I am not a literati, nor have I intentions of becoming one. I am a interdisciplinary designer. A professional learner and day dreamer. This is not a scholar paper according to the norms and regulations of what determines one. Rather this is the story of how I met Mr. Edgar Allan Poe and the cultural digital byproducts of such a unique meeting.
I met Mr. Poe when I decided to register in "Poe and the New Media" class offered as part of the MATX program at Virginia Commonwealth University. During a period of sixteen weeks I read Poe's texts and listened to them using audibooks from Audible, Librivox, and Learnoutloud. This "listering" to texts practice -as I call it- has become almost addictive by now.
I found Poe's texts fascinating. They have opened a new escape tunnel into a dark side of creativity that I didn't know I had, and I hope to potentiate soon. However, sixteen weeks represents too little time to develop anything that could negotiate a definition of "scholarly" in the next few blog entries.
What I offer, here in this blogospheric new medium, is a series of observations about my interpretations of Poe's narratives and story characters hoping that my words -- given the public nature of the blogosphere -- serve as a guide to potential new comers to the world of Poe's text and textuality.
I expect this and nothing more. ;)
The first thing that caught my eye was Poe's fascination with killing people. I think he was a conceptual serial killer who --as any macabre serial killer-- loved begin caught. He would constantly encapsulate his victims in between walls [The Black Cat] or in Cellars, alive! [ The Cask of Amontillado. ] He was fascinated with boxes, entrapments, and closed spaces. I am sure he must have realized about the universal human fear towards darkness and more importantly, towards death. He capitalized these themes in his stories. Ironically, he was the one who ended up trapped in one of them by the end of this life, forever. Even though the oblong box itself collapsed and his body decayed his bones made it to Westminster Hall in Baltimore where he now rests far from peace.
When he died a vapor of mystery surrounded his sudden departure. An obituary in the local newspaper described his life in a very sour way. The clip claimed he died with no friends, and it went on stating that few would grieve his early termination.
It's been almost 160 years since Poe died. It could be argued, though, that it's been 160 years since Poe joined his most affable partner: Death. And to continue here among us -bodiless-, forever more.
It is Non Pace Requiescat for him as he is constantly scrutinized by Literary Scholars trying to unearth a new clue about his life, his writings, or his way of thinking. They want to know how he inhaled, ate, dreamed, and loved. In more than one and a half centuries Poe has become his own victim. Buried alive. Latent.
I think Poe had a rough life. One lacking of what, we humans, mostly look for: Attention. While going through a series of personal letters addressed to his step father, John Allan, in order to design TYPOE, a font face based on his handwriting (available for download by the end of this blog) I found out how painful his life was. The way he described himself was not only very touching but also very telling of his state of mind, and emotions. Both features that were essential for the 3D character studies I pursued.
160 years had gone by and He still remains among us, trapped in boxes called books, being scholarly observed, dissected, over analyzed and now trapped in a new form of electronic boxes called NEW MEDIA for short. I am still struggling with the observation regarding the analysis of his work. Aren't poems, and stories supposed to function as such? Stand alone? Self-Sufficiently? Aren't they suppose to be about the experience of reading them? The process intellectually digesting them?
Does the author's intent really matter? Or does the story matter? Is it important if Poe was racist according to today's standards, theories, and definitions of such practice. What about cultural expectations? A myriad of questions were put in front of the table before me. Yet one question presided them all: What will my contribution be to the Understanding of Poe?
This is my answer, and nothing more.
[ And this is the last time I say "nothing more" or the like, I promise ]
“Edgar Allan Poe had the most original imagination in the world; he struck an entirely new note. I shall have to find its equivalent in music.” Debussy.
Something that I learned during this course was that Poe had become an integral part of American Culture. He has been turned into a commodity, an object to consume, a voiceless lab frog to dissect for free. He is now part of the American trend of conspicuous consumption. His works are copyright free and I think that fact alone has everything to do with his objectification.
Ironically, Poe struggled his entire adult life to become economically successful and failed miserably short from this goal. After his dead his short stories, and poems had been subject of an everlasting reading of them; interpretation after re-interpretation of his texts are constantly tackled. The fact that they have been preserved in writing thanks to the technology of mechanical reproduction helped raised Poe to the status of public figure. In his essay entitled: "Anastatic Printing" (1845) he acknowledges the benefits of said processes applied to books. He talks about the diffusion of knowledgeand information; above all, he talks about the possibility of the general public obtaining access to the circles of control defined by the market place, both in terms of consumption and production when he claims that:
"The tendency of a this [Anastatic printing] to cheapen information, to diffuse knowledge and amusement, and to bring before the public the very class of works which are most valuable, but least in circulation on account of unsaleability - "
Poe was fascinated by technology. He was eager to embrace it and he kept trying to find ways to make his texts available to the general public. He wanted to create a massive demand for his works. He was constantly thinking about how to reach audiences in great numbers while he continue to develop his marketing and managerial skills, not doing a good job at either of them.
