Jenny Weight (geniwate) lives in Adelaide, Australia. She spent several years dabbling in more conventional literary
forms before turning on her computer. She had a short collection of poetry entitled <life in the oort cloud>
published 1996 (wakefield press/friendly st)and before that a play of hers called <the revivalists> was performed
a couple of times.

More recently she has been incorporating puppetry and soundscapes in performance poetry. The leap from
performance poetry to Jenny's brand of digital poetry has not been great. It is her continuing project to integrate
audio and visual material with text. Of course, acquiring the technical skills has been, and remains, a different matter.

Jenny, her partner Oscar and her dictaphone went to Vietnam at Christmas, 1997. The depth of complexity associated with relative wealth and cultural difference that the trip revealed to her led to the development of <rice> . when she received a new media artist residency at the media resource centre in adelaide she was given opportunity to develop the piece.

The development of this project was made possible through the support of the Media Resource Centre and the Australia Council, the Australian Federal Government's arts funding and advisory body.

About Rice -

an experiment in digital poetry
co-winner of the trAce/Alt-X International Hypertext Competition

In Australia where I live, we have an ongoing dialogue about how Australia,
which is a country mainly populated by non-Asian people, should relate to
people from Asian countries. Geographically we are a part of Asia,
but culturally most of us have a European background. My project attempted to
explore some of these issues.

One of the most striking things about visiting Vietnam for an Australian is the poverty.
Because we were involved in the Vietnam War, Australians have to take some
responsibility for this poverty. On the other hand, there's not much we can do
individually except be tourists and spend our money there.

This is what the Vietnamese want, but it seems like a new form of colonialism.
That is, another way to feel vaguely guilty and uncomfortable. But it's hard to
argue against tourism when so many Vietnamese would be even worse off
without the tourist dollar. The relationship between Vietnam and Australia is
particularly complex because 30 years ago we participated in the American
attempt to remove the communists from Vietnam.

In this awful war we destroyed a lot of the Vietnamese environment, apart from
all the lives that were lost, damaged and uprooted. The war has left a deep
psychological scar in American and Australian culture, but the Vietnamese
themselves seem prepared to put it all behind them.

Being in Vietnam made me think a lot about cultural difference, but also about
how much different people ultimately have in common. While I have a lot of
questions about how different cultures can relate to each other, I also believe
in a common humanity that can overcome much when the good will and
respect is there. As I was learning about different cultures, I was also learning
about multimedia.

was my first major online work. I believe that the synthesis of different media
that the Internet allows makes it possible to communicate different things.
While I call myself a poet, poetry for me has come include much more than
just text.

Poetry is temporal progression--an exploration through words, sounds and
images. It is an exploration without end, and that is where the excitement lies.

MUSIC
All Along the Watchtower by Bob Dylan performed by Jimmi Hendrix

PHOTOGRAPHY
By Oscar Ferreiro