180 --> 00:00:48.520 align:middle line:84% that other people had different value sets. 00:00:48.520 --> 00:00:51.940 align:middle line:84% So I thought if I composed these poems using nothing 00:00:51.940 --> 00:00:57.250 align:middle line:84% but the language that was being used on me, 00:00:57.250 --> 00:00:58.925 align:middle line:84% that was as respectful as I could be. 00:00:58.925 --> 00:01:00.550 align:middle line:84% All I was doing was taking the language 00:01:00.550 --> 00:01:03.190 align:middle line:84% they were using and reformatting it to my own purposes, 00:01:03.190 --> 00:01:04.640 align:middle line:90% not adding anything to it. 00:01:04.640 --> 00:01:09.970 align:middle line:84% So there was a series of about 150 of these that I did. 00:01:09.970 --> 00:01:13.630 align:middle line:84% This is an Israeli type designer named Oded Ezer. 00:01:13.630 --> 00:01:17.050 align:middle line:84% He has some really crazy, amazing stuff. 00:01:17.050 --> 00:01:19.990 align:middle line:84% Some of it is gorgeous and beautiful, 00:01:19.990 --> 00:01:22.750 align:middle line:84% because he's a professional graphic designer. 00:01:22.750 --> 00:01:24.912 align:middle line:90% These are letters that are-- 00:01:24.912 --> 00:01:26.620 align:middle line:84% they're Hebrew letters that are beginning 00:01:26.620 --> 00:01:31.060 align:middle line:84% to come up off the page and take a life of their own. 00:01:31.060 --> 00:01:34.870 align:middle line:84% This is him in a piece that he has made. 00:01:34.870 --> 00:01:37.690 align:middle line:84% It's a mohawk, but what it actually says is "typosexual." 00:01:37.690 --> 00:01:43.150 align:middle line:90% He's very font-obsessed. 00:01:43.150 --> 00:01:46.180 align:middle line:84% This is a Belgian artist named Helen White. 00:01:46.180 --> 00:01:49.810 align:middle line:84% She does a lot of visual poetry and has several series 00:01:49.810 --> 00:01:53.590 align:middle line:84% that are like this, where the finished 00:01:53.590 --> 00:01:59.523 align:middle line:84% piece is kind of a documentation of a performance or of a piece. 00:01:59.523 --> 00:02:00.940 align:middle line:84% There's a guy named Billy Mavreas, 00:02:00.940 --> 00:02:02.860 align:middle line:84% who's a Canadian cartoonist, actually. 00:02:02.860 --> 00:02:08.380 align:middle line:84% He publishes little comic book scenes that he draws himself, 00:02:08.380 --> 00:02:11.920 align:middle line:90% also a prolific visual poet. 00:02:11.920 --> 00:02:14.710 align:middle line:84% Again, the piece is not what he's holding in his hand. 00:02:14.710 --> 00:02:18.085 align:middle line:84% The piece is the photograph of his hand holding the piece. 00:02:18.085 --> 00:02:21.090 align:middle line:90% 00:02:21.090 --> 00:02:24.180 align:middle line:84% This is an American artist named Kathy Ernst. 00:02:24.180 --> 00:02:29.250 align:middle line:84% She has a whole series of sculptural concrete poems, 00:02:29.250 --> 00:02:31.590 align:middle line:84% for lack of a better phrase, visual poems. 00:02:31.590 --> 00:02:34.420 align:middle line:90% 00:02:34.420 --> 00:02:35.370 align:middle line:90% This is Maria Damon. 00:02:35.370 --> 00:02:38.460 align:middle line:84% She's also a pretty prolific visual poet. 00:02:38.460 --> 00:02:42.120 align:middle line:84% But I really love the work that she's done that is stitched. 00:02:42.120 --> 00:02:44.850 align:middle line:84% This is just one example of many, 00:02:44.850 --> 00:02:52.980 align:middle line:84% where this sort of fabric and text mixing works very well. 00:02:52.980 --> 00:02:54.660 align:middle line:90% This is David-Baptiste Chirot. 00:02:54.660 --> 00:02:56.610 align:middle line:90% He lives in Milwaukee. 