The Twitstat Project
A collaborative double book of new/experimental poetry by Chris Weige and Renee Zepeda (Spring 2010).
Published, designed, and edited by Renee Zepeda and The Pulchritudinous Press:
60 pages, hand-sewn binding, Strathmore-style paper, cherry vellum, personal stamp & bookmark.
Inspired in part by the Twitstat application, whereby users post 140 character messages via mobile phone to Twitter. Printed in a special limited edition of 36 copies in Boulder, Colorado.Cover art and photography by Chiai Matsumoto
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bluesocks78/551543199/
NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) – Twitter, the social networking site favored by some celebrities, has gone high-brow with a performance from James Joyce’s 1922 novel “Ulysses.”
Two “Ulysses” enthusiasts, videogame designer Ian Bogost from the Georgia Institute of Technology and colleague Ian McCarthy, wanted to try to use the site in a culturally interesting way rather than just as a service that let users send 140-character messages, known as tweets.
They came up with idea of recreating a chapter from “Ulysses” on Twitter.
They chose chapter 10, Wandering Rock, which is famous for showing the interlocking events of 19 characters walking through central Dublin doing their daily business.
Bogost and McCarthy registered 54 of the novel’s characters as Twitter users and adapted the chapter in a large series of 140-character or less first-person statements, using a specially created software to automate a performance.
On June 16 or “Bloomsday,” the day the action in the novel takes place in 1904, these characters all sent tweets about what they were doing at the correct fictional times.
Bogost said the performance went smoothly although a few technical hiccups meant some characters were unable to take part.
“I think the project sheds a new light on Twitter by intermixing usual fare with these century-old characters,” said Bogost on his blog www.bogost.com.
“As for long-term literary uses of Twitter, it’s certainly a viable and interesting option.”
Every year “Bloomsday” is celebrated in Joyce’s home country of Ireland and in other English-speaking parts of the world with Joyce fans and scholars often retracing the characters’ steps.
(Reporting by Belinda Goldsmith, Editing by Miral Fahmy)
via reuters
Photo by truck stop tea party
EDINBURGH, Scotland, Nov. 2 (UPI) — The works of Robert Burns are being Twittered as part of the celebration of the Scottish poet’s 250th birthday.
Users can pick up short excerpts from Burns‘ works, along with factoids about the Ayrshire poet, The Scotsman reported. The National Trust for Scotland is behind the project.
“We like to find new ways of spreading the works of our national icons,” said the trust’s chairwoman, Shonaig Macpherson. “Twitter is an inexpensive and fun way to do that.”
Burns was born on a farm in Alloway, outside Ayr, Jan. 25, 1759. The trust is also involved in a renovation of the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum.
Appropriately, one of Burns’ most famous poems was “To A Mouse,” an ode to a rodent disturbed by his plow that begins “Wee slickit cowerin’ timorous beastie.”
via UPI
The Twitstat Poems II.
Cool beans feeling food with yr hands and feet
addicted you’ll get your fingernails dirty
and find food tastes better once you get to know it.
The spell lingers…
I hear it’s home
farm feeling affirming years of far fun kites
organic food found hiding in stalks something real:
milk, money, missing parts.
Hear friends doing feeling found
esta everything is part party play
read safari, read the invitations made
most names mean something.
Smart stuff, network oil for the thinking town.
* Most already believe in love * Most at least try to hear the missing thoughts * Care * Change * Seriously better beer, and a lot of cool details
* Listening live yeah, making new work, new words * Ha ha here, dinner and a pantsless party * in the cool country tonight * you can join quietly or storm in * wearing what you were born in
To to the peach tree whisper soft lips and scent
No no retreat from the long beach where bodies will not relent.
To to elaborate, Woman, it may be ok,
it may in any language taste the same when you call out fuck and game,
when you really drive it, and when yr soon
if you’re not getting wet the best kiss consumes
and you know you recognize it, and it you in your sexy room.
Money moments of course
on the other hand: if you think about it:
empty cameras painting your bedroom with someone else’s deck of magick cards.
Your cash, oil switch,
Your gruff wonderful words whose true name is Love.
Your bash belly-dancing curves.
Your non-stick non-stop walls vibrating in the impossible church.
_ C/W
Link man met the morning music feeling every note in the big picture show,
ever noting the strange stuff, the techie things ‘tween us,
old offers in the happy head trying to make it through feeling stupid,
trying to make it go dueling cupid and the throes, if you follow.
Damn, hope would not let me go despite my shriveling act only known as apathy-ego,
mr. cool-done-doing, mr. social something-or-other, mr. big ‘ol yesterday imagining a marvel
through the window leaning on the pane’s chipped paint.
_07 C/W
5.7 love wasn’t work / wasn’t isn’t old / but was is form more worthy. love wasn’t pointless storks / wasn’t isn’t bored / but was is born. either idea scores / big soundy star-stuff / free and prettier folklore / funny ladies made of statues casting shadows on identity / and love wasn’t hidden under floor or carpet dirt / wasn’t isn’t just a flirt / but was is written / on no heart left unhurt… i don’t know. you tell me.