He never attaining his goal of financial success. He did not only live in poverty but died in it. He was a very hard critic of fellow writers which might have kept him away from the circles of Literary production. (My observation)
After his dead in 1849 many cultural products were developed based in Poe's stories. Among them we can find films, magazines, books, musical scores, and spoken word projects. Professor Ronald Smith provides a great account of Poe's influenced work in his book entitled POE in the Media. Screens, Songs, and Spoken Word Recordings. (ISBN 0-8240-5614-0).
My personal interest during the semester focused into those re-appropriations, and particularly about his most well known poem: "The Raven," and how it has been rewritten to adapt it to new technologies. Right below you may download the resulting draft-paper I worked on regarding this topic:
During the development of this short academic exercise I concentrated my efforts in a record ( LP ) produced by Allan Parsons Project. They did it as their production team debut album. Selecting texts such as The Raven, The Cask of Amontillado, among others to turn them into into a full LP album was no coincidence. Poe's texts were chosen for this project in 1976 under the name: "Tales of Mystery and Imagination." This cultural construction was the result of a marketing analysis conducted by Eric Woolfson (Parson's partner) during his college years.
The reason I mention it is because of the use of a vocoder, an electronic device that alters the human voice. It was the "newest toy in town" among emerging electro-techno-music-engineers and composers.
Click the link to download a sample (not the complete song) of what the Allan Parsons Project interpretation of The_Raven
sounds like. Pay particular attention to the introductory voices as they were re-interpreted by the vocoder. The sound you heard results from passing a normal human voice through this electronic device. These are the lyrics of The Raven by Allan Parsons project:
The Raven
Lead Vocal: Alan Parsons, Leonard Whiting
The clock struck midnight And through my sleeping I heard a tapping at my door I looked but nothing lay in the darkness And so I turned inside once more
To my amazement There stood a raven Whose shadow hung above my door Then through the darkness It spoke that one word that I shall hear forever more
Nevermore Thus quoth the raven, nevermore
And still the raven remains in my room No matter how much I implore No words can soothe him No prayer remove him And I must hear for evermore
Quoth the raven, nevermore Thus quoth the raven Nevermore
To honor Edgar Allan Poe and his earnest attempt to incorporate technology in his textual production I will use the latest novelty in the market place: Spore® by Electronic Arts.
Spore® is a new video game. So what? Video games are out there for a good number of decades. Everything and anything has been turned into a video game. Poe was no exception. His stories have been used over and over as we had a chance to talk about one during class time: The Dark Eye, based in "The Mask of the Red Death," which eventually was raised to a status of cult. The game now is history due to the ever changing nature of the electronic technology. One that would have been of great interest to Poe, I think.
Spore® is not a video game about Poe or pretends to use Poe's texts in any way. What I find conceptually worth mentioning in connection to Poe is about its marketing and distribution approaches. The game was designed, developed, and implemented in a period of eight years. It was released to the Market in September 2008 and until December 14th 2008 a total of thirty four million creatures had been created. Yes 34 Million creatures. The game allows the user to create a individualized version from a given set of rules and regulations. Quite the opposite of mechanically reproduced printed pages. 34 million versions of the same story; some how connected, sharing something in common.
How does Poe fit in here? For me all the stories that he created -or at least all the ones I have read or listened during these sixteen weeks- are somewhat connected as well. These subtle connections mimic the Spore metaverse environment, similar to Poe's intention during his lifetime.
Poe wanted to generate an audience with his stories, a pattern, a voice; just like Spore, an individual voice among the community of voices telling the same story with customized outcomes.
Side note: I am constantly wondering how Poe would have done today, in the midst of a consumer society eager to ingest byproducts of fear by the hour. I see him as the Dick Wolf of his time who was born in wrong time.
So what about Spore? What did I do with it? I used the Spore® Creature Creator Interface to render 3D characters -monsters really- based on Poe's stories. Throughout the semester I would sooth my brain from Poe's dark and macabre stories after my long commute back home, by creating my interpretations of the monsters described in his short stories and poems.
