Notes on Aram Saroyan's Lighght Poem

Aram Saroyan’s “Lighght” is probably one of the greatest things ever created by mankind - so simple and yet so powerful.

It is the poem you can’t really read but only comprehend, if that makes sense.

This poem consists of just one word, slightly modified - and nothing else. In a way, it is just an instant, a moment of comprehension that causes deep repercussions - something very different from the casual poem reading experience.

The entire poem is based on a fact that are silent letters in English language. Saroyan adds another “-gh-” and by that adds a new dimension to the word “light” and elaborates on the concept behind it. You can’t spell it, but can see the difference when you look at the poem and that triggers a different reaction. The one that leads to parts unknown.

The poem plays on the cognitive dissonance between the common way of writing the word “light” and its appearance with an additional “-gh-” which does not really make any difference in the spelling. And yet it makes the reader to reconsider what the concept of “light” and what does it mean when there is an additional “-gh-” thrown in. Does it mean more light or a different kind of light?

It is very reminiscent of how Inuit language have multiple ways of describing the snow and its states. There are numerous variations of words that signify different types and states of snow. They add functional parts to the core word so that it would describe the thing more precise detail.

“Lighght” works in a similar manner. The addition of another “-gh-” is subtle notion that this particular instance of experiencing “light” is somewhat different from the one that is casually experienced.

And that is basically what the poetry is doing with language in a nutshell. It uses its aesthetic properties and creative potential to uncover new things, new shades, to transform casual matters, to defamiliarize common concepts and move forwards into the unknown and hopefully, makes us understand the nature of the world and its perception better.

MFT: Google Poem Portraits

Baba Google Strikes Again. The last time i've covered Google's exploits in the field of artificial intelligence, machine learning and natural language processing was around the time Talk to Books was presented. It was fun but not much else.

Now they have unveiled their brand new toy - Poem Portraits. Long story short: at least they tried.

Developed by Es Devlin with an assistance from Google's Ross Goodwin, Poem Portraits is another attempt to explore the possibilities of natural language generation in a specific environment. This time - it is poetry. Because, you know, poetry is the most effective way of showcasing the aesthetic possibilities of language and push the boundaries of comprehension deep into the parts unknown. Poems do stuff other forms of literature skim over - such playing with semantics, clashing the disparate meanings of words, subverting the narrative by context and overall wrecking the common perception of language use. This makes it a good to choice for natural language processing algorithms. It is challenging and the results may be stagering.

Also - it helps to refine customer support conversational interfaces, but that's absolutely not the point of it all. Not even a bit. For real. For sure. Yup.

Poem Portraits is all about composing a text that is technically poetic based around an input query. The user is asked to donate the word. After the word is entered, the thing does a fancy animation with the word being sliced up and digested (by algorithm). Then it overlays the text on the user's selfie because gimmickry. Or you can skip and get a semi-abstract thingie with the text.

Poem Portraits uses semantics to figure out the best fitting sequence and applies its extensive vocabulary and sample base in order to compose a short piece of text. The algorithm is trained on 19th century poetry (it is stated that algorithm ate around 25 million words - now that's an alphabet soup). This means it is verbose and flowery and diverse in stylistic flourishes. These features make it easier to embellish the input query with ornate verbiage. The resulting text is supposed to be poetry by proxy - because it was generated out of poetry. And it seems like poetry, all the ingridients are definitely there, except it is slightly off.

The text is just there. It looks pretty but it makes nothing happen. Since there is this overused aphorism "poetry makes nothing happen" - that's it. The resulting text is just a couple of phrases thrown together with an input word sticking out of a glory hole.

But at the same time - Poem Portraits is an interesting case of simulacrum. The thing is - Poem Portraits exploits the elusive notion of poetry, not the poetry itself. It revolves around the feel that is not exactly present in the text or its perception or it is present but not really there.

Poem Portrait simply makes impressions which cause a certain kinds of reaction based on common perception of the concept of poetry. It clicks and that is it. It is a perfect fodder for "yeah, uh-huh".

The most interesting thing about it is that the thing doesn't know the word "eellogofusciouhipoppokunurious" but it knows "floccinaucinihilipilification". It makes no sense regardless but it is baffling that one word is there while the other is don't. Whatever.

Deconstructing Joy Division "Unknown Pleasures" cover into an abstract landscape sketch

Sometimes an idea hits you and you can't help but try to do something with it. This is how it happened.

So - a couple of days ago I was surfing on the Internet haven't nothing else to do. It is mildly frustrating but otherwise unmemorable. I was going through my subscriptions - looking for something interesting, probably something to write about it. And there was just nothing of note.

Disappointed, i went to my favorite MP3 blogs feed and started clicking around at random, hoping to stumble upon something unexpected. It didn't happened, so i was rolling the mouse wheel until the end of the feed. And down there - there was something i was aware of but never really thought of it this way before.

It was Peter Saville's a poster based on the front cover art for Joy Division's "Unknown Pleasures" album. The one with an image of radio waves from CP-1919 pulsar, the signal from little green men.

Here it is:

For some unknown reason, I was looking at it as if i haven't it before. I was mystified by it and I knew i needed to do something with it or it will never go away and i'll be stuck with forever.

