Ian Gibbins

Ian Gibbins, in an interview with Rossana Licari:

Ian Gibbins in conversation with Rosanna Licari. Because of Ian’s scientific background, I have noticed he tends to use language in a more categorical and analytic manner than a lot of poets/ video poets I’m acquainted with. This seems to spring in part from the areas that catch his interest, and in part from his intellectual habit of breaking phenomena down into their constituent parts. (I noticed this most recently during an online conversation about the bush fires in Australia.) However, there is another, much larger issue he refers to here, which is the limits — or, if you prefer — the imprécision of language when it tries to describe, for example, emotional states. How can scientists contribute to improving that aspect of language? How can artists?

Ian Gibbins en conversation avec Rosanna Licari. En raison de la formation scientifique d'Ian, j'ai remarqué qu'il a tendance à utiliser le langage de manière plus catégorique et analytique que beaucoup de poètes / poètes vidéo que je connais. Cela semble provenir en partie des domaines qui attirent son intérêt, et en partie de son habitude intellectuelle de décomposer les phénomènes en leurs parties constitutives. (Je l'ai remarqué récemment lors d'une conversation en ligne sur les feux de brousse en Australie.) Cependant, il y a un autre problème beaucoup plus important auquel il fait référence ici, qui est les limites - ou, si vous préférez - l'imprécision de la langue quand il essaie pour décrire, par exemple, des états émotionnels. Comment les scientifiques peuvent-ils contribuer à améliorer cet aspect du langage? Comment les artistes?


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Gibbins: “I have utilised scientific language explicitly in many different ways. For example, I have sampled texts from scientific papers, including my own; I have written in what seems to be an archaic scientific style, often making up words in the process; and I have reimagined the context and voice of scientific or technical manuals to give them a very different life.
I now have four books of poetry, and all have some kind of underpinning in science and scientific language. My first, Urban Biology, has a glossary and species checklist in it, identifying all the various plants and animals I referred to in the poems. The Microscope Project: How Things Work came from a major collaboration with artists Catherine Truman and Deb Jones, and includes diverse  re-imaginings of manuals and design plans for a range of microscopes and ancillary equipment I once used and  managed at Flinders. Floribunda, with artist Judy Morris, imagines the discovery of new plants by European explorers and employs the language of 19thcentury scientific reports. My recent chapbook A Skelton of Desire contains a range of poems built around the structure of the body and the Latin terminology used to describe it.

I don’t have much of a theoretical underpinning for my writing, but as time has gone on, I have developed some more or less neuroscientific basis for what I do. For all of the undeniable value of language, there is much that it cannot do. Indeed, language fails dismally to describe actions and it’s not much better at describing objects or emotions in any kind of detail. We are only consciously aware of a tiny amount of what is happening around us and within us. Nevertheless, the contents of this small window of experience are moving far too rapidly to be captured by language in real time. So, these days, much of my writing tries to replicate what is going on at the edge of consciousness where language is on the verge of breakdown as it tries to keep up with fleeting experience.”

Noteworthy

Nouveau poème par Jean Coulombe intitulé « On danse »

Strangelove 1

Canadian Winter Walk/ Promenade pendant l’hiver canadien

Downtown seen from Esplanade/ centre-ville vue par Esplanade- Toronto

Winter/ hiver - Toronto

Winter/ hiver/ 겨울 - Toronto

Green Vision Eco Film Festival - This World Breathes

Happy to have participated in this interesting ecological film festival in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Vimeo link to the project: https://vimeo.com/374046923

Noteworthy

Michael Dennis on Carsten Rene Nielsen

ChantWork, more

#videopoetry #singing #poesie #video

To see the original version of this, go here: https://vimeo.com/186507014

Here is the 146th from the Baram Series (“Sound into World”) and one of the first of those projects that received a proper screening (at a conference for the Korean Society of Comparative Literature). That was a few years ago. I’m glad that the poem at the heart of it has now been published at Former People.

Making a videopoem is considerably different from writing a poem; that’s especially true when — as is the case with “Sound” — making the poem and making the video go hand in hand. I wanted to capture something about the different experiences I had of rural and city life here in South Korea. These differences are more pronounced than in Western countries — perhaps because the cities are so densely populated. The cities are constantly interesting. But it’s difficult to achieve a meditative zone within them.

