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[Kenny G at ubu.com has put up an .mp3 of Alan Licht and I performing last year at the St. Mark's Poetry Project. The direct link is here but it might change in the future. My intro is below.]
One day at work, not inspired by anything in particular, I decided to run Kenneth Goldsmith's "Soliloquy" -- a book whose text was composed of an uncompromising transcription from tape of everything Goldsmith had spoken for a week -- through Microsoft Word's "autosummarizer" program.
Since the autosummarizer basically preserves what, statistically, has been repeated most often, I discovered that a majority of what Goldsmith had said that week (and probably every week) was "Uh" and "yeah" with some fleshy words, like "Stockhausen" and "Cheryl," piggybacking on them past the autosummarizer's red pencil.
My text, which I called "Summary," seemed strangely resonant, and exposed to me the vulnerability of Goldsmith's somewhat strident, grandiose textual program -- which is to say, the risk of utter triviality, but also the way his private life can be helpless before the transformations of a text alogrithm (that he put the text online contributed to this).
I wanted to perform part of this text at my reading at the St. Mark's Poetry Project on May 1, 2002, but learned, after practice runs at home, that I probably would not be able to hold anyone's attention for the desired length (I wanted about 5 minutes of it).
I had seen and heard Alan perform in a variety of contexts over 2000-2001 -- one time as solo performer riffing off a guitar loop, once as a second guitarist for a reformed DNA (with Arto Lindsay and Ikue Mori) and at home on .mp3s of his two bands from the 90s, Love Child and Run On.
His range was incredible, he seemed capable of doing anything, and I saw a kindred spirit in the sense that he was interested in trying out several seemingly incompatible styles that would appeal to different cultural groups and sensibilities, at times appearing a feedback "naif" and others aprog-rock virtuoso (he's also a really good writer).
Anyway, after a test run in my apartment we decided to give it a shot -- I thought, in both the rehearsal and the live performance, there was the same initial movement of apparent disjunction -- very percussive and, in the voice, kind of nasal -- that melded into an "ambient" phase that just flowed.
I surprised the audience by putting "Summary" at the tail end of a sequence called "What is Said to the Poet Concerning Flowers" -- you hear the last poem of that sequence in this .mp3; there was also some funny audience response that doesn't quite come through on this recording.
When compared to the Stack, the Heap is a simple thing to understand. All the memory that's left over is "in the Heap" (excepting some special cases and some reserve). There is little structure, but in return for this freedom of movement you must create and destroy any boundaries you need. And it is always possible that the heap might simply not have enough space for you.
Posted by: David at January 19, 2004 03:58 AMWhen compared to the Stack, the Heap is a simple thing to understand. All the memory that's left over is "in the Heap" (excepting some special cases and some reserve). There is little structure, but in return for this freedom of movement you must create and destroy any boundaries you need. And it is always possible that the heap might simply not have enough space for you.
Posted by: George at January 19, 2004 03:59 AMThis back and forth is an important concept to understand in C programming, especially on the Mac's RISC architecture. Almost every variable you work with can be represented in 32 bits of memory: thirty-two 1s and 0s define the data that a simple variable can hold. There are exceptions, like on the new 64-bit G5s and in the 128-bit world of AltiVec
Posted by: Judith at January 19, 2004 03:59 AMThis variable is then used in various lines of code, holding values given it by variable assignments along the way. In the course of its life, a variable can hold any number of variables and be used in any number of different ways. This flexibility is built on the precept we just learned: a variable is really just a block of bits, and those bits can hold whatever data the program needs to remember. They can hold enough data to remember an integer from as low as -2,147,483,647 up to 2,147,483,647 (one less than plus or minus 2^31). They can remember one character of writing. They can keep a decimal number with a huge amount of precision and a giant range. They can hold a time accurate to the second in a range of centuries. A few bits is not to be scoffed at.
Posted by: Gwenhoivar at January 19, 2004 03:59 AMEach Stack Frame represents a function. The bottom frame is always the main function, and the frames above it are the other functions that main calls. At any given time, the stack can show you the path your code has taken to get to where it is. The top frame represents the function the code is currently executing, and the frame below it is the function that called the current function, and the frame below that represents the function that called the function that called the current function, and so on all the way down to main, which is the starting point of any C program.
Posted by: Gawen at January 19, 2004 04:00 AM