Technotexts.

The Dreamlife of Letters is always fun, if just because the name is interesting. I always seem to just imagine the letters taking on lives of their own because of the title. While I was reviewing this the first time I looked at it as an option for an experiential learning project, I decided that I could not come up with something as creatively random as that--so I decided on something else. I think that made me feel like that sort of project was out of my grasp was because I do not generally understand it. I do not think that my brain works to come up with random letters and made up words like the ones used in this because I always end up thinking of "real" words and how these words work with other words, making the project something that is not so random, and therefore, not so creative.

This class makes me think differently of pieces like this. Normally, I would think that the Dreamlife of Letters is just a silly expression of letters, having no meaning or creativity to them what-so-ever, but because of the context of this class, this is a piece of poetry (or creative work) and it is thought of as truly innovative.

I think this goes for the Anipoems, as well. Where I would normally write *some of* these off as poems that a fifth grader put together as part of a class poem on one of those old Mac computers, because they now have this "technotext" label attached to them, they are automatically a credible source of poetry.

The poems themselves are interesting; they do not seem to following a certain pattern, except that of giving letters true importance, whether it is because the letters are drawing out a picture to match the title of the poem, or because the letters spell out words and nearly complete thoughts.

As for the "While Chopping Red Peppers" technotext, I did not care for it at all. I do not feel that the images or the voice conveyed what I thought the text meant. The little "refrigerator" for the word magnets that stood as a time filler before the poem started amused me. I had fun putting together what I thought was a pretty big group of random words. The words ended up meaning something, but not entirely too much to me considering I was not the one who chose the words in the first place.

Andrews mentions in his last paragraph that sometimes these special effects, such as moving and crossing texts, etc., are often meant to be "impressive" rather than "readable." This can be true, and this does often lose my attention. With ideas like Anipoems and "While Chopping Red Peppers," I just can't help but to think that these ideas are being done for the sake of being creative. I do not feel that these poems should be praised as innovative, but rather silly experients. "Fields of Dream" was just like a madlib, I felt. It was not truly creative , either.