The DH Seed Grant Spotlights highlight work supported by the NYU DH Seed Grants. David Perry was selected for a 2022-2023 NYU DH Seed Grant for his project n Lines & Changing, an ongoing digital poetry project that emerged from Perry’s time living in Shanghai.
Below, Digital Scholarship Graduate Student Specialist Jo Suk interviews David Perry.
What are you most proud of about your project? How have people in your field engaged with your project? Has it helped you find new participants?
D.P. I am pleased with the ways in which this long-term project has grown and begun to mature since its inception in 2015. I have had numerous conversations and engagements with peers and colleagues in creative writing and literary studies as I have worked out ways to construct a “changing poem” that will be accompanied by a body of documentation (including photos, video and sound files), and to do this in ways that engage not only with relevant experimentalist compositional methods arising from avant-garde practices in the West, but also in ways that deepen my engagement with Chinese culture, thought, poetry and poetics, and history, generally within the framework of Global China Studies. Furthermore, I am pleased with the ways in which this has all begun to come together with my research interest in the question of the Anthropocene, with a particular focus on how “the Anthropocene” is being critiqued, represented, rethought and mobilized as an important concept to help us understand and meet the urgent challenges that arise from accelerating anthropogenic disruptions of Earth systems and ecology.
I have given a number of presentations and talks on this project over the years, with the project always being presented more as an aspirational project than as one that is ready to present to the broader public; I am enormously grateful to the NYU Digital Humanities Seed Grant for the opportunity to move the project forward to the point where I will begin to share it publicly, even as I continue to develop it and add to it with more urban walks in Shanghai (resuming Spring ‘24) and the processing and posting of the enormous amount of material that I have generated on past walks; I also look forward to working with digital artists to move from simple displays of discrete photos (and, soon, video and sound files) to a “changing” display of such files that, in a way similar to the changing lines of the “System Poem” (https://changinglines.net/ home page), meld and mutate in seemingly endless combinations.
I will be posting an account and list of previous and planned future presentations, talks, and exhibitions on this project, with the official live date of the website slated to coincide with participation in a group show and public reading on Oct 22 at Pollinator Gallery in Philadelphia (https://pollinator.one/on-exhibit). I will return to Shanghai from the US in the spring of ‘24, and will be presenting to colleagues at NYU Shanghai in the Faculty Lunchtime Speaker Series while also seeking opportunities to present in other venues in Shanghai and elsewhere.
What Digital Humanities skills or resources helped you most with your project?
D.P. Project management skills tailored toward website concept development and realization working in partnership with a web development team; concept development skills developed in conversation with computer scientists, digital artists, programmers, and media theorists that have helped me plot out a feasible path forward for a site that uses photos, video and sound files in new and engaging ways; practical experience in using aleatoric writing processes in teaching creative writing students; practical experience in presenting and performing the “poetry reading” in a way that embraces and foregrounds digital poetry and poetics; a deepened and deepening engagement with the work of scholars doing vital work in the digital humanities and related fields, as well as with artists and writers and composers working in digital spaces.
How, if at all, do you plan to build upon your project going forward?
D.P. I will continue to do walks and collect material; process the notes, photos, videos and sound files collected from dozens of walks conducted in the past five-plus years; post new “Station Poems,” work with digital artists to develop “AI”-driven “changing” images, sound loops, and videos that will recombine and mutate discreet photos, sound files, and videos in ways that are in line with the “changing lines” poetry and poetics; I will continue to draft critical reflections of the history and use of the I Ching as a compositional device in the context of Global China Studies and Comparative Literature; will seek to work with Chinese poets and translators to develop at least a partial translation of the “changing lines” that would allow a visitor to the site to use a slider to change the proportion of Chinese to English in the poem; and I will seek opportunities for talks, readings, presentations, and exhibitions as the project continues to grow.
View n Lines & Changing at changinglines.net.
The DH Seed Grants are administered and funded by NYU Libraries, the Center for the Humanities, and NYU Research and Instructional Technology. The goal of the program is to sponsor the initial development of projects that may go on to receive greater funding from external sources or otherwise build NYU’s institutional capacity in Digital Humanities work. We especially welcome projects that give voice or expression to underrepresented communities and that engage with the urban fabric of the cities in which NYU has campuses.
You can also read more about the NYU DH Seed Grant program and read the 2024-2025 call for proposals.