Design Workshop – July 29 2011

This is a renga composed in a design workshop conducted by interMedia lab design researcher, Idunn Sem at RMIT University July 29 2011. The workshop title was Bring your tools! Artifacts of expression and expressive artifacts in collaborative design research.

Marsha Berry used renga and Twitter as her tool to create an artifact of expression. The participants composed the renga above. Renga is a literary art form written by two or more collaborators that was popular in Japan during the medieval and Edo periods. Bashõ was a keen proponent and innovator of the form. As well as being poetry, renga is an improvisation where two or more poets collaborate to produce a performance through linked verse.

Reichhold (1995) describes the writing of renga thus,

While engaged in contributing to a renga the writers are aware that a careless, uneducated reader could find the completed poem merely a crazy-quilt assemblage of alternating two and three line stanzas. However, they also know that a knowledgeable, sensitive reader will legitimately anticipate a creative, meaningful and enjoyable assemblage of organized stanzas. Writers of renga design their lines so that ANY ADJACENT SET of two and three lines will have a subtle but recognizable relationship.

Poetry4u Update

The poetry map of Swanston St has 21 sites and three poems at each site. The Poetry4u application promotes future submissions into the competition.

Zeitgeist

There is an application about the lane-ways of Melbourne called MyStory that has resonances with the poetry4u application. Locative media has burgeoned thanks to smart phones. It is wonderful to see the range and scope of creative projects using new mobile media.

Interesting Project in Sydney

We found this quote on The Power of Locative Media blog:

“In the very near future, billions of people will be roaming the planet with GPS devices. Clouds of network connectivity are forming over our major cities and will inevitably coalesce. The geoaware web isn’t a product we buy; it’s an environment we colonize.” – Udell, 2005

The blog describes a really interesting project in Sydney called “Sydney Sidetracks: History where it happened” that has resonances with the poetry4u project.

New steps

Work has commenced on the iPhone application. We are also editing an anthology of the best entries from 2009 and 2010 which will be published by Lulu in the near future.

Poetry4u at Fed Square

Some of the Poetry4U poems wrapping around the shard at Fed Square.

Poetry4u at Federation Square

It is so lovely to see our winning entries up on the East Shard tickers at Federation Square.

Twitter poetry competion winning entries scroll along the East Shard at Federation Square