He spent all week lifting stones · 5 December 06 by Ray Crowley
A wonderful piece about language and habitation by my friend Gearóid Ó Colmáin.
Here is an extract:
“The future of a multicultural, multilingual society will depend on our ability to balance the particular with the universal, the old with the new. The new Ireland does not have to discard its heritage. Rather, through a continuous dialogue with the past, we will be able project with confidence and deeper understanding towards the ‘páirc ard’of the future.”
tags: ireland, irish, language, space, ó colmáin
m*honey: a small tool for alternative langauge learning · 24 November 06 by Ray Crowley
Requirements Python enabled mobile device.
Rationale:
The user is in an alternative language environment and desires to actively work on acquiring and developing his/her vocabulary.
People have their mobile devices with them at nearly all times while interfacing with public space and accordingly the mobile device is perfectly suited to help in the language learning process.
Example use scenario
1. User is walking down the street with a friend in the second language of environment
2. User desires to keep a record of a new word he/she comes across. This could a 1st to 2nd language discovery or 2nd to 1st discovery.
3. User has m*honey installed on his / her mobile device.
4. User asks acquaintance what most common translation of lexical item is.
5. User activates programme and textually enters first primary language element, then user is prompted to textually enter translation.
6. User is prompted to make an optional sound recording of lexical element.
7. These units (1st text string, 2nd textstring, sound recording) are saved on the memory of the mobile device and indexed for easy recall at a later point.
Potential Extensions of core application:
1. Upload of text and sound to webserver via MMS.
2. Option to attach image with textual items for visual learning.
Out of Scope
m*honey is not a translation tool or electronic dictionary, rather m*honey is a framework to help a user keep track of new words he/she is learning in an alternative language environment.
Code: download here
tags: language, linguistics, locative, mobile, python, scriptT*Int (Textspace In Not Txtspace) or The Death of the Author · 25 October 06 by Ray Crowley
here is the preface to my most recent assignment paper which utilizes TagCrowd The deliverable envisioned is part interactive audio-visual installation, part Beckett performance with a bit of deconstructionism thrown in for fun.
To Dr. Tapio Takala, Helsinki University of Technology
The subtitle is in homage to Roland Barthes who was commissioned by the artist and writer Patrick Ireland (formerly known as Brian O’Doherty) to write his hugely influential post-structuralist essay “Death of the Author” for ‘Aspen Magazine 5+6’ (1967).
This edition of the magazine also included original contributions by Samuel Beckett, William Burroughs, John Cage, Marcel Duchamp, Michel Butor, Morton Feldman, Dan Graham, Sol LeWitt, Robert Morris, Hans Richter, Robert Rauschenberg, Alain Robbe-Grillet and Susan Sontag.
I engaged many times with the texts, images and sounds of ‘Aspen Magazine 5+6’ over the course of the hot summer of 2006 as there was a retrospective of the work of Patrick Ireland at The Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin. I lived a stones throw away from the gallery and had quit my corporate job.
This paper is dedicated to my dear friend, Gearóid Ó Colmáin. Go raibh maith agat mo chara.
TagCloud The Unnamable · 24 October 06 by Ray Crowley
Recently I came across a great project called TagCrowd by Standford Researcher Daniel Steinbock . I like tags, I like lexical analysis so I love this. Enter up to 100kb of text for lexical frequency analysis and hey presto there you go a beautiful TagCloud (published under a Creative Commons License).
Below are the results of the application applied to Samuel Beckett’s novel The Unnamable
Learning Estonian | Toolmaking · 17 October 06 by Ray Crowley
I need something quite simple to help me to learn Eesti keel (Estonian): an mp3 file of the 40 or so vowels and diphthongs in the language.
Once I have this then at least I can begin to make mistakes in spoken Estonian for the next couple of years.
I have searched and asked relevant institutions but to no avail.
If I haven’t sourced such a resource by the end of October 2006 I will work with some Estonian friends to make the recordings and release them here into the public domain.
tags: audio, estonian, language, linguistics