00:02:56.610 --> 00:02:58.530 align:middle line:90% An amazing, amazing guy. 00:02:58.530 --> 00:03:01.170 align:middle line:84% In fact, a conversation with him was 00:03:01.170 --> 00:03:02.760 align:middle line:84% how I developed the notion that I 00:03:02.760 --> 00:03:05.070 align:middle line:84% want to start exploring rubbings in a way that 00:03:05.070 --> 00:03:07.080 align:middle line:84% led to the other ones that I showed you. 00:03:07.080 --> 00:03:10.500 align:middle line:84% His rubbings are totally not like what I do at all. 00:03:10.500 --> 00:03:16.110 align:middle line:84% David is-- he walks everywhere, and he 00:03:16.110 --> 00:03:18.360 align:middle line:84% knows the city of Milwaukee so well that he wakes up 00:03:18.360 --> 00:03:20.693 align:middle line:84% in the morning and he says, I'm going to make this poem. 00:03:20.693 --> 00:03:23.640 align:middle line:90% And he plans his walk. 00:03:23.640 --> 00:03:26.310 align:middle line:84% So one main different-- what I did, 00:03:26.310 --> 00:03:27.960 align:middle line:84% every one of the ones I did, that text 00:03:27.960 --> 00:03:29.252 align:middle line:90% was all on a single monument. 00:03:29.252 --> 00:03:30.960 align:middle line:84% I never came up with my message and said, 00:03:30.960 --> 00:03:31.960 align:middle line:90% I'm going to go find it. 00:03:31.960 --> 00:03:33.710 align:middle line:84% I stood in front of the monument and said, 00:03:33.710 --> 00:03:35.160 align:middle line:90% what can I take from this text? 00:03:35.160 --> 00:03:37.020 align:middle line:84% Some monuments yielded multiple text, 00:03:37.020 --> 00:03:40.450 align:middle line:84% but no text came from more than one monument, 00:03:40.450 --> 00:03:42.610 align:middle line:84% whereas what David does is sort of the opposite. 00:03:42.610 --> 00:03:44.820 align:middle line:84% He decides what he wants, and then he goes 00:03:44.820 --> 00:03:46.650 align:middle line:84% and he finds it in the city of Milwaukee, 00:03:46.650 --> 00:03:48.140 align:middle line:84% because he's so familiar with it. 00:03:48.140 --> 00:03:49.140 align:middle line:90% That's what this one is. 00:03:49.140 --> 00:03:51.150 align:middle line:90% This one over here-- 00:03:51.150 --> 00:03:59.010 align:middle line:84% he makes clay because these human-- 00:03:59.010 --> 00:04:01.020 align:middle line:90% I forget how he says it. 00:04:01.020 --> 00:04:02.970 align:middle line:84% It's a mix of the word poem and human. 00:04:02.970 --> 00:04:06.420 align:middle line:84% And what he does is he builds these clay heads, 00:04:06.420 --> 00:04:10.320 align:middle line:84% and he carves into the clay heads the text that he wants. 00:04:10.320 --> 00:04:12.240 align:middle line:84% And then he inks the clay heads, then 00:04:12.240 --> 00:04:18.510 align:middle line:84% he presses the paper onto the clay and pulls it off. 00:04:18.510 --> 00:04:25.770 align:middle line:84% Holly Crawford, in the spirit of Victor Borge, 00:04:25.770 --> 00:04:30.975 align:middle line:84% does performances of just the punctuation in various poems. 00:04:30.975 --> 00:04:36.675 align:middle line:90% 00:04:36.675 --> 00:04:41.625 align:middle line:90% [VIDEO PLAYBACK] 00:04:41.625 --> 00:04:45.585 align:middle line:90% [NOISEMAKER HONKING] 00:04:45.585 --> 00:05:03.405 align:middle line:90% 00:05:03.405 --> 00:05:06.380 align:middle line:90% [END PLAYBACK] 00:05:06.380 --> 00:05:07.730 align:middle line:90% And what she really does-- 00:05:07.730 --> 00:05:10.520 align:middle line:84% this is just a video version of the performance. 00:05:10.520 --> 00:05:12.410 align:middle line:84% She really does them in performance, which 00:05:12.410 --> 00:05:15.740 align:middle line:90% is even crazier and funner. 00:05:15.740 --> 00:05:19.370 align:middle line:84% This is on the floor in Bob Holman's apartment. 00:05:19.370 --> 00:05:24.140 align:middle line:84% His floor, his walls, almost every surface in his apartment 00:05:24.140 --> 00:05:27.110 align:middle line:84% is covered with poems that are not necessarily his; 00:05:27.110 --> 00:05:28.970 align:middle line:84% some of them are, but not all of them. 00:05:28.970 --> 00:05:31.070 align:middle line:84% I just love this notion of living 00:05:31.070 --> 00:05:34.725 align:middle line:84% in a space where not only do you have the poems in your books, 00:05:34.725 --> 00:05:37.100 align:middle line:84% you have them on your floor, you have them on your walls, 00:05:37.100 --> 00:05:38.350 align:middle line:90% you have them on your ceiling. 