The First one I designed was The Raven himself. To me, The Raven has nothing to do with a Raven. After so many years for teaching semiotics and symbolism theory to design students I believe that words are mere doors to meaning until they are given form, but that is a different story.
I deal with semiotics on a daily basis. We all do. They come to us -meaningful messages- taking the shape of sensory stimuli. In the case of the written word -unless the text is meant to be technical writing- the meaning must be extracted, interpreted, constructed from the pieces of organized language. Their relationship to one another, their positioning within the printed or electronic texts are relevant pieces of information that help construct a final meaning.
The latter takes vital importance in this exercise since the electronic text must be considered "living" text. Alive, breathing, moving.
According to Julia Flanders (Electronic Textual Editing: The woman Writers Project: A Digital Anthology) Digital textual projects give the reader access to raw, unedited textual information with the great potential of empowering the regular user with the possibility to make editorial decisions, to "make the reader a potential participant in the process."
I see Spore® as a huge book filled with living texts creating intertextual auto regulated editions of itself.
So there found myself, facing the challenges of this electronic metaverse filled with 3D parts and pieces. The idea was standing by itself, bold: Extract the spirit of each story and turn it into a 3D creature. Very simple, very soothing. Make the macabre monsters go away; take them away from my brain.
I made the executive decision of keeping the interpretations to a minimum "bloggable" version. This doesn't mean that I would be able to elaborate later on. It just means that I tend to synthesize concepts due to my training as a graphic designer and advertiser. Both professions driven by the aphorism: Less Is More. Quite the contrary case of Literary Criticism. Here they are: Three stories, concisely analyzed.
Story One: The Man That Was Used Up.
I
interpret The Man That Was Used Up as a social commentary of how
technology makes us better humans, better living creatures, whole. The
downside of this artificial betterment however, is our loss of unity and its subsequent
dependency on bodily augmentations that provide the key to access
societal acceptance. When the story is translated into contemporary terms the
parallels are remarkable. Everything "i" attests this phenomenon; it is all about the self, the individual: iphone, ipod, imovie, idvd, ibook. My first creature inherited some descriptions about how agent John Smith A.B.C.might have looked like when he was not constructed as such: A leg with an eye.
However, everything was also there. How to explain it? How to depict it? I designed the monster so it has a first frontal view of the eye and the leg with all the other parts "carried over" in the back. The awkward motion of this creature pretends to establish a comparison with our erratic way of moving around a given space when we forget our cell phone at home -if that ever happens,- or any other device that defines who we are. Here the creature animated.
When the creature takes the form of Agent Smith A..B.C, it becomes human (nized). Or at least what we perceive it to be: human. He moves and acts as such, however, the sounds still have that animal quality to them thanks to the interface of the game itself. The "human" version of Agent Smith A.B.C. was created directly from its predecessor, no parts had been added. They have been modified in terms of scale in order to create the human look in the creature.
Story Two: The Tell-Tale Heart
I
interpret The Tell-Tale Heart as a social commentary about the narratives of power between generations. The old man symbolizes the status quo, the establishment with all its regulations and uncontested rules that are taken for granted. The young man is urged to commit an atrocious crime for society at large: Silence the elder and blind the powers of control imposed over us. The eye in the story represents control, overlooking every act, regardless of it being closed from time to time, it remains forever vigilant. The young man needs to wait for the darkness, a moment of blindness happening just a few minutes during certain hours of the day/night when cameras switch modes. A few seconds are enough to complete the task of termination. However, in the same fashion of a hard core computer hacker the revelation of the great accomplishment must be shared with the highest authorities. Otherwise, the whole story losses its meaning and purpose of liberation from the old establishment. Proving that liberation is possible empowers future generations to continue acknowledging the eye, and the everlasting palpitation of his hideous heart, that for me represents the role of technology in today's society. Ever present, making us feel "connected," "alive."
I chose to design the Spore® creature to resemble a piece of meat, almost a heart, but not really, with veins in a poor attempt (I must move within the constrains of the software) to connect the graphic to a living creature. A palpitating one. The resemblance of a heart was necessary given the use of an eye. A blue big eye that looks everywhere. The hands of the creature can't really help the suffocation that will follow. They were placed and designed so they visually signify "impossible reach" therefore impossible protection. The mouth is pointing downwards right below the nose. They can't bite but they can make a big noise. Big enough as to alert the possible system flaw.
Story Three: The Raven / The Real Poe
I
interpret Poe's favorite poem, the one he said was most willing to perform in front of any audience: The Raven as Poe's auto biography.
