best.hello is a web poem, composed of original and appropriated texts. The appropriated texts were liberated from emails received by the author. Both bodies of text have been fed through a text-manipulation program to reorder the words, interleaving them to unfold new layers of meaning or interpretation. The resulting poem, best.hello, utilizes the affordances of both time-based visual media and the encounter with a ‘pop-up’ ad or alert box on the web. When combined, the two create a dialogue between them that refuses to be ignored or passively experienced: the alerts trigger the browser to jump to the front of other running applications, asserting the poem even after it has been minimized or concealed behind other applications. Even while the text obscures itself, several orders removed from its original context, shifting in and out of legibility, it demands to be read. What would be the "best" hello? Is it one that cannot be ignored? best.hello exists in the tension between restraint and release, hiding while wanting to be found in the most mundane of cultural exchanges: the greeting.
(Source: ELO 2014 Conference)
