Poetry in Motion I and IIby Ron MannSealed Collectible CD-ROMs (Rare OOP) from original Voyager Production Release
Multi Media CD-Rom Software
Produced in the Mid-1990s by the Original Voyager Company
One of the best developers of multimedia CD-ROMs that ever existed, Voyager Company, released dozens of high-quality educational CD-ROMs between 1993 and 2000 before being bought out by Learn Technologies, which then quietly went out of business sometime in 2002. This is one of their interactive CD-Roms for PC/Windows or MAC.
Poetry in Motionby Ron Mann
CD-ROM Review by Koreen Slocum
This CD ROM is a showcase of poets performing their works, talking about their poetry, and discussing how they think of themselves and their work as poets in digitized interviews. I was enchanted with the performances of the poems; it was amazing to me to watch the rhythm of the poetry through the poet\'s own words. In addition, some of the poetry was adapted by the writer to be performed with music as a vocal performance.
I feel this CD-ROM could be used in schools in several ways. First, it could be used as an example of the effect an author has on his work. Because the poets are talking about and reading their own poetry, you get a unique perspective on the poems. This would be a really interesting way to talk about ownership of writing and the importance of the author\'s intention.
A second way this CD-ROM could be used is in helping students to define poetry. Not all of the poems on this CD-ROM are published, and some were edited to be accompanied by music or to better fit into an oral performance setting.
Each of the poets had a unique way of presenting their work and it was difficult to categorize any of the poets together. This could spark an interesting discussion of \"What is poetry?\"
Finally, I think this CD-ROM would encourage students to think about different ways of expressing themselves. I was inspired to write poetry after viewing these performances and I think students would be, too.
One of the drawbacks of this CD-ROM was the language used in some of the poems. I definitely would limit this CD-ROM to seniors, possibly juniors, in high school because of the language and content. Also, I was disappointed in the lack of written text to accompany the performances of each poet. I found myself wanting to know more about each of the poets, and no biographical or publishing information was given on the CD-ROM to answer some of the questions that I had. However, this could be a benefit for some students who would then be motivated to do research on the poets he/she found intriguing on this CD-ROM.
All in all, I found the directions for use very simple and the performances to be engrossing. There is a lot of material on this CD-ROM; I recommend at least an hour for viewing in order to experience a wide range of the forms and styles featured. I\'m looking forward to seeing more classrooms encouraging \"poetry in motion.\"
Poetry in Motion IIby Ron Mann
CD-ROM Review by Mary Maddever
July 31, 1995
Ron Mann strikes again
Intriguing topics such as fish condos, cat houses for dogs and cockroach cure-alls are all in a day\'s cd-rom work at Ron Mann\'s Toronto-based Sphinx Productions.
Mann and Toronto filmmaker/editor Robert Kennedy have just begun production in New York City on Joey Skaggs Strikes Again!, a cd-rom for The Voyager Company telescoping the 25-year career of media hoaxster Joey Skaggs. Mann, for whom this will be the fifth disc for Voyager, had always wanted to do a film about pranks, so when Skaggs approached Voyager to do a cd-rom, the two were brought together.
Mann wrote the script with Skaggs, and culled his archives of pranks - there have been 80 over the years - winnowing those to be included down to 12. The material includes everything from phone messages (very irate) to rigged news stories from cnn and the New York Times to interview clips from tv shows where he\'s sent impostors of himself. In addition to Skaggs\' media-terrorist antics, Mann says Skaggs designed an exclusive try-this-at-home prank that cd-rom owners can participate in.
Mann\'s fourth disc with Voyager, Poetry in Motion II, has just been published. Featuring performances by poets such as Michael Ondaatje, Spalding Gray, and the eternally-acrid, professionally-dissolute Charles Bukowski, the new release is a sequel to the original Poetry in Motion, the first cd-rom translation of a film (also by Mann). Poetry II is only available on cd-rom.
Asked about the conventional wisdom and market stats showing that the money to be made in cd-rom is only for a very elite top percentage of titles in specific hit categories, Mann replies that from a creative point of view, it allows him to do more titles quickly and less expensively than film.
\"I get to work on projects I couldn\'t do in film, says Mann, pointing out that his latest feature film, Grass, will cost $1.3 million and take one and a half years to make, while Skaggs will be out in five months and will cost about $83,000. The cd version of Grass, currently in production, is destined to be Mann\'s sixth title with Voyager.
Mann, a veritable vet of the infant cd industry (and the most prolific cd-rom producer in Canada), says since \'92 the market has grown, and his royalties have been quite substantial. Mann says Voyager, a leading publisher of intelligent product, has pioneered what cd-roms can do, blazing a sales path via catalogues and bookstores for its more than 60 non-mass-market titles, which CityInteractive is now handling in Canada. Poetry made about $300,000 in gross sales and cost about $75,000 to produce. Mann says his costs are currently in the $50,000 to $75,000 range.
Technical requirements for Voyager\'s CD-Roms
Windows: 486SX-33 or higher processor; 640 x 480, 256 color display; 8 MB RAM MPC2-compatible CD-ROM drive and sound card with speakers or headphones; Microsoft Windows 3.1 (TM); MS-DOS 5.0 or higher.
Macintosh: Any Macintosh (25-MHz 68030 processor or better); System 7 or higher; 5,000K of available RAM; 13\" color monitor; double-speed CD-ROM drive.
The Voyager collection of CD-ROMs represents an era that is fading into oblivion.Due to a lack of computer systems still capable of executing this software, Voyager products that are still available in the original sealed packaging have significant historical value for collectors only.
The following discussion of CD-ROM technology and its preservation is found inThe International Journal of Digital Curation;Volume 7, Issue 2 | 2012:
Virtual CD-ROM Collections
Although the Voyager CD-ROMs have substantial historical significance, they, and most other published CD-ROMs, are destined to have a dwindling user base whose expertise in the systems required to use them is in sharp decline. The physical machines required to execute them have already disappeared from most educational institutions and even the operating systems are increasingly hard to find; at Indiana University, which once had many hundreds of ?classic macs?, only one person within our University IT Services had distribution disks of the corresponding operating system software. The physical copies of these CD-ROMs are disappearing from library shelves. In seeking examples for this paper we made extensive use of interlibrary loan and we found that many cataloged copies of Voyager CD-ROMs are either missing or damaged.
The long-term probability for individual libraries providing physical access to the Voyager and other published CD-ROMs is nearly nil. The user base is dwindling, the existing hardware and softwaresupport disappearing, and the physical media degrading. While we believe these materials have substantial historical significance, their ultimate survival depends upon spreading the preservation burden across many institutions through a virtual collection that enables networked access for a sparsely distributed base of patrons using modern work-stations.