00:05:38.350 --> 00:05:41.810 align:middle line:84% There's really no way to avoid them. 00:05:41.810 --> 00:05:46.880 align:middle line:84% This is a project that is in the works. 00:05:46.880 --> 00:05:49.820 align:middle line:84% A friend of mine, Pat Stump, is an amazing artist, 00:05:49.820 --> 00:05:51.320 align:middle line:90% and he makes his own frames. 00:05:51.320 --> 00:05:52.900 align:middle line:84% And when I found out he made his own frames, I said, 00:05:52.900 --> 00:05:54.050 align:middle line:84% can you make a frame in any shape? 00:05:54.050 --> 00:05:55.070 align:middle line:90% And he said, well yeah. 00:05:55.070 --> 00:05:56.610 align:middle line:84% I said, could you make a letter of the alphabet? 00:05:56.610 --> 00:05:57.290 align:middle line:90% He said sure. 00:05:57.290 --> 00:06:00.150 align:middle line:84% I said, could you make every letter of the alphabet? 00:06:00.150 --> 00:06:02.280 align:middle line:90% He said, I don't know. 00:06:02.280 --> 00:06:03.690 align:middle line:90% And then he did it. 00:06:03.690 --> 00:06:05.180 align:middle line:84% And my friend, [? David ?] [? Haig, ?] who's another 00:06:05.180 --> 00:06:07.388 align:middle line:84% artist collaborating on what would ultimately be this 00:06:07.388 --> 00:06:09.440 align:middle line:84% project, watched Pat make these frames, 00:06:09.440 --> 00:06:11.665 align:middle line:84% and he said he didn't draw them first-- 00:06:11.665 --> 00:06:13.040 align:middle line:84% he just started cutting the wood. 00:06:13.040 --> 00:06:16.730 align:middle line:84% So he built his own font out of wood 00:06:16.730 --> 00:06:19.962 align:middle line:84% just in his head, which is amazing to me. 00:06:19.962 --> 00:06:21.920 align:middle line:84% But the plan that we're going to do with these, 00:06:21.920 --> 00:06:23.990 align:middle line:84% we're going to decorate all of these canvases, 00:06:23.990 --> 00:06:26.198 align:middle line:84% and then we're going to try to hang them in galleries 00:06:26.198 --> 00:06:29.360 align:middle line:84% and allow galleries to tell us how much wall space they have, 00:06:29.360 --> 00:06:34.010 align:middle line:84% and then we'll let them know what words they can make. 00:06:34.010 --> 00:06:38.600 align:middle line:84% This is a project that never came to fruition, 00:06:38.600 --> 00:06:40.220 align:middle line:84% but conceptual things are good, too, 00:06:40.220 --> 00:06:41.930 align:middle line:90% especially for what we're doing. 00:06:41.930 --> 00:06:44.480 align:middle line:84% I had a friend who was a juggler, 00:06:44.480 --> 00:06:47.060 align:middle line:84% and there's this thing called site swap, which 00:06:47.060 --> 00:06:50.380 align:middle line:84% is a system of notation for jugglers to use. 00:06:50.380 --> 00:06:54.350 align:middle line:84% So you can say, this is how you do this four ball out of a five 00:06:54.350 --> 00:06:54.950 align:middle line:90% cascade. 00:06:54.950 --> 00:06:57.180 align:middle line:84% And there's this specific notation for it. 00:06:57.180 --> 00:07:01.310 align:middle line:84% And in some of the rotatable things that you've seen already 00:07:01.310 --> 00:07:02.900 align:middle line:84% that I do, I mean, I looked at this 00:07:02.900 --> 00:07:04.790 align:middle line:84% and I said, oh, there's got to be some linguistic patterns 00:07:04.790 --> 00:07:06.470 align:middle line:84% that this would work, you know, where every time the ball 00:07:06.470 --> 00:07:08.137 align:middle line:84% comes up, you're making a sentence here. 00:07:08.137 --> 00:07:09.087 align:middle line:90% This should work. 00:07:09.087 --> 00:07:11.420 align:middle line:84% So I talked to my friend Marco, who's a Java programmer, 00:07:11.420 --> 00:07:12.920 align:middle line:90% and I said, could you do this? 00:07:12.920 --> 00:07:16.070 align:middle line:84% If I came up with words that match some of these patterns, 00:07:16.070 --> 00:07:18.440 align:middle line:84% could you do this so that there was words there 00:07:18.440 --> 00:07:19.410 align:middle line:90% instead of balls? 