His command of language in the construction of the poem was what Poe was all about: Control.
At least that is my reading after getting to know him for this short period of time. I am aware that this reading has no "scholarship," real or fictional that could support my arguments without much further and deeper research. This reading is just a byproduct of what the poem makes me feel after several readings of it. its rhythm fits perfectly that of a sound piece. As a visual composition the continuous use of "nevermore" and other similar words provide the same sense of unity and controlled flow of events.
For me the raven, the black feathered animal represents the way he saw himself in relationship to society. Unwelcome, dark, unexpected. However, always present yet unreachable. His dark soul is perched above himself, impossible to be caught, grabbed, told what to do. Constantly talking to himself with the famous "nevermore." Poe couldn't find a way out of his serial killing, blood thirsty brain. Awake, sleep, in between. The result is a sour man, sadly beaten by a life of misfortunes.
The Raven, goes through every step of his life in every stanza. From his unexpected arrival to this world and the loss of his parents to his very own impossibility to become successful and free in a society that becomes more violently hungry of ideas and commodities.
Who loves a Raven anyway? Who wants a Raven visiting in the middle of night? The repetitive nature of the beautiful rhythm imposed by the language represents the amazing limitless capacity of Poe to reshape the same story structure over and over again, with enough changes as to make it unique.Always willing to stop, never having been able to do it.
When I designed the first Poe as the Raven, in the early section of this course, I made the fundamental design mistake of interpreting the character in its literal reading. During a design process the first drafts always corresponds to what is perceived as "cliche." Therefore this mean looking raven is a monster with wings to resemble those of the actual black bird. At least I didn't paint it black! That is some serious progress in my way of designing first state cliches!
This was the first animation ever uploaded to YouTube® The one that has been sitting there for the entire semester. The name Spraven was the result of a combination of the terms Spore and Raven; another cliche eager to call attention upon itself. yet another mistake.
As my "scholarship" of the design-interpretation enhanced I came up with a second version. A Poe that was more human and sad looking. I began to understand that the poem wasn't about the death of her lover but the dead of his future as an author. The bird wouldn't fly away. Any feathered animal -that flies- represents freedom semiotically by virtue of the ability to defy gravity, our common ruler and impossible hurdle to overcome without the use of external devices.
A bird that instead of flying away flies inside the room (his head) and doesn't want to leave talks about his frustrations. The second Poe was about sadness and frustration. This Poe-Raven preserves some monster features to it just to connote discomfort and danger.
The final version of The Raven engulfs the previous reflections and adds some other layers of meaning to it. At this stage I definitely wanted the animation to convey the message of sadness and burden. Defeat. The animal characteristics deriving from the relationship between the subject (Poe) and the Object (Raven) are present in the designed creature. A body that somehow resembles that of a dying, and starving man was achieved. The effect is enhanced with the bones sticking outwards from the sides of the body; bones that double play as weapons to be aware of.
The arms are long to enhance the effect of weight upon the back. The additional layer of meaning that I was referring to comes from another creature study. As a matter of fact a self-portrait (available in my YouTube videos.) It consists in an additional mouth located very purposefully in the buttocks' area to signify what it does: Criticism.
Poe's criticism could have been precise and keen, no question about it. However, it threw him into a self-imposed category of hard critic. Which means in return that he wasn't perceived as friendly. I am convinced that his attitude was the result of his hyper-brain. I am also convinced that he suffered ADD. Can I argue this "scholarly"? Of course not. This observation comes as the result of personal experience. Interestingly, enough if you search for Poe and ADD, some sites claim he suffered from it. After reading so many books about this very modern condition, Poe shows all the symptoms not only through the history of his life but also through his work. At any rate I can't confirm any of these claims nor have I the desire to do it. I am pretty sure that out there (or is it in there?) a scholar must be developing this idea. One who may take it all the way through if interest be to discover one more clue about this lab frog called Poe.
Poe's criticism would come as unfriendly as possible. Precise, sharp, and acute. Just like shark teeth. Uncontrollable and destructive. Above the shark mouth an eye looks everything that is out of reach of his frontal eyes. This eye in the back represents, in tandem with the critical devouring mouth, his keen critical observations. The whole composition then creates a Poe that is very sad in one side, and completely destructive in the other. They are one, impossible to separate. That is my interpretation of The Raven, an autobiographical poem.