And so i did what any sane man with a nondescript creative urge would do - messed with it. 

Before starting, I reverted the color scheme of the original image. Then made a copy of an image, wiped it clean and used it as a pinboard canvas. Then i've used a capture tool that grabbed the lines and started composing my own piece out of Unknown Pleasures cover. 

Due to compression artifacts and image resolution - i couldn't grab the entire lines. The tool was capturing them in a very erratic and disjointed manner - a little of this and a little bit of that. At first I wanted to do an asemic writing thing but soon it became apparent that this thing was perfect for the fake abstract pencil sketch of some landscape.

Here's the result:

This is an example of how to make something new out of something old and well-known. The only thing you need is go for it. 

MFT: One Minute of Anime Gasp Noises

These days Justin Whang is making rounds as an Internet folk historian with "Tales from the Internet Series". But back in the day, he was into supercuts. See me writing a couple of hundred words about one of them.



This is a one minute supercut of Anime Gasp Noises crudely culled together from different series in a relentless breakneck pace assortment that is as pointless as it is utterly hilarious. Just like Randy Savage vs Hulk Hogan breathing match - it is the thing that exists more in your mind than in reality. It is a form of a mental exercise to stretch the perception muscles and make them more capable in detecting something completely different within the fickle thickness of the mundane.

The thing is - our brain is looking for patterns to make sense of - all the time. It is a natural cognitive process. Its casual mode is subtle and unassuming dot connection. But sometimes, when the brain encounters something a little more dense and unusual it goes a bit haywire in order to digest the thing just for sake of digesting it. If done intentionally, it is a fine brain teaser that might result in some unexpected assumptions and conclusions.

This is why supercuts works so well. As a form of curiosity cataloguing - it takes certain things out of its original context and groups them together based on a unifying features. The resulting collection is quite discordant in its nature - a little bit of this and a little bit of that and also that thing because it is also like that. But by the mere fact of being crammed together, they start to merge together into something else while being perceived as a singular whole.

In other words - it is unintentional overcomplication of a throughaway jest.

Anime Gasp Noises supercut leaves out the inciting of the gasping while retaining the gasping itself. It comes with the fool in the air in the middle of the step and that is very disorienting. It bounces off the opaque into the vague and that does not bode well with the perception as there is a natural need to eliminate the unknown. However, there is no way the unknown would become known in the supercut and that leaves mild irritation that solidifies the impression of the video.

Since there is a throughline feature in all elements - it serves as a backbone for the makeshift narrative while bits and pieces of the original context provide dissociated breadcrumbs non-sequitir narrative. 

That's a very long and winding way of saying that this thing is really funny.

MFT: Two Black Holes Merge into One

This is beautiful. In this video you can witness a simulation of two black holes merging together. Such thing is fun to think about in your spare time and even more entertaining to watch once in a while.

The video depicts the process of two black holes colliding into the space of one another, circling around each other, warping the stars around them due to its extremely strong gravity, gradually locking up and colliding and then coalesce into one big black hole.

The simulation was generated by Simulating Extreme Spacetimes project based on an event detected by Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory. The story goes - there were gravitational waves in space and time - it happened approximately 1,3 billion years ago. The simulation shows how this event would look like through human eyes.

What it makes this video so special is that it is an approximate imagining of how this thing turned out as no one actually witnessed it.

And since this is only a modeling based on an Einstein's theory - this makes this video and the concept behind it a fine example of an extreme abstract conceptual art - so much beyond our experiental reach it is stuck in the realm of speculative fact-based imagination.

But that is that if you know what it is supposed to represent.

If you are watching this short video out of context for whatever reason - it seems like a very different thing.

• For once, it looks like nostrils juggling before transforming into a singual cyclopian nostril. 
• Or it can be a macabre variation of cue sports with gravitional shenanigans where two cue balls that are initially solid gain momentum and gradually turn into a jelly-like singular substance. 
• Or it can be a cheap and unimaginitive black light show.

MFT: Looney Tunes: Back In Action Louevre Scene

This is a scene from a 2003 live-action / animated hybrid feature film "Looney Toones: Back In Action" directed by Joe Dante. In it you can see the antagonist Elmer Fudd and the protagonists Buggs Bunny and Duffy Duck messing around in the Louevre museum trying to one up each other in the classic Looney Toons "in you face" cerebral surreal mayhem. They are running around the hallways, jumping from one painting to another, taunting the aggressor and otherwise passing time in a creatively fulfilling fashion. It is a fine showcase of what Looney Toones is about in a nutshell.

I'm going to retell the episode because it is one of those things that are really fun to write out.

The story goes - the band is ambushed by one and only Elmer Fudd. However, Buggs Bunny is no slouch and he starts to talk to Fudd. He starts a dispute regarding the nature of good and evil. That makes Fudd to hesitate for a moment, but he momentarily snaps back and threatens to finish them off. But Bunny starts to play a guessing game with playing cards to distract Fudd. He makes a series of incorrect guesses while Fudd tries to explain which card he meant. By the end of the routine, Fudd is all covered in playing cards like a sticky ribbon with flies near the rotten meat. 

