Jim Andrews on the Aleph Null too and his collaboration Adeena Karasick:
The text in the video is from her new book of poetry–titled Checking In–forthcoming from Talonbooks in Vancouver.
Maria Damon said this about Adeena Karasick’s book Checking In: “Aesthetically innovative and intellectually stimulating, Checking In is a restless and propulsive commentary and parody of our habitual and often addictive uses of social media.”
Adeena Karasick selected the 208 images used in the video poem.
I created the video with Aleph Null 3.0, software I wrote in JavaScript. You can see an interactive version of Checking In at http://vispo.com/aleph3/an.html?d=Adeena%20Karasick%201#. Click the aleph at top left to toggle display of the interactive controls.
Aleph Null is an extensive project. Here’s something I wrote about it: http://vispo.com/aleph3/slideshow/info.htm. The video is different from the interactive piece in that the video consists of about 25 segments, each of which was an independent session in Aleph Null. In other words, I’d record a segment from Aleph Null, then change the settings, and then record the next segment. I recorded and strung the segments together with video software called Camtasia.
Adeena Karasick will be touring her new book soon. She’ll be playing the video during readings and supplying the audience with a URL they can view the interactive piece with on their phones.
Adeena Karasick, Ph.D is a New York-based Canadian poet, performer, cultural theorist and media artist and the author of eight books of poetry and poetics. Her Kabbalistically inflected, urban, Jewish feminist mashups have been described as “electricity in language” (Nicole Brossard), “proto-ecstatic jet-propulsive word torsion” (George Quasha), noted for their “cross-fertilization of punning and knowing, theatre and theory” (Charles Bernstein) “a twined virtuosity of mind and ear which leaves the reader deliciously lost in Karasick’s signature ‘syllabic labyrinth’” (Craig Dworkin); “one long dithyramb of desire, a seven-veiled dance of seduction that celebrates the tangles, convolutions, and ecstacies of unbridled sexuality… demonstrating how desire flows through language, an unstoppable flood of allusion (both literary and pop-cultural), word-play, and extravagant and outrageous sound-work.” (Mark Scroggins). Most recently is Checking In (Talonbooks, 2018) and Salomé: Woman of Valor (University of Padova Press, Italy, 2017), the libretto for her Spoken Word opera co-created with Grammy award-winning composer, Sir Frank London. She teaches Literature and Critical Theory for the Humanities and Media Studies Dept. at Pratt Institute, is co-founding Artistic Director of the KlezKanada Poetry Festival and Retreat, Poetry Editor for Explorations in Media Ecology, 2017 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Award recipient and winner of the 2016 Voce Donna Italia award for her contributions to feminist thinking. The “Adeena Karasick Archive” has been established at Special Collections, Simon Fraser University.
Jim Andrews is a poet-programmer who has been publishing his site vispo.com since 1996; he is a pioneer in net art and in writing for the Internet. On vispo.com, you find interactive poetry, interactive multimedia (verbo–voco-visual) and essays on art and technology. He did a degree in English and Mathematics and, later, studied more math and also computer science at the University of Victoria in Canada. Most of his work is digital and available on vispo.com, but he is also the author of two books and occasionally shows work in installations. He has been working on Aleph Null since 2011. He wrote about it at vispo.com/aleph3 . Other recent work includes Globebop at globebop.com . He lives in Vancouver Canada with his wife.