BERNEVAL

A quotation from Northrop Frye and the Poetics of Process. Caterina Nella Cotrupi. pp. 84-85.

What Frye understands by this term [displacement] is the gradual tendency observable in literature over time to move away from the pole of fiction and make-believe towards that of plausibility and ‘realism.’ The changes entailed in this movement involve the transition from the realm of fulfilled desire, of imaginative freedom to conjure the most ideal and visionary projections, to one where anxieties and concerns with time, contingency, nature, and fact are so pressing as to contrive a veritable imaginative prison or hell. […] so exaggerated that the plausible has been again left behind and the demonic side of the imagination makes its radical appearance through the nihilism of the most ironic and bleak satires and tragedies.

Captivating. The ordinary is somehow sandwiched between extremes. And the prose has us moving relentlessly.

And so for day 961
31.07.2009

I have come across the promo for a workshop on wordsmithing for the World Wide Web

Wednesday September 10/97, 7:30-9:30 pm

http://www.interaccess.org/weavers/panel2.html

Francois will be using the example of Clioscope to discuss authoring dynamic text. The presentation will focus on three areas:

Adequate Redundancy – comforting and surprising readers

Hybrid Audiences – accommodating the varieties of surfers

Contingent Closure – planning for future linking

What on earth did I mean? I had to revisit Clioscope to make sense of the remarks and so doing find myself reading the HTML markup as much as the other words in the source document.

Adequate Redundancy – comforting and surprising readers

E.g. using not quite icons but clues (such as graphic element with a vertical thrust with hyperlinks but without verbal reinforcements — counting on the browser to “Go to #top on this page”) Here’s the HTML markup
<a href=”#top”><img src=”clu.gif” border=”0″><img src=”cllu.gif” border=”0″></a>
And this is the graphic which appears to be repeated twice and with its twin “cllu.gif” plays with symmetry (and makes for faster loading in those days of dial-up connections).

Another little bit of decoration was the <HR> element — here improvised by the heading element (in the days prior to CSS): — See <h3 align=”center”>~~~</h3> — one is almost tempted to reach for a formula and describe this by analogy with the theatre of poverty as the “poverty of typography” which can used judiciously lend a richness.

Hybrid Audiences – accommodating the varieties of surfers

Contingent Closure – planning for future linking

It’s a wordsmith thing.

And so for day 959
29.07.2009

I have lifted this from publication elsewhere and elsewhen to bring it to a novel space and time. Self-spamming?

Somewhere spam senders are paying for connectivity and somewhere that service is being taxed and somewhere revenues are being generated for kindergartens and old age homes. Ah, but you will ask, is it fair for the receiver to be reminded of veniality and incur expense in being reminded. What is the cost of forgetting?

Reminders of veniality include get rich quick schemes and aids to sexual performance. Neither produce great titillation (no transport) and every time I hit delete reminding myself there is no signal without noise.

And so for day 958
28.07.2009

Thoughts on containers.

I recall a version of processed luncheon meat called Klick. A brand name very similar to the sound of the key used to open the can. A lever actually with one end like the eye of a needle and the other like the handle of a key to wind up a toy or a clock. The key came attached to the can. The key was detached and the eye-end hooked into a tiny tongue. A winding motion resulted in a wrapping of a strip of the tin and paper round the key. Considerable skill was required to avoid premature snapping.

There were containers that did not come with tools. Some books still require their pages to be slit.

The can opener on a Swiss army knife could also open bottles.

One kitchen tool was the bottle opener (for glass bottle with caps) at one end and a can opener (for cans of liquids) at the other. The can opener too was a lever. It was used to perforate the top of the can. For example, tomato juice cans would receive two holes before pouring. The holes would be placed at diametically opposed positions on the circle. Sometimes one hole would be a bit smaller, the air hole.

Tetra packs don’t quite have the same craft potential as an old tin can. However masses of them have been recycled into construction material.

A can not a tin. From the Old English for cup. Apt now when I think of cans as repurposed containers akin to the reusable mason jars. But unlike glass, a nail and hammer could tackle a can and produce amateur tinwork.

Prying caps with a bottle opener was also an art. You didn’t want to dent the cap too much. It could be added to a prized collection.

No fuss with milk bottles. No bottle opener was necessary. Fondly hoarded collection of cardboard milk bottle tops were, I believe, to inspire Pogs*, some time after glass bottles had been replaced by cartons. With the arrival of plastic spouts and foiled seals, the art of opening cartons now tackles a different set of fine motor coordination demands.

However much I like the design concept of a milk carton that unseals to form a spout (and produce no disjecta beyond its own shell and that has served on occasion to create candles or nuture seedlings), I am not nostalgic. I am merely sensitive to the memories of handling containers and how such memories might impact not only […] but also […], that is reading and writing [writ large]. Material culture counts.

from HyperMnemonics – MetaMimetics

* Pogs, Wikipedia informs me did not come milk bottles but a brand of juice. See Pogs

And so for day 953
23.07.2009

Hockney, David.

from the brochure for “fresh flowers” which was on view at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto

With the iPhone I often drew with my thumb. I could hold it in my right hand and my thumb could reach every corner of the screen as it was small and the fulcrum of the thumb is within the thumb. I learned to type with my thumb as well, holding the phone in my right hand. I could then have a cigarette in my left hand to help me concentrate. I was one of the first to get an iPad simply because it was bigger and I assumed the drawings could be more complicated. I suggested to friends that they get one and I would send them the drawings. There was a new thing on the iPad. You could play the drawing back with the press of a button. I had never seen myself draw before, this also seemed fascinating to everybody I showed them to. The only thing seen like this before was Picasso drawing on glass for a film.

Drawing and drawing (as in drawing on a cigarette).

And so for day 952
22.07.2009