Saturday
Jun282008
Vispo
Saturday 28 June, 2008
Jim Andrews:
'Walt Whitman wrote one book: Leaves of Grass. He changed it throughout his life. Vispo.com is my 'book'. And it isn't a book at all but, hopefully, something that you can experience as many times as you like and find different things each time--very different, and of a new and ongoing life in writing/art/sound/programming.'
Link
There are fascinating design choices made for many poetry sites. While the blog is understandably the most dominant form, there is a subset of intentionally backward-looking, anachronistic websites. Vispo is a good example, as is Jodi. Harking back 10 or 15 years in web design terms is the equivalent of 10 or 15 decades in terms of printing technologies. In fact, it makes me wonder how important 'prettiness' is going to be in terms of making online publishing successful. Perhaps text on screen will only reach a tipping point when Jonathan Ive has crafted us new eyes out of polyester twine and sports socks.
'Walt Whitman wrote one book: Leaves of Grass. He changed it throughout his life. Vispo.com is my 'book'. And it isn't a book at all but, hopefully, something that you can experience as many times as you like and find different things each time--very different, and of a new and ongoing life in writing/art/sound/programming.'
Link
There are fascinating design choices made for many poetry sites. While the blog is understandably the most dominant form, there is a subset of intentionally backward-looking, anachronistic websites. Vispo is a good example, as is Jodi. Harking back 10 or 15 years in web design terms is the equivalent of 10 or 15 decades in terms of printing technologies. In fact, it makes me wonder how important 'prettiness' is going to be in terms of making online publishing successful. Perhaps text on screen will only reach a tipping point when Jonathan Ive has crafted us new eyes out of polyester twine and sports socks.
Reader Comments (2)
I had a look at vispo.com. Backward looking? It seems forward looking to me. You may be taken with the uniformity of the blog format--every blog looks like every other blog--but it's nice to see there are people such as Andrews at vispo.com doing something that uses the full screen for composition, something original rather than corporate templates. The variety of types of work on this site is refreshing.
When I said backward looking I referred to the general presentation of work on the site as opposed to the work itself. I agree that Vispo is a refreshing contrast to the standardised blog template look. I'm all for sites like Vispo and didn't want my post to appear negative. Perhaps backward looking was the wrong term - perhaps retro-perspective is better. Having said that, the blog form is what you make it, and the constraints imposed by content management systems can often lead to original and refreshing designs. The social component of the blog form is also a stimulus for fascinating dialogue - the blogosphere's response to Ron Silliman's post regarding the parallels between Flarf and Conceptual Poetry has triggered a number of interesting responses, for example.