[Hopperxx] collaboration with bill bissett

[Jim Andrews]

i recently did a collaboration with the poet bill bissett. the full 
thing is at http://vispo.com/aleph3/images/bill_bissett

bill asked me to send him some visual poetry for a show he's putting 
together in toronto. i suggested we do a collab in aleph null together, 
and we could get stuff from that for the show in hog town, as it's 
called in vancouver. he agreed. i asked him to send me photos of some of 
his paintings. he's quite a well-known painter as well as a legendary 
poet. i also asked him for graphics of some of his visual poems and even 
poemy poems. and also for personal photos of him and friends. he 
responded very generously with hundreds of images. i also asked him for 
a few poemy poems in text rather than image.

i worked with the material bill sent me in aleph null, which is an 
online graphic synthesizer i wrote in javascript. it's generative and 
interactive. its highly configurable. the basic architecture is of n 
simultaneous layers/channels of animation. the user creates x 'brushes'. 
each brush 'writes' on a single layer/canvas, though there are controls 
to raise/lower brushes. each brush can be assigned one of about 30 nibs. 
there is a bill bissett nib, for instance. and a jim leftwich nib. there 
are about 20 participating artists, at this point.

the bill bissett nib is actually 3 brushes in two layers. the topmost 
layer writes one of bill's poems and fills the text with bill's personal 
photos. the background brushes, of which there are two, sample from 
bill's paintings and from his visual poems. these two brushes are on the 
same layer and continually overwrite one another.

here is something i wrote about aleph null: 
http://vispo.com/aleph3/slideshow/info.htm

here is aleph null itself: http://vispo.com/aleph3/an.html

but what i'm showing today mainly is the bill  bissett collab, which i 
just completed. it's at http://vispo.com/aleph3/images/bill_bissett

comments welcome.

ja