1.  Lyotard, Jean-Francois. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1984.

    Jean-Francois Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge is an analysis of the term postmodern as well as a historical look as to why it has emerged as the heir to the future of art. The author uses the term art to include a broad spectrum of mediums ranging from literature to painters. Lyotard's defines the postmodern as “that which in the modern, puts forward the unpresentable in presentation itself; that which denies itself the solace of good forms, the consensus of a taste which would make it possible to share collectively the nostalgia for the unattainable.” Essentially a radical extrication of the rules and conventions of all types of art to create something “new”. Jean-Francois' rational for the “breaking of tablets” of classicism and realism lies in his belief that “modernity, in whatever age it appears, cannot exist without a shattering of belief and without discovery of the “lack of reality” of reality, together with the inventions of other realities.” We live in a world that is becoming more and more enveloped by technologies which to a certain degree adds to the “lack of reality” within our lives. Thus for the age, and more specifically for a class with a focus on new technologies, Jean-Francois Lyotard's ideology of postmodernism is a wonderful tool for exploring a new methodology of transforming literature into an audio piece.

2. Weingart, Peter. "The Order of Meaning: The Career of Chaos as a Metaphor". Configurations 1997: 463-521.

    While our group project is concerned with transforming one form of art, in this case Shakespearian Sonnets, into tonal patterns. The inclusion of the term “pattern” in itself suggests that our as we convert literature to music something might emerge that has a distinct uniformity as opposed to something completely random or chaotic. The article by Weingart takes a look at chaos theory and more importantly the multifaceted nature of the term and its application over a widespread of intellectual fields. The article denotes two major sects of chaos theory, “the order-out-of-chaos branch” and the “hidden-order-within chaos.” Although our project depends on a tonal chart at an attempt to increase objectivity , and thus rigidness, the music which is produced is still rather chaotic. Thus I would describe our analysis of out tonal patterns as falling under “the order-out-of-chaos branch.” The text explains this branch to be concerned with “the spontaneous emergence of self-organization from chaos.” That is essentially what my aim is in analyzing the products of our project. 

3.  "Soundboard". Soundboard.com/Mountainside, LLC. February 1, 2007. <http://soundboard.com/>.

    A soundboard is generally a flash applet with several buttons which the user can click to generate individual sounds or phrases. They were quite an internet sensation for awhile due to the fact that many people started making celebrity soundboards with different phrases and then using them to make prank phone calls. Thus a flash soundboard is essentially the digital equivalent of what radio hosts have been using for years to play a wide array of different sound bytes. While originally I had planned to construct a soundboard using Flash MX, a flash applet generator, and a guide for making said application I quickly disbanded the idea after finding this website. Essentially by using the website no programming is necessary, all that it requires is that I upload the sound bytes we decided upon and then creating buttons for them via a very friendly and easy interface. What I found most interesting about the site however is that its a community in which sharing is required. While you can make a soundboard of anything you like it immediately becomes party of the community than anyone within it can access. I was struck by how developed a community could evolve from such a simple idea, for the site boasts 7,000 different soundboards.

4. "TAPoR: Text Analysis Portal for Research". TAPoR, McMaster University. January 30, 2007. <http://portal.tapor.ca/portal/portal>.

    Professor Liu included this powerful text analysis site/application in the toy chest and hopefully we will be able to harness its power. While I am still not quite sure how we will go about using TAPoR in our project it presents a multitude of options. Since the application can easily create lists of the most common words I thought it would be interesting if we ran some of Shakespeare's sonnets through it and then made tonal patterns of these lists. At first I thought we could simply write down these words and then assign values via each member of the group placing a value on each word and then averaging them and putting them in succession over a scale. The problem with that is clearly a lack of subjectivity, which is why Shaun created the tonal chart assigning types of words to specific tones. Nonetheless I still feel it might be interesting to take a concordance of the most common word and then turn it on its side and use the rising and falling of each sentence and queues for where the notes should go. Overall I'm not quite exactly sure on how we will use the application simply due to its vastness.

5. Shakespeare, William. "Shakespeare's Sonnets". Soundboard.com/Mountainside, LLC. February, 2007. <http://www.shakespeares-sonnets.com/>

    When I had first thought about the project I had no real focus when it came to what type of text we would convert. I initially considered poetry simply because the vastness of other forms of literature would drowned us under their weight. At first I recommended a poem by W.H. Auden entitled "As I walked Out One Evening." What quickly became apparent was that while most poetry subjects itself to some form of structure it is hard to translate that structure. Thus Shakespeare's use of meter in his sonnets presents a much easier form to attempt to convert into music, something controllable if you will. The site offers the viewer the experience of looking at a vast archive of these sonnets as well as notes and facsimiles on the texts. Due to the volume of Shakespeare's sonnets hopefully we will not have to focus on one. Rather hopefully we will be able to create tonal patterns out of several and then compare them with the original text and then to each other. The question of what will emerge out of said comparisons should be the most interesting aspect.