Published on the Web (online journal)

Eye in the Making consists of 3 clusters of texts.  The user interacts with image and text, expand the texts to develop readings.The user creates contexts and variations in readings depending on how much or little the texts are expanded, from where they are expanded, and the order in which the reader opens up the text.  This is furthered by a tension between the spatial arrangements and chronological expansion of the texts, along with the sounds accompanying the user's interaction with the text.Start by clicking on the moving image, and follow the texts, clicking certain words to produce more.  Click on the moving image once more to move on to the next section.

Source: author's abstract

This Twitter based netprov collected under a title headed by the word “ballad” provokes thought on the relation between this fictional piece and this ancient poetic form. The ballad, a form rooted in oral tradition, was often about sensational, comic, and tragic events and served as a conduit for stories from one region or time to another. With the invention of print, the broadside ballad reinforced the tradition of spreading news in poetic form. The fictional narrative of Workstudy Seth and how he took over Marino’s Twitter account was told during a 3-month period in 2009 and is compiled in a single HTML page— kind of a Web broadside. The language, though prosaic and loaded with netspeak, is governed by a 140-character per Tweet constraint, which leads to a poetic compression similar to that which governs many lines of verse. Sure, its meter isn’t governed by number of accents, syllables, or feet but it does have a shape, which leads to distinct ways to unfold the story. Read each distinct voice as it shifts from one character to another and enjoy how the mischievous Seth refuses to be silenced.

(Source: Leonardo Flores)

Originally published in BeeHive 3:4 (December 2000), this poem maps human experiences, narrative, weddings, funerals, and memory onto the ebb and flow of waters in tidelands— those coastal regions where rivers flow into the sea. The metaphorical relations between tidelands and individual and collective experience, past and present, knowledge and intuition are enacted in the use of hypertext and layers. This layering of text and image makes some lines and words difficult to read, breaking with the tradition of sequential arrangement of texts to draw attention towards new juxtapositions and the blending of human experiences. The poem also references estuaries, islands, and water during high, low, and neap tides— lunar and maritime cycles presented as a female analog to the more masculine solar solstices and equinoxes that have received such archetypal attention.

This is a work worthy of rereading and reflection to allow its language and images to ebb and flow in and out of your conscious mind.

(Source: Leonardo Flores)

This “reactive” (a.k.a. responsive or interactive) poem does an admirable job of representing the haiku in digital media, much like “Basho’s Frogger” by Neil Hennessy. Built upon a looping image of a drawing of a tree changing through the seasons, while a stick figure walks across the screen representing its shifting mood through body language. As the reader moves the pointer on the screen, different words emerge, allowing for the discovery of different phrases, depending upon one’s mouse movements. Juxtaposition of images and a connection to nature along with the speaker’s “posture” towards the material are all represented in this brief poem. The question of the title remains: is this a “free haiku” because it is offered gratis or because it has somehow been liberated from convention? Both readings are plausible, given the politics and poetics of Dada.

(Source: Leonardo Flores)

This two-part poem examines two sides of an emotional event in the speaker’s life. The first part, “Breathing” shows sadness, even depression, perhaps over the presence and absence of a woman, shown partly in the image standing by the door on the right side of the image. A mouseover triggers a whispery spoken soundtrack, stabilizes the softly vibrating lines so they become readable, and switches from one part of the poem to the other.

If you raise the volume on your speakers to make out the whispering voice in “Breathing,” then “Secret of Roe” is going to come as a shock with its loud music and voice. This is an angry side to the poem, as the image of two men fighting on the ground in front of the same woman in “Breathing” comes to the foreground. (Note that the images are both edited from the same photograph.) Each stanza in the poem is presented as a line scheduled to display in a rapid sequence, paused by a mouseover. The voice delivers the lines in about 1 1/2 minutes, and its pauses breathe meaning into the lines even as the sequenced text reminds us that “I am not really breathing.”

(Source: Leonardo Flores)