Congratulations to the trAce team for the awards both to the main site and to Kids on the Net
AWP at Albany
A three day Conference of 1,400 people,even if they are not all on site at the same time, takes some organising. The list of participants read like a 'Who's Who' in American Literature.The variety of activities catered for was mind blowing. There was so much to choose from.
I started nostalgically with a schoolteachers' session on Improvisation and Voice: Approaching Writing through Performance. The difference between USA Culture and UK is at its most invisible in sessions like this, perhaps because we have been swapping teachers and ideas for so many years. There was the usual camaraderie as we as we acted out colours, almost identical fears expressed afterwards.
" I am not sure if I will be
allowed to fit this into my (national) curriculum? "
"Our director of education introduced this to us himself, so I know it is encouraged
in our state (county)"
The pendulum between 'chalk and talk' and 'whole body learning' continues to swing.
We spent so much time swapping e-mail
addresses afterwards that I was too late to attend the next session I had marked down for
myself
"Translating Soft Poems from Clay to Kinetics a translation method which encourages
the reading of simultaneous and malleable layers of meaning in poetry and uncovers
similarities between such soft poetry written in Sumerian cuneiform by women four thousand
years ago and poetry written in kinetic form by contemporary hypertext poets today."
If anyone attended that what was it like?
I felt guilty being there enjoying myself when others were doing the hard physical work of setting up the joint Nottingham Trent/trAce bookstall in the book fair in the main convention centre. What a collection of bookstalls that Book fair was. I had not realised how many small book presses there were in America and in addition each university had its own offerings. it was hard to resist the warning voice of reason "If you buy all those books you won't be able to carry your luggage."
I spent so much time touring the book stalls and discovering what what was meant by the new-to-me genre, creative non-fiction I missed the panel sessions on William Kennedy, the famous writer from Albany.
Our prime rendezvous was of course, the Schuyler room in the main conference hotel where Joe Duerner, the AWP Board member responsible for setting up the hypertext section of the conference, had done marvels acquiring the equipment everyone would need to show their poster sessions. He introduced us to a superb , light weight data projector.
Joe Duemer and Roxanne French-Thornhill.
Roxanne is the lady who so efficiently organised the whole conference.
Thursday afternoon we had the privilege of listening to the team who who were joint winners of the Hypertext writing Competition. Their work , as you will all know, is absolutely great on the net but we had the added treat of listening to the text read out by the authors themselves.
After the reading came what was for me the social highlight of the conference- the trAce reception.
Joe and Alan first at the appetising buffet
Next day was the main trAce event - the panel "The Writing Community on-line"
Sue chaired, Christy, Alan and Barbara spoke. Between them they described their different approaches to internet writing. For Christy it is artistic to the nth degree, drawing users in and encouraging them to search for the valuable nuggets she hides within her pictures, allowing her users to rearrange her images to their own taste. For Alan it is philosophical, exploring the use of avatars, for Barbara, it is social, letting people discover their talents, and forming social support groups for themselves
I overheard the people sitting behind me declaring it was the best panel they had yet attended.
The panel session was in the afternoon. Most of us spent the morning in between revising our own poster sessions listening to and watching the work of other people busy exploring the use of video and internet in creative writing.
Preparing for poster sessions. Note the data projector in the foreground
I was particularly impressed by the work of the poet laureate for Florida. He did not attend the conference himself but sent a student up to demonstrate. The fluidity of movement in the piece "The Chair" I found particularly affecting.. However because it was on video it was not interactive. I hope he decides to re-interpret it for DVD. (All right, I won't go on about DVD's as the medium of the future until I get to the social bit and my shopping in a mall.)
Simon and Christy had their poster sessions on this Friday. Simon described how he put frAme together in his usual clear, fashion. Christy gave a demonstration from her out of this world work on light-water using DHTML
Friday back in the electronics room we watched Michael Neff give us a demonstration of his magnificent site WebDelSol , reviewing and hosting many many e-zine. This should be book-marked by everyone.
During trAce's poster sessions that day. Alan showed us his Q-Basic programming for conversation between electronic avatars and his first steps into dhtml.
Sue showed us her minimalist approach with poetry cleanly placed on the screen. She also showed us a touching short story she had published to the net
Barbara whowed us by linking up live to a radio show she is involved in in California where people marginalised by society are encouraged to air their views.
Somewhere during all this back in the main convention centre, so I missed it, Mahendra had great success reading from his book of poems. He first cunningly attracted the audience by asking his friend a superb violinist to play before he started. As a result of his reading he has been asked to do a session at a university in the USA later this year. (Virginia, I think)
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