| I was on a panel with Steve Kurtz of Critical Art Ensemble and Mark Bernstein of Eastgate. It was great to see Michelle Glaros, who'll soon become a professor in the Southwest. Can't say where yet. Michelle is a theorist and filmmaker. I almost always disagree with Steve but enjoy his personality. We're both experimental artists but with different premises. At 9:30 a.m., I spoke briefly about the temporal and spatial significance of DHTML to poetry and then showed my web-specific love poem, "The Rockgarden of Love." All day I attended seminars. Mark Cantor, one of the developers of Macromedia Director, spoke on broadband. Michelle, Steve, Tina Egnoski (my friend and recent MFA Emerson graduate) and I went to the NoName Seafood Restaurant on a pier. Later Michelle, Steve and I stopped at Finale, an elegant place where we shared a bottle of champagne and the ne plus ultra of chocolate desserts. Steve paid most of the bill and I contributed.
|
| Finally, at Lulu's on Lark Street, I was able to meet Sue Thomas, trAce Director and novelist; Simon Mills, editor of frAme and website designer; Carolyn Bamborough, Web Adminstrator; Margaret Penfold, trAce Attachment and hypertext fiction writer, and Solanki Mahendra, English Professor at Nottingham Trent University. I also met Alan Sondheim, a New Yorker who'll be the next trAce Virtual Writerin-Residence, and Barbara Steinberg, a soon-to-be Californian who chairs the Writers and Society Conference. Janet Holmes and her husband Al Greenberg dined with us at Lulu's. I took many pictures of trAce staff eating because that's when I'd think to do it! While we were working, focus was intense. It took hours to make my IBM ThinkPad compatible with the projector. The conference was split between sessions in the Convention Center and those in the Omni. For presentations of our work, we were in the tech room at the Omni, a room capable of seating about 25. Attendance at the Omni "tech" presentations was light to moderate. Our panel on Web Community in the Convention Center was well-attended, with lively questions. Among the more pleasurable experiences, I met several of my publishers: Jeff Parker of Salt Hill, Christina Milletti of The Little Magazine and Ed Falco of New River. The trAce Reception was a big hit. Free food and drink and bright conversation.
Each day at Holiday Inn Western, I rose and rode the bike for 20 minutes, then did T'ai Chi. I don't have any pictures of this. Barbara and I roomed together, a good experience. We have about the same degree of messiness, and Barbara is amiable and vivacous. Late at night, to debrief, we'd eat dark chocolate Dove bars. Barbara's laptop was in the shop so I was able to lend her mine. We both had aol accounts especially for travelling. That way you can dial up local numbers. Several coincidences at the conference, here's one: I picked up a guy in a book shop, David Baratier, who happened to have two copies of The H's, my book, for sale in the trunk of his car. I had been unable to get any more copies of this book; I bought them. David lives in Columbus and is a poet and publisher.
|
