Audio&Text

December 6th, 2007

Asking for more?

250px-Oliver-twist-cover.jpgThe head has split into a range of brains today. At 6AM chanting to the voice of a Yogi Master, the depth of his voice, trapped in CD, was tough as muscles but, enchanting. The majority of the Yoga class chant with him, yet I feign the chorus voice and understanding of Bengali magic, making each syllable up with gusto and imagination. Who knows what Iyengar says, it may be ’sausage rolls and buttons’.

Then, at 8AM I shared coffee with my father; we discussed pigeons flying into Germany with British secrets, during WW2. Our delicious Italian waiter, combined with a river of wild fashion paraded by local ‘characters’, meant the day began with laughter and companionship.

Not long after I had a brief but ever special talk with a friend, that ended before it had begun, and

an hour later, I entered lap top land, beavered about the office and forced myself to open Power Point, but closed it as soon as I felt my brain crying at how boring a double P can be.

I was saved from Computer lethargy by the rattle of my niece who had no one to look after her, as the child care center was full with other toddlers, up and eating mush earlier than her. So, my niece Charlie (yes a girl) and I, read books, watered the garden, dressed ourselves in tea towels and I introduced her to Jane Austen via a tea party for the two of us.

The 3 O’Clock bell took me into the University again and I madly prepared for Day 1 of our education conference tomorrow. One entertaining component will be setting up a writers’ desk in the conservative landscape of a convention center. I also look forward to spotting teachers delirious with the thick, moist carrot cake, abundance of cream filled biscuits and soggy sandwiches that all sign up to our program, for 2008.

By 5.30 after hauling tables and CD’s to my car (and passing my favourite Car, along the way) :

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Then, upstairs at the University feet thumped and a piano sang through the roof, it was the English Department Christmast party.I and Bonny, (who has just been awarded an Asia-Link Fellowship), sipped some sickly wine, ate fruit and sucked up spoons of snotty noodles.

I enjoyed stimulating chats with Post-Grad students about the attractiveness of Johnny Depp and the awfulness of the most recent adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. We then discussed which literary characters we’d all fallen in love with. Mine remains forever, Oliver Twist.

Following a John Tranter moment, I scurried into the office again, photocopied and stapled tomorrow’s notes until I smelt of ink and staples. Then, had a sit in the park, listening to the sound of ducks find one another amongst the reedy banks.

Now, Soda Water bubbles are distracting me and I must complete a poem and see to the bubbles.
Thanks for listening, whoever you are. Some nights are lonelier than others, even when the Butterflies are out.

September 25th, 2007

Radio Active

Only Anna remains. Then, all eight poets in the Sustainable project will have been captured in the digital archives and ready for 23 years of slumber. Here are a few sneak previews of the studio poets are recorded in. Gareth does, of course, know how to place headphones on his head. Today I’ll be writing and recording the Time Master introductions which you’ll be able to listen to when the first set of recordings are released on October 5th. The Red Room is radio active at the moment, having met with the crew at CBAA yesterday, to discuss future community radio broadcasts which will reach you, wherever you are and even if you’re wearing ear muffs. At the end of 2007 we’ll be creating a ‘New & Selected’ collection of audio pieces featuring poets recorded on our shows, that began way back when there was no blog.

September 14th, 2007

Johanna: 2030: Red Room Remains

logo-1.jpgMonday evenings, over the past few weeks, have taken on a mystical component with the poets, participating in our Sustainable Sydney project (2030: Red Room Remains) recording poems and statements on the future of the world, as their minds imagine it to be in 2030.

Elliott Wheeler masterminds the controls from a table of faders, computer screens, mice and headphones. From the corner of his musical eyes he observes myself and the poet trying to seriously discuss literature whilst perched on a piano stool and a cane chair, so high off the ground, I Am A Toddler.

A note here to thank Mr Wheeler who provides our company with studio space in which to record the poets. Having reduced recording rates means all our audio is provided to the public for free.
Writing of trying to remain young brings us to examine the name of one of our poets, Bravo Child. His name changed in accordance with Law to announce of each utterance of his self that his Age is a state of mind and language a grand way to sustain modes of thought. By calling oneself ‘Young’, one is so.

Does Kevin Rudd become a nifty fish with a tobacco brown body and fire red fins, if we think of him as he is written?

You will be able to listen to all the interviews with our poets on October 5th, from 9AM onwards, to coincide with the public launch of ‘Art & About‘ – to which you are welcome to attend. The interviews will reveal how the poems for this project were designed to fit onto a city building and into the brief set by Red Room and The City of Sydney for this project.

