Description of New Work

[AUGUST HIGHLAND]

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the methloop series is from a collection of works
by paul whitney

http://www.the-hyper-age.com/methloop/methloop0001.html

in methloop i am working with the recurrent insertion of a glossary
of textstrings into the main body of the text - the main body of the text
itself is based on a repetitive or looping formula - the textstrings i
selected
contain violent and horrifying imagery - i chose this thematic material
only in the methloop series - paul whitney has several series - i wanted
one of the series to contain violent thematic material because of the
pertinence this has right now to our political climate - i also chose
these textstrings because violence and horror has always been a genre
that i have never been able to read or watch - but a close writer-friend
does write horrifying imagery in some of his prose - this has always
been a side of his work that has been difficult for me to read - as our
middle east conflict began to loom larger and larger i decided to go
back and read my friend's violent prose and look at is as a metaphor -
when i was able to do this i decided to use textstrings from his work
and use it in the way i described above

i am very happy with the way this series turned out
one of the things that makes me happy is that it is in part a collaboration
with someone whom i admire as a writer and human being
i am also happy with the way in which the interspersed horror/violence
imagery works in juxtaposition to the larger multi-thematic body of
material

i am happy that i incorporated two literary elements that worked out
to my satisfaction: looping material that is always changing in conjunction
with reiterated material that is constant

bringing together polarized elements in a literary work is one of the things
i am always trying to achieve

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the pipeloop series is also from a collection of works
by paul whitney

http://www.the-hyper-age.com/pipeloop/pipeloop0001.html

the title of the series is derived from the use of the pipe character as
the only punctuation mark usage with the exception of the question mark
which is used sparingly - the pipe character is very good for creating
text blocks - it is a strong visual punctuation mark - because it is so
strong i needed to offset some of this by using the question mark - the
question mark takes away some of the strong declarative power of the
pipe character - so these two characters each with their individual
properties
function well together as literary elements

the text content is drawn from three sources - one is eroticsm/pornographic
material - one is global military and political operations - one is the old
and
new testaments - with regard to the five books of moses and the bible i used
every english version i could find - so there are 10 or so versions all
combined
in the pipeloop series

i chose these three themes deliberately - one of my personal interests is in
the dichotomy
of sexual attraction or desire and violent conflict or repulsion - these
seem
to be the two driving forces that control our human condition - it appears
that we are either desiring something or rejecting something - the little
knowledge i have gained from my superficial exposure to different world
religions is that they all mention this dichotomy and describe it as a
condition
that the human being suffers - and that this condition is the symptomology
of the
physical nature of man - and that spiritual well-being and peace is found
through
freeing oneself from this condition

desire and disgust and freedom from desire and disgust is confusing
to me and seems impossible to resolve

pipeloop is a series that expresses my personal spiritual struggle