_016 C/W
actually, another near breakdown
another cool business call love
like yr the media listening in on every person’s thoughts
twisting simple meanings and might into long elitist magazine articles.
huge hope super-colored thinking everyone will be alright in making their sounds, in opening their sacks of light, picking their pretty peaches
whoa wonderstuff, big cool listening lotsa love,
something special in store, something free but worth much more,
something few and far between everything, open sesame doors
Globe CW / Reckon
Wrote a thing or two
watching warm wonderful wish
turned on by a book.
Globe-CW / Reckon
Ah haiku happened
to make happy the love notes
lost in the movie
Globe-CW / Reckon
agree anyway
agree away
sometimes it’s better not to look.
doesn’t it like a dog get you down?
the longing, the constant runaround,
screeching city sounds and same ol’ same ol’?
start thinking – yr in a rated x movie talking music but the dinosaurs have become a problem (they abuse it)
Globe-CW / Reckon
sleep, worker.
coffee up the mail the man a marketing plan;
it’s friday’s big account bin following all the fun at the chat barrel.
Globe-CW / Reckon
April 27th
I’m compiling a collection of poems inspired in part by the Twitstat Twitter Twitgeist.
This is the first installment unedited.
_30 C/W Reckon_
already found fire and followed;
answer. answer anything (!) apparently awesome
when our minds met that night and sensed someone…
exactly: eyes bed better
yeah yedda (wow) and let life’s long looks sound something off for someone making happy sounds.
A:m exactly… give love the old photo party fix.
_30 C/W Reckon_
**rest.**
_(or ide’s wild)
(or Ida, Southwestern Child)_:
**she said the same in shanghai**
she wanted to walk on the wild side while wearing a full body condom;
hmmm…city comments: calm down,
look at the moist mountains in the backdrop
beyond the multiple hotels motels fountains and demo beds;
t.v. on the night-stand tomorrow trying again…
Yeah.
_31 C/W Reckon_
interesting ideas hmmm
adobe ah air
found a polite bug in the peekaboo project
cool china love in the u.s. made for free
feeling coffee today
thx for the feed
_31 C/W Reckon_
1. Online I am _completely_ myself
* Between the **ins and outs** there is no difference hmmm
* Out there in the air this morning I was haiku leaves
* And have felt just as free on flickr
2. Inspired, renewed
* Walls who watch the web werd fall happily
* In love so weak-kneed they slide down the sink
* Watching this my hands get the haha feeling. Behold:
3. Today I almost entered a cave on Bull Creek
* But a beautiful woman wouldn’t let me go
* Be bold her natural milk
* (…and she is neither fat nor old)
_07 C/W Reckon_
Look, Love (Music in the Morning)
add a friend already
beta better in bed
check the cargo going down
gotta hey hello mahalo
it’s a pretty show
c
_07 C/W Reckon_
another connection listening, and it looks like love
or why else would we be meeting in these gaps?
morning must make a dream reality, dreams that is
threaded like popcorn round a gift tree that is
sweating buttery sap.
c
_25 C/W Reckon_
I need a new bed already
a new bed another bed bad
enough to go down eating funlight
hey, let’s move your legs thataway
put yr feet on top of my while I
while I work the sweet spots thinking
tiempo what tiempo?
_25 C/W Reckon_
Ahora always another apple free. A writing storm and the tired headaches caught up to me.
Pretty but claustrophobic.
Big books like dinner.
_25 C/W Reckon_
might mellow tonight, porn video. quick whoa, waiting mellow woman. quick whoa listening love,
hot season enjoying menopause, jesus;
it’s a sweet trip testing the happy hill…
_25 C/W Reckon_
a little light felt so far away in the company of the cool dictionary.
a trip, um, to another place, a drive down webways watching Man get busy and tired
what the fuck – i just wanted to be able to read.
worth it | you better believe
C/W
_25 C/W Reckon_
mmm something rad i had while washing a window:
head and a buncha good squeeze, long sex lunch,
delicious watermelon striped panties in my spit.
_26 C/W Reckon_
Two love sleepy Sunday nova;
actually, folks: sweet-tipped pie.
a bird sings outside the window middle of night.
Yay and yum those are bread crumbs two actually taste.
_26 C/W Reckon_
Let me slide my elbow into the cup at the back of your knee
Measure if you will where my fingertips fit then
While I squeeze your left cheek
apart from the other on the right
Let me chew on the nails of your feet
two by two upwards til two fingers fit
into the grooves of your spine let me climb
down your shiny shoulder …
_26 C/W Reckon_
The Beauty, Secrets and Utility of Twitter for Business
Lots of people laugh at Twitter, call it a waste of time and worse, and, that’s just fine with me. While they’re laughing, I’m learning, listening, meeting, and enjoying a global view of an endless flow of creative thought – 140 characters at a time…[Continue reading here.]
The above is from B.L. Ochman’s business blog, but I’m posting here with the hope that those who aren’t in marketing, tech, or business per se might be moved to sign up and join the conversations, offer their sage advice, and share a little of the priceless mundane with the rest of us.
Follow me on Twitter if you’d like. I’ve taken to calling it Twitter University after my uninformed, inexperienced knee-jerk reaction upon first hearing about the service. Now I consider it an essential learning and communication tool (and then some). Highly recommended.