The component of the poet recordings you are not going to hear this year is the poet’s poem or series of statements that are being placed into our audio time capsule. These pieces will be archived digitally until 2030, as will Red Room’s prediction of the future of poetry at this time. Alongside the audio each poet has given our Capsule Keeper physical objects which are being stored in a secret space, to be opened in 2030. The time capsule is currently being built and you will soon be explore details of this object shortly.
Having avoided the phone all morning and ignored the insane bubble boils of an egg on stove, behind my back, I shall blog off and begin Saturday formally. This afternoon Gareth Jenkins is bringing his newly born baby to our recording studio, part of her language will be stored in the capsule, alongside Gareth’s poetic predictions.

All people involved in this project are aware of the morbidity inherent in predicting futures.
Read More »

September 6th, 2007

Sport moves aside for poetry

ts1004.jpgThe ‘Sound Translations’ project planned for the Newcastle Young Writers’ Festival has taken a scissor kick to the left; one of the artists has had an accident and can no longer mix and match poems to beats. This was speedily followed by another sound artist having to pull out due to circumstances beyond [insert your preference for omnipotent being] control. So Red Room’s original project plan has become: Open the Audio & Text Index for all broadcasters of the festival radio shows rather than working with two selected artists.
Helicopters hurry in and behind clouds as I blog. Normally, I blog to the urban sounds of cat meows or plastic garbage bins being stacked in neat piles by a vigilant neighbour – who runs a hairdressing salon from his lounge room.

WJview.jpgToday Emily Ballou is in Yass, poem-ing with the students and exploring the cabinets which have taken over Mt Carmel School. The English teacher, Sarah Johnson tells me, even the sacred glass cabinet that holds sporting trophies has had to make space for poetic action.

Red Room has arranged for our poet to sleep in a quaint bed and breakfast where she can dream up new poems following her Yass experiences. I’d imagine this Yass B&B offers similar sweet clichés to all others: shy breakfasts of orange juice and poached eggs, baths with white flannels and lavender soap and a welcoming committee of a bouncy maternal owner telling a salivating terrier it has too much energy for jumping onto laps.

August 27th, 2007

Johanna: It’s impossible to be late, early or on time

Romaine arrived wrapped in a spectacular shawl which swirled in deep, rich tones and thick cotton lines sewn together to protect her from the weather and to attract eyes of patchwork admirers, like myself. Costume, combined with voice and broad smile gave Romaine the presence of a magnanimous, impressive character.

With Elliott Wheeler monitoring our whispers and hollers from his studio desk beyond the glass, Romaine and I explored the ways or non ways time decides to exist as – or we decide time to exist as. Time, in Romaine’s view has never been a reality but it is instead a grand imaginary. Making poems makes time and the trees and the water ways take it away. We also yarned about mystery and mountains, Romaine being another Sydney poet (Pam Brown, I’m thinking of) who has ventured into the blue bark.

This was the first interview recorded for our ‘Sustainable Sydney’ pod-casts and time capsules. Part of which we will reveal in October 07 and the rest in 2030.

Just as Romaine was handing me her tangible time capsule component … there was a knock knock and Brook Emery arrived with his neat brown leather satchel …
Always two words, ie. high school
If you’re speaking generally as in
“this is a program for high schools” then it’s lower case;
If you’re referring to a particular school
as in “Penrith High School” then it’s upper

August 25th, 2007

Johanna: Nickel plated poem

The Newcastle Young Writers’ Festival project, Sound Translations, is gaining body slowly and cautiously. The project involves sound artists taking a selection of poet voices from our Audio and Text Index and mixing them up into musical bumps and lineations for radio broadcast and as an exhibition sound scape, during the festival. I’m yet to make verbal contact with the translators. Emails say yes but the vocal chords say it directly into the ear hole, and then it becomes real. So, don’t wax your ears just yet.

I’ll be brief in the Papercuts update. Brief because we’re designing copyright details for our education resources to ensure schools don’t use our works without asking us…

So brief case lea : Pam Brown was struck down with head attacks and flu inspired fatigue and not able to meet the Pennant Hills High School class on Friday. Instead Bonny Cassidy, Fiona Wright and myself took the 40 Year 9 and 10 students in a series of poem writing and cabinet construction lessons. It was an unexpected thrill. Each student penned an object poem, the only (rule?) was blank pages are not allowed to exist. For some their blank page became two words dense. For many it was Attack of the Acronym! For others the page had become a thoughtful, experimental and enjoyable space where description met rhythm. These poems will be hammered and nailed and puttied into a poem shape fit for their own Cabinet of Lost and Found.
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One of the male students with a shy and ponderous smile selected an AA battery as his object. But the boy (I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your name) wanted to know what his battery was made up of. Knowing the insides of the battery would enable him to understand and articulate the insides of his poetry.