00:07:19.410 --> 00:07:23.680 align:middle line:84% He said, sure, I could even make it so the guy had three arms. 00:07:23.680 --> 00:07:26.594 align:middle line:84% That's a guy thinking off the page a little bit. 00:07:26.594 --> 00:07:31.310 align:middle line:90% 00:07:31.310 --> 00:07:35.300 align:middle line:84% This is text art by a guy named Bradford Paley. 00:07:35.300 --> 00:07:38.060 align:middle line:90% What you're looking at is-- 00:07:38.060 --> 00:07:39.740 align:middle line:84% the full text of Alice in Wonderland 00:07:39.740 --> 00:07:44.010 align:middle line:84% is around the outside in that ring, and then in the center, 00:07:44.010 --> 00:07:46.460 align:middle line:84% you have the text again, but more 00:07:46.460 --> 00:07:50.570 align:middle line:84% as-- the placement where it is within this ring 00:07:50.570 --> 00:07:54.230 align:middle line:84% is weighted based on word frequency 00:07:54.230 --> 00:07:56.030 align:middle line:84% and where the word is located in. 00:07:56.030 --> 00:07:57.830 align:middle line:84% The best analogy I can make for this 00:07:57.830 --> 00:08:01.082 align:middle line:90% is if a word is way up here-- 00:08:01.082 --> 00:08:03.290 align:middle line:84% imagine that there's sort of like a pin with a rubber 00:08:03.290 --> 00:08:06.592 align:middle line:84% band on every word and it gets to the middle. 00:08:06.592 --> 00:08:08.300 align:middle line:84% If there's all these rubber bands pulling 00:08:08.300 --> 00:08:10.440 align:middle line:84% at it from everywhere, that's how it ends up in the middle. 00:08:10.440 --> 00:08:12.440 align:middle line:84% But if it's out here, it's because, in this part 00:08:12.440 --> 00:08:15.320 align:middle line:84% of the text, it was very prevalent and very not 00:08:15.320 --> 00:08:18.710 align:middle line:84% prevalent in other places, so it got pulled out to here. 00:08:18.710 --> 00:08:20.690 align:middle line:84% And then the animation that's happening 00:08:20.690 --> 00:08:22.910 align:middle line:84% is you can see the green going around the outer. 00:08:22.910 --> 00:08:25.520 align:middle line:84% It's going through the text right now, word by word. 00:08:25.520 --> 00:08:29.880 align:middle line:84% As it hits various for words, if they're repeated, 00:08:29.880 --> 00:08:32.700 align:middle line:84% it's sort of going out to all of the places that you see it. 00:08:32.700 --> 00:08:35.690 align:middle line:84% This is essentially a data visualization tool, 00:08:35.690 --> 00:08:37.370 align:middle line:84% but it's also a full concordance. 00:08:37.370 --> 00:08:39.997 align:middle line:84% And it's tweakable, because you can go in and you can say, 00:08:39.997 --> 00:08:42.289 align:middle line:84% oh, I don't want these words, I don't want those words. 00:08:42.289 --> 00:08:44.610 align:middle line:84% I just want to see all of the appearances of this 00:08:44.610 --> 00:08:45.590 align:middle line:90% and the other thing. 00:08:45.590 --> 00:08:47.270 align:middle line:84% And there are several different texts 00:08:47.270 --> 00:08:50.300 align:middle line:84% that he makes this available for. 00:08:50.300 --> 00:09:00.460 align:middle line:90% 00:09:00.460 --> 00:09:03.100 align:middle line:90% This is just-- 00:09:03.100 --> 00:09:07.180 align:middle line:84% Cecilia talked last night about how the poem is-- 00:09:07.180 --> 00:09:08.920 align:middle line:90% it's only recently on the page. 00:09:08.920 --> 00:09:11.470 align:middle line:84% So the notion of poetry off the page 00:09:11.470 --> 00:09:15.010 align:middle line:84% really needs to sort of realize that, for most 00:09:15.010 --> 00:09:18.080 align:middle line:84% of poetry's history, it has been off the page. 00:09:18.080 --> 00:09:20.140 align:middle line:84% There's this particular poem called, 00:09:20.140 --> 00:09:22.780 align:middle line:84% "I Wanted to Forgive You, So I Tried to Erase Your Name," 00:09:22.780 --> 00:09:26.530 align:middle line:84% and this guy, Scott Pound, wrote this piece. 