A new medium demonstrated?
I felt that all three of this weeks' short works are strong evidence for the existence of a new medium--none of these works could be reproduced faithfully in an older medium.
Faith, with it's cute animated intro concerning the imperviousness of faith to logic, requires motion for this message. It prompted me to question whether the rest of this "poem" could be printed in a traditional anthology. But how would you print a morphing poem? Print the 4 screen-pages sequentially; or print only the second-to-last screen-page when the poem is most "complete"? It would fail to capture the sense that one poem could contain/reveal another within it.
I found the contrast in Murmuring Insects to be quite striking. At first, the scene only seems to highlight the content of the original poem (much as in last week's "Origami")--the peaceful night sounds, two fluffy airplane lines over a still moon:
In the sky, flocks of departing geeseBut as the poem is revealed, we find other sounds that correspond instead to the faint early image of the Twin Towers and the 9/11 date we had to click on to start the experience. These sounds are not natural evening sounds, but human chaos and suffering. The sadness of poem is attached to the events of 9/11, promoting many interesting image and emotional comparisons. This was my favorite work (though I agree I found the "apparent" link from the moon to be confusing).
In the weeds, murmuring insects
Tears like dew well up in my eyes
Some of the scenes from Hermeticon were nostalgic for me, but overall, I found this work less enjoyable. The background beat put me on edge. Possibly due to my lack of rhythm, I failed to make any interesting "spells" from the work. If found I'd rather press many keys quickly and use the resulting noise to drown out the background beat. Yet, in a way, it reminded me of dipping into the "communal consciousness", of being aware of all the messages being simultaneously transmitted on all the different communication channels, and the futility of personally making order from it.
Though none of these works could have maintained their effect through print, I also found that the interactivity was important. I often had to go through each of the works at my own pace, pause to evaluate each scene, back up and play it again to evaluate it closer. This suggests that they may not have done well as video either.
posted by Zach @ 11:00 AM
1 Comments:
The question of whether a work would "work" on paper is always a good one to ask as we confront digital literary materials. Your sense that Kendall's poem would be hard to represent on paper seems right on, and in comparison to the Japanese poem by Rengetsu Ankerson is "setting" in Murmuring Insects, it's a poem that really needs the medium of animation to meet its aesthetic goals. Even though Ankerson's text could easily "work" in print form, the impact of the work as a whole, with the images and sounds from 9/11 "updating" the 19th century poem and placing it in a radically different cultural context, might be harder to achieve on paper. You are asking solid "medium specific" questions.
I always wonder about the "newness" of so-called new media. Certain kinds of performance, such as opera and some types of theater and ritual, bring together multiple modalities--text, song, visuals, interactions. Your questions and comments raise interesting points about other means besides the computer by which to achieve the effects of electronic media.
I especially appreciate your final comment about the possible inadequacy of video for pieces such as these. The role of interactivity is different in each one. It's a standard page-turning button in Kendall, a slightly more choice-based button-pushing in Ankerson, and an integral part of the "reading" in Nelson. Great observations and reflections.
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