Touchdown

It's been a while, but the first codes have been posted. I've placed them in places where I hope people will be open minded to the idea-- or procrastinating. Libraries, stairwells, bathrooms. The pieces that I've been putting up lack direct context in the city. The pieces might remind me of New York in general, but there isn't the specific connection I'm looking for. I'll need to do some writing this weekend.

Pressing Onward + Medium Horizon Goals

I've made some simple changes to the website, trying to keep it as neutral and open to collaboration as possible. Trying to find a middle-ground font for the different genre's which will hopefully one day occupy the site is hard. Individual customization would obviously be much better. Beyond font size and background color though, I think photo backgrounds, washed out, fogged, or blurred, would be a cool backdrop to set a bold text upon, setting the time and place for the poetry or prose more appropriately or for contrast. 

For instance: you sit on a park bench in Prospect park in the middle of July. The code you scan on the bench has a blurred photo of the view from the same bench on a snowy January morning. The background is blurred or illegible so there is no instinct to dissect it for information, yet the tone, the pallet of colors with which to read the poem is instantly set. The poem might play on the contrast of seasons.

-PP

Thinking about the future

SWP is one step in a study that I am interested in. I think it might fit in with the idea of "the Internet of Things" that people are talking about right now, but it's a little bit more specific. The world itself, the buildings and streets are still not technological. Social networks and social media has been able to in a sense harmonize socializing and technology. Physical locations can also be augmented or complimented in a way; become more connected, perhaps not to other locations, or to other people, but to the past, to other forms of expression (say poetry or art), and most importantly meaning or at least correlation.

Side Walk Poetry is one step towards this goal. The intermingling of language and space, I think, could bring something new and interesting to the table. The image of the lonely philosopher toiling away in his room dark room is what I commonly associate with creative writing. A far more interesting picture is the writer who draws from his surroundings, and works as a conduit for reality and his context.

Culturally speaking, it seems to me that we are moving away from this Newtonian world view of discrete actors, to a more reflexive view in which just as a quantum particle is seen by you, you are in a sense seen by it. In this way, the connectivity of social media is a literal surface manifestation of this deeper change. More on this later.

To conclude, I am for:
-Interdisciplinary collaboration
-Interpersonal collaboration

I am against:
-Every man for himself
-Anything without context

-PP

Some poetry

Hmm... 

What is this?

Poetry...?

It's just sitting here.

Where am I? Somewhere...

Off 2nd ave?

Maybe this is first ave.

I've got a very simple hit counter solution to work because I don't know how to use Google analytics yet. Right now, if anyone scans any of the QR codes, the hit counter will go up. This will let me track if people are scanning the codes at all, but won't tell me if code A or code B is getting more scans. I intend on solving this soon, but as things stand right now, the first QR codes are ready to be put up!

-PP

Who Watches the Watchmen?

Progress continues... I don't expect to be this productive everyday, but things are going well for now. I have completed the first couple of pages for the QR codes, and in looking for valuable content to put up (as I struggle to produce my own), I have found excerpts from Alan Moore's Watchmen to be very appropriate for the streets of NYC. The piece itself has so many characters with interesting psychologies. In a way they are all very intricate and complex, but in another sense they seem to be purely portrayals of extremes (and in that sense, non-complex), filtered through the so-called 'human experience'... but maybe that's obvious and I'm not actually saying anything.

It seems like most people feel like they have something to say, when they really don't. Myself included.

Rorschach might have gotten me a little depressed.

-PP

Leeroy Jenkins

That's just about how I feel right now. Its almost 2am and I have class tomorrow, but if I'm serious about taking my life in another direction, I need to have something to show for it.

The rules: at least 2 posts a week on SidewalkPoetry. Where it's progressing, what I've done, my own poetry I intend to put up. They can be however long or short I want but they need to be done.

Thats it. I guess that's actually just one rule.

-PP