00:09:26.530 --> 00:09:29.500 align:middle line:84% He was fascinated whether this thing was a poem 00:09:29.500 --> 00:09:32.260 align:middle line:84% or not, because he found it in a recording in an archive. 00:09:32.260 --> 00:09:34.510 align:middle line:84% And he was questioning whether it 00:09:34.510 --> 00:09:40.030 align:middle line:84% could be called a poem because it wasn't written down. 00:09:40.030 --> 00:09:43.390 align:middle line:90% I find that notion shocking. 00:09:43.390 --> 00:09:45.280 align:middle line:90% Like, of course it can-- 00:09:45.280 --> 00:09:50.500 align:middle line:84% on the page is an aspect that a poem can take and can inhabit. 00:09:50.500 --> 00:09:52.570 align:middle line:90% It's truly not a requirement. 00:09:52.570 --> 00:09:54.715 align:middle line:84% I mean, what a notion, that it's required. 00:09:54.715 --> 00:09:57.550 align:middle line:90% 00:09:57.550 --> 00:09:59.740 align:middle line:84% This is something that they maybe do in your city, 00:09:59.740 --> 00:10:00.468 align:middle line:90% maybe not. 00:10:00.468 --> 00:10:02.260 align:middle line:84% There's a lot of cities that have sort done 00:10:02.260 --> 00:10:08.500 align:middle line:84% these poetry in transit things, where local poets submit poems, 00:10:08.500 --> 00:10:11.830 align:middle line:84% or sometimes they use classic, royalty-free stuff. 00:10:11.830 --> 00:10:12.933 align:middle line:90% These go on a bus. 00:10:12.933 --> 00:10:14.350 align:middle line:84% So when people are riding the bus, 00:10:14.350 --> 00:10:16.030 align:middle line:84% instead of seeing advertisements, 00:10:16.030 --> 00:10:18.910 align:middle line:90% they get to see poetry. 00:10:18.910 --> 00:10:22.380 align:middle line:84% This is an app for iPad and iPhone, amazing. 00:10:22.380 --> 00:10:23.910 align:middle line:90% You send a text-- 00:10:23.910 --> 00:10:26.400 align:middle line:84% and, in fact, let's just see this thing in action, 00:10:26.400 --> 00:10:30.240 align:middle line:84% because my description could take a lot longer than 00:10:30.240 --> 00:10:31.380 align:middle line:90% if I just show you. 00:10:31.380 --> 00:10:33.190 align:middle line:84% You send a text message to somebody, 00:10:33.190 --> 00:10:35.310 align:middle line:84% and if they have the Dance Writer app also, 00:10:35.310 --> 00:10:36.930 align:middle line:90% and the presenter can hit Play-- 00:10:36.930 --> 00:10:43.888 align:middle line:90% 00:10:43.888 --> 00:11:14.157 align:middle line:90% [VIDEO PLAYBACK] 00:11:14.157 --> 00:11:14.740 align:middle line:90% [END PLAYBACK] 00:11:14.740 --> 00:11:15.850 align:middle line:84% Maybe not the best way to say, honey, 00:11:15.850 --> 00:11:18.308 align:middle line:84% can you pick up a loaf of bread just for the amount of time 00:11:18.308 --> 00:11:21.850 align:middle line:84% it takes, but certainly beautiful and a lovely concept, 00:11:21.850 --> 00:11:24.790 align:middle line:90% combining dance and text. 00:11:24.790 --> 00:11:27.020 align:middle line:84% This, you will have the opportunity, 00:11:27.020 --> 00:11:29.200 align:middle line:84% if you haven't seen it already, it's next door. 00:11:29.200 --> 00:11:36.310 align:middle line:84% It's amazing project that [? grr, I didn't do ?]]] myself. 00:11:36.310 --> 00:11:38.625 align:middle line:90% In fact, you can mark my words-- 00:11:38.625 --> 00:11:40.000 align:middle line:84% 20 years from now, people will be 00:11:40.000 --> 00:11:44.260 align:middle line:84% talking about this project as sort of a watershed moment 00:11:44.260 --> 00:11:47.320 align:middle line:84% when the book and the digital were 00:11:47.320 --> 00:11:50.200 align:middle line:84% combined in an interesting way for one 00:11:50.200 --> 00:11:51.970 align:middle line:90% of the very first times. 00:11:51.970 --> 00:11:53.590 align:middle line:84% There will be other things like it, 00:11:53.590 --> 00:11:55.553 align:middle line:84% but they will all be cheap imitations. 00:11:55.553 --> 00:11:56.720 align:middle line:90% This is a beautiful project. 00:11:56.720 --> 00:11:59.760 align:middle line:84% You need to go next door and check it out.