I also wanted to experiment with ambient environmental sounds and sound collage. Most movies employ music . But at what point does the music become a morsel that’s thrown at a (restive) audience — a form of seduction, in other words — instead of something integral to the film that lends it its intended quality (in this case, a kind of meditativeness)?

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Voici le 146e de la série Baram («Sound into World») et l'un des premiers de ces projets qui a reçu une projection appropriée (lors d'une conférence pour la Société coréenne de littérature comparée).  C'était il y a quelques années.  Je suis heureux que le poème au cœur de celui-ci ait été publié chez Former People.

 Faire un vidéopoème est très différent de l'écriture d'un poème;  cela est particulièrement vrai lorsque - comme c'est le cas avec "Sound" - faire le poème et faire la vidéo aller de pair.  Je voulais capturer quelque chose sur les différentes expériences que j'ai eues de la vie rurale et urbaine ici en Corée du Sud.  Ces différences sont plus prononcées que dans les pays occidentaux - peut-être parce que les villes sont si densément peuplées.  Les villes sont constamment intéressantes.  Mais il est difficile de créer une zone méditative en leur sein.

 Je voulais également expérimenter les sons ambiants et les collages sonores ambiants.  La plupart des films utilisent de la musique.  Mais à quel point la musique devient-elle un morceau qui est lancé à un public (rétif) - une forme de séduction, en d'autres termes - au lieu de quelque chose d'intégré au film qui lui donne la qualité voulue (dans ce cas, une sorte de méditation  )?

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Sound into World 

—

Listen --

No, listen this way:

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The too much of sky is like a tool

that tightens nature's energy.

Its sound is like an ache.

Nature's sights and sounds are too;

they have t'-'eauty.

They woosh and jitter and ahh.

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But then mountain – assertive, aggressive –

breathes up as high as sky,

and sky, made nervous, merely smiles quietly on ground. Tree, interceding, creates home

for all sorts of beings,

and sky, calmed of anxiety, rests.

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Think of all things –

or think of nothing at all.

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Rain resembles poetry,

or satori.

Rain wants to blur everything

that resembles negative thought. But negative thought propels itself – it wants to escape.

Can we escape, too?

Can we clarify thought

by running to a new location

that will enlighten us?

Road blurs thought, too;

we have to be humble

and return to sky for advice –

correction: advice from the clear things under sky; the things that exist

even when

sky is gone.

- Finn Harvor

From my collection of ambient and authorial movies.

ChantWork

ChantWork. YouTube link: https://youtu.be/K20J20H9xvA

I have been experimenting for some time with singing and videopoetry, and I would be interested in seeing work by other doing likewise.

J'expérimente depuis un certain temps avec le chant et la vidéopoésie, et je serais intéressé à voir le travail des autres faire de même.

나는 노래와 비디오시로 한동안 실험을 해왔으며 다른 사람들도 같은 일을하는 것에 관심이있을 것이다.

Venho experimentando há algum tempo canto e videopoesia, e estaria interessado em ver o trabalho de outras pessoas fazendo o mesmo.

Έχω πειραματιστεί για κάποιο χρονικό διάστημα με το τραγούδι και τη βιντεοπαρακία και θα με ενδιέφερε να βλέπω την δουλειά και από άλλες.

私は歌とビデオ詩でしばらくの間実験してきました、そして、私は同じようにして他の人によって仕事を見ることに興味があります。

Ho sperimentato per un po 'di tempo con il canto e la videopoesia, e sarei interessato a vedere il lavoro di altri allo stesso modo.

Некоторое время я экспериментировал с пением и видеопоэзией, и мне было бы интересно посмотреть на то, как другие делают то же самое.

Upcoming: Moinho Film Festival - Greening Korea (minute version)

Full version: https://youtu.be/6pA5exVcTnc

Marie Craven/ Sarah Sloat

With my brother (Ottawa)

Canadian Winter - a one-minute sound collage

The Rideau Canal (Ottawa)

From Hokkaido to Korea

Finnegan's Wake

A reading from the Joyce masterwork.