We discussed batteries as being metaphors for poems, both chambers (the poem structure / battery body) being a collection of cells all working together.
On Friday my battery knowledge was smaller than triple A but today I am battery charged so for the student with the blue AFL ball, here are some word insides for your poem:

voltage,zinc-chloride,lithium,nickel-cadium,nickel metal hydride, graphite, rod, paper, electrolytes, valves, cathodes and try incorporating battery concepts like re-charge, chemistry and exotic.
It is possible I was more charmed by this chemical metaphor than the student and the jubilation continued when the lunch bell droned and the school teacher presented the poets with an oval tray of elfin sized sandwiches and caramel slices.

August 11th, 2007

“The queer stumps had uncanny shapes, as of monstrous creatures” (John Galsworthy).

tn_0308-2657-97.jpgMost days the carpet on Level 11 of the Town Hall House is a murky ball- point blue. But, last Friday the carpet of one of the rooms was set on paintings by imagistic predictions of school children, participants in our ‘Sustainable Sydney’ project. Each student had created an A3 art work which will accompany the poem on the AMP building projection, in October. Myself and some of the project crew tip toed, crawled and bent about each illustration hand picking the art work for projection.

I would like to think my ideas in the painting selection were helpful yet, the council and projectionist has the final say. Now the poems are written Red Room can twist in a new direction, turn our backs on the poems and let you offer variations on their stories.

For this project, Red Room is now concentrating on recording the participating poets and asking them to predict the future of poetry in 2030.
The art work reflected many themes the poems contain, like hovering, flight, dogs, sun and orbiting dragons fighting and cuddling whilst keeping an eye on the earth below. However the poems condense the kid’s concerns and wishes in 5 lines, he paintings expand their ideas into thick, primary colours. These paintings are now being animated and will eventually flick in and across the 5 lined poems each poet wrote

Look for:

..digital carnival of objects (bridges, trees, houses) and idiosyncratic beings hip hopping with fire hot energy and cartoon inspired spite….

My preferred painting was an illustration without people or smiles. The student had sketched an aerial map of Hyde Park resembling some of John Wolseley’s art which navigates Australian landscapes in stipples, scratches and linear song.
When reading the poem alongside this map design, the future was a humble geographical prediction of Sydney in 2030, the park as the beginning and end of communities and life and the walker was guided by reading lines, breath and the gaps between them.

August 8th, 2007

Johanna: Translating white hair and bald spots

The limitations of definitions. Emerging. Young. Person.
So how does the Red Room Company continue its focus on supporting young and emerging writers if its Artistic Director isn’t one, i.e closer to 30 than 20.

I can propose the you are what you feel argument, that being itself is in a constant state of emergence. Or, youth is about curiosity, adventure and surprise? In that way a boring, apathetic person of 25 is older than a daring and excited person of 35?

Yet, even with the Chief Researcher for Red Room, Bonny Cassidy, being in her early twenties, or Fiona Wright, our Sponsorship Major being a similar age to Bonny, I’m still older and therefore this affects the projects we create, our audience and our ethos.

So, when the Newcastle Young Writers’ Festival asks Red Room to mastermind a project to fit in with their festival for ‘Young and Emerging Writers’, should I say no? I am an Ancient One.
NO.

And after having said No, we will be doing YES and this involves translating Red Room poets into rhythm and music.

July 4th, 2007

Johanna: Pru Upton designed our Red Room’s own boxed head

Our Audio & Text Index is a collection of performances by and interviews with The Red Room Company poets. As I was saying to the Poinsettia on the workshop table (the only blossoming plant I’ve owned that hasn’t wilted and died within two months), this index is designed to offer other ideas and ways of wearing poetry, not offered by the academic run data bases of Australian poetry or multiplying a digital lists rich in poet names that scroll into infinity.

The Red Room’s Audio and Text index, as our Chief Researcher Bonny declares:

“The Audio & Text Index is not based in either academic research or resources, as APRIL is, but it aims to make a link between the audio and text, and not simply treat them as entities. This is important given the recent popularity and acceptance of performance poetry forms in Australia (ie. that those forms become recorded in a non-oral form, and vice versa for written poetry); and it is a specific archive of RED ROOM material, not simply anyone’s…it’s a record of our projects and existence and history as much as it is of the poets”

Hear Here.

The design of the image took many seasons, myself sending Pru, who also photographed our ‘Occasional Poetry’ event, illustrations, art works, font references and letters of the ‘please be patient’ family. Again, when graphics try to tell the stories of the poems and our projects, there’s a sinking feeling only the poem can illustrate the poem, but having written that I think Pru’s design is one of our best.