In the meantime - the dynamic duo escapes through the hallways of Louevre. They jump into Salvador Dali's Persistence of Time. Fudd follows, tries to shoot, but his gun melts just like the clocks. Buggs and Duffy run away. At first it seems like a simple change of scenery. But the environment of the painting affects the characters. As they escape, time cathes up with them and starts to drag. Fudd yells at them and the words he spits out turn into an abstract rebus floating in the sky. He tries to shoot again, but melts into a nondescript blob similar to one from "I have no mouth but I must scream" (really).

After that - the boys go through the wall like Freddy K. straight into Edward Munch "Scream". They run from deep background right into the foreground stumbling into the protagonist causing him to scream. Fudd follows and so Buggs stomps on his foot and Fudd makes his own 'scream' impresssion, while the dynamic duo escapes. 

The next stop is Toulouse-Lautrec Moulin Rouge poster. Fudd gets really awkward in this kind of environment. He is approached by two ladies who turn out to be crossdressing Buggs and Duffy. They proceed to kick him around a bit until the pace switches into overdrive and they just start to jump around from painting to painting as if it was musical chairs thing. 

Finally, they go into Georges Seurat's A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte - the pointilist painting. Fudd enters his huntere mode and looks through the passerbys. He stops by disguised Duffy and finds Buggs who pretends to be a toddler. Fudd doesn't get the ruse and tries to play with the toddler until he realizes the trick and continues the chase. He tries to shoot two but they manage to slip away. Fudd leaves splashes of erasure on the canvas.

Duffy and Buggs manage to jump out of the painting to the hallway. Fudd follows. But before he can readapt from the painting, Buggs approaches him and reads him an explanation of the concept of pointilism. Fudd realizes he is in trouble. At the same time, Buggs gets his portable fan, turns it on and disintegrates Fudd as if he was just a hoard of dust. In the meantime - Duffy tries to reconstruct himself by connecting the dots. 

Outside context - this scene is a fine showcase of the Looney Toones freewheeling, anything goes mentality. It is very lettrist-situationist in its approach to already existing material. Joe Dante uses it for the purposes of slapstick gags and at the same time he manages to make a distinct homages to the source style and string together a cohesive surreal narrative building upon the existing blocks.

How to waste time and make it count while reading Slash Magazine?

Slash Magazine was one of the cornerstones of LA punk scene. If you wanted to know a thing or two about what is going on there - you need to read that thing. It is a treasure trove of gems - starting from clumsy record reviews and gig reports and ending with messy interviews where everyone tried to be more thoughtful than they really are resulting in some cognitive dissonance macabre. Then there adverts which show the american punk aesthetic in all its DIY glory. Just looking at them makes you feel better and brighter - they are so vibrant, so standoffish. 

So, the story goes. I have stumbled upon a big selection of Slash Magazine issues. And since I'm a kind of person who can't just skim over stuff like that - i've spend a good couple of hours devouring the thing as if it was the most important finding in the world. 

During that time, nothing in the world mattered more for me. It was as if I've encountered a Holy Grail. The one with mediocre writing, nonexistent journalism standards, shameless plug-ins and pointless meandering between the lines. But that's part of Slash's charm - it wasn't made by cynical pro's - it was made by the folks who cared about all this and wanted to make difference - not just spectate the developments of the scene as some pro's would do.

While reading it - i've noticed how many interesting typographic choices there is in the layout. It brimmed with creativity. Every now and then there was a thing i wanted to cut-out because it was jumping out of the page like a Jack Kirby superhero - it was radiating with energy. 

And so - i started to cut-out those things with a screen grabbing tool (my tool of choice is Jing, I endorse it). After a while i had a pile of bits and pieces from different issues. However, on its own - those cool bits and pieces does not seemed to be that great. They were just a bunch of stuff and that was really frustrating. Imagine that - you've spent like seven hours dissecting page by page looking for that kind of stuff and in the end - it is basically a whole bunch of nil. I had a long, dubious stare into nowhere after realizing what i have done. 

And that it came to me - i'm gonna bury them all in one place.

That's how this piece came to be: 

While the original intention of this thing was nothing more but a morbid relief - in the end it turned out to be the complete opposite. While i was thoughtlessly slapping bits and pieces onto the canvas it seemed to me like i was trying to justify an immense waste of time i was clearly guilty of. After a while it felt like pinning butterflies with the needles - some savage stuff. Cue Jack the Ripper from Doom Patrol.

And then I was distracted by the phone call. Since my ring tone is Merzbow's "Pulse Demon" i was subjected to the blast of harsh noise augmented by substandard phone speaker. But it was enough to snap me out of frustration and let me look at the thing with the clear eyes. And for some reason - it wasn't just a dumping ground for the aftermath of the waste of time - it was an accidental impressionistic collage narrative.

The resulting piece is a blast of barely eligible elements thrown together seeming at random. But the more you look at it - the more it comes together in the fluid non-committal manner. It suggests certain notions but never really goes anywhere. It is like glimpses of glimmer that comes from the deep to the surface as borderline abstract entities.

It was very unexpected and satisfying conclusion to my encounter with Slash magazine.