In the previous postings I have done nothing but deliver my "readings" and interpretations of texts. I am aware that they don't comply with Literary form or scholarly discourse. When I was asked the "so what" question about my project I found myself somewhat blank. I certainly didn't know I had to contribute to the overall understanding of Poe to the world, let alone at the scholarly level.
I insist that 16 weeks is way too few weeks to develop anything that could be claimed scholarly acceptable.That I've learn so far. After thinking for quite a long time about how I could contribute to the scholarly research of Edgar Allan Poe, the author, I decided that I would do it using my experience and expertise in the graphic design world.
I began collecting manuscripts from several different sources, both digital and analogous. I even purchased a scanned copy of an original manuscript of The Raven. This digitized version of it came from the Library of Philadelphia where they claimed it not to be an original manuscript but an original transcription of it by Edgar Allan Poe himself.
I couldn't avoid to wonder what the difference is/was between the real Manuscript and a transcribed version of it by the same author's hand. Does it mean that if Picasso repainted one of his major paintings (considering that he could do it obliviously) would it be considered a transcription of his painting? Less seminal of a source? This notice opened many questions that will remain unanswered for the time being.
With all the technology progress we are experiencing today, with cloning, with multiple original, blue ray, and all the protection the industry of mass communication and the market place are pressing upon everyone I cannot stop wondering about the future of manuscripts in the writing process. Neither can I develop many questions about authenticity, originality and the role of creativity in all this discourse.
Based on these wandering thoughts I decided to contribute to Poe's understanding with two components: First a collection of Poe's signatures. They, as you will see, are very interesting since none of them look alike, yet they have a common trait, what in design is referred to as "typologies."
Where they came from and their particular details are irrelevant for the study. They don't intent to prove anything (although I have my own theories about them) beyond being here. Available to whoever wants to see them, download them, and go deeper into them. I can assure you they are facsimile and have not being drastically altered from its original form.
Some details might have been enhanced to improve some of the lines that were lost during the pass of time and the quality of paper/inks used for each signature but they are true to their original rendering.
The last one, at the very bottom of this blog-pit corresponds to his signature from the transcribed and digitized manuscript of The Raven.
They are certainly interesting if you consider that Poe wrote and extensive article about Autographs from Manuscripts of famous literati, where he claims that he: "gave fac-simile signatures
of no less than one hundred and nine of the most distinguished
American literati." For that reason I could claim myself that he was well aware of how to read and interpret an autograph. I wonder then what his thoughts were about his own. Here they are:
My next and final contribution to Poe's scholarly world consist in the design of a font face for MAC and PC computers. One that will derived from the typographical analysis of his letter traces abstracted from his manuscripts. All letter forms from a to z. Here are some samples of the studies conducted towards a final product:
These are some typographic studies that lead towards the design of a true type font based on Poe's hand scripting. As you might have observed already, there are some major differences between the scripting of the same letter in the same document. When letter scripts from different documents are compared the differences are sometimes a real crevasse. This simple observation could be of great interests for those scholars who are involved in decoding the way Poe's brain worked.
However, from the typographical design point of view this means one thing: Interpretation is required.
I spent more than forty hours redrawing and designing a font face that could be utilized in the computer. Upon completion I called it TYPOE. It seemed to be a very fitting name because of Poe's variable scripting that sometimes resembled typos. Here is a study sketch of the uppercase letters. As an interesting note The Raven has no "Z" in it.
This is a work in progress. Designing type is the most craft-demanding
activities within the world of graphic design. Even though software for
designing them is available the process itself requires the
study and drawing of each character individually. However, what is most
difficult yet is to develop a family of fonts; a.k.a. a font face. A font face that
provides a sense of familiarity among each member. Here is the final
family prior the coding process:
TYPOE is currently standing in version 2.0 It still requires intense labor in terms of kerning, curvatures, and all sorts of details pertaining letters. Details that are invisible to the naked eye but very important when it comes down to using a font face for textual development. However, TYPOE v2.0 is currently fully functional. The font face offers both upper and lower case versions plus numerals and signs. If you play with the tracking and the kerning you can add a "joint" feeling to them.
To conclude this project I am offering TYPOE v2.0 as a shareware. Feel
free to download it and install it in your computer. It is currently zipped into a downloadable file for PC and MAC. Just double click for decompression and double click again for automatic installation.
Finally, you are more than welcome to click the paypal donate button right below the TYPOE link. The suggested donation is 5 dollars and it will go towards the creation of more Typography interpretations from manuscripts of famous authors. They will be available as fully functional alphabets interpreted for the digital world. If you have any suggestions about a particular author you like please let me know.
