music

"pianographique" is a "multimedia instrument" created in 1993 on CD-ROM and made available on the Web in 1996 by a French webarts collective. "pianographique" is a work of "programmatical literal art," a term coined by John Cayley. Letters are "literal" here: they tumble and morph automatically, and they can also be manipulated on occasion by the reader-interactor and/or generated by the program. The user of this work is presented with a keyboard on the screen that corresponds to the keyboard beneath her fingertips. Each letter of the user's keyboard, when pressed, produces a distinct sound score and an animation that can be displaced by the hand of the user working a mouse. Playing the "piano" of graphics and sound bites, the user can create an infinite number of verbal visual-aural collages, while hitting the space bar effaces all that has come before. The user can choose from a set of three sections to „write“ a story: "Sound System," Continuum," and "Pianoparole." Lamarque has programmed "pianographique" in such a way that the same constricted motions required to form a letter (curves and lines) are responsible, when digitally processed, for the letter's disfigurations. The swirling motions of the user's hand are mirrored on the screen only. These gestures render the letter illegible; its constituent marks are returned to protowriting, to the status of meaningless shapes and lines. Visually, "pianographique" becomes a work of post-concrete poetry accompanied by music. While the work is dadaistic and surrealistic, it also recalls dance and gestural movements or paintings by Cy Twombly and Robert Morris.

 (Source: "Digital Gestures" by Carrie Noland published in New Media Poetics.)

Created by babel and 391.org, Animalamina, a collaboratively constructed work of multimedia poetry for children, consists of 26 pages of flash-based poetry organized around the letters of the alphabet.  The key aim of this project is to introduce a younger audience (5 - 11) to a variety of styles of digital poetry, animation and interaction, through the familiar format of an animal A-Z.  As the project’s “background” page notes, this work is situated within a tradition alphabet primers that stretches back over 500 years.  This background is noteworthy precisely because of the tradition’s combination of pedagogy and play, instructing new generations in the mechanics of emerging techniques and technologies.  Specific innovations introduced in this recent ABC are animation, audio, interactive content, non-linearity and chance.  

The poems are hidden in 26 interconnected scenes which are revealed through various types of animated, visual and generative poetry, and game-type interaction. Each scene represents a specific animal/poem, and is revealed by interaction within the scene. Each scene has been designed to be different from the others in the style of narration, illustration and interaction, to create a series of unique environments that are exciting to traverse and uncover. There are two styles of play: in the 'game' version, the reader chooses their own path through the scenes, and progress into new scenes is rewarded by the corresponding letter at the bottom and the ability to jump back to that scene at choice. In the 'teaching' version, all the animals are accessible from the start with the cheat button (the ladybird/ladybug at the right hand side of the starting Alligator scene).

Animalamina is eclectic in feel and operation, incorporating paintings, photography, drawings, three-dimensional renderings, and mixed-media images as well as offering many different ways to read, interpret and interact.   All in all, this contemporary take on a centuries old literary form offers many surprises, reaffirming the interdependence of human expression and innovation, and offering delightful lessons for children young and old.

(Source: Electronic Literature Directory entry by Scott Rettberg and Davin Heckman)

Correspondences is a translation into sound and image of the timbre of Charles Baudelaire's "Correspondances." The work is not a reading, per se, but it follows the structure of Baudelaire's sonnet closely, pivoting around the white space of the dash in the first tercet. In this experimental video + computer music work the gesture of Baudelaire's poetry serves as a scaffolding for an exploration of mutable time and memory. Correspondences is an invocation to the memory of something read, half-remembered perhaps, connected through a dream logic.

An intermedia elegy, animated in Flash created to mark the passing of Brazilian poet, Philadelpho Menezes (1960-2000). As aND explains in the piece, "I was harvesting the seeds of False Blue Indigo (Baptisia Australis) the day I received news Philadelpho had died." The work reveals a series of letters and words formed from seeds to music.

R3/\/\1X\/\/0RX (remixworx) - selected works:

an online journal of digital art and writing - 2006 to 2012

R3/\/\1X\/\/0RX (remixworx) is a space for the remixing of digital media, including visual poetry (vispo), electronic poetry (flashpo), playable media, animation, music, spoken word, texts and more. It began as a blog in November 2006 and has grown to number over 500 individual works of media. The source material is made available and all media is freely given to be remixed. Each new work is remixed, literally or conceptually, from other works on the blog. Then, the new work is linked to the blog post(s) that contain the component parts, thus the blog 'talks to itself' - "I link therefore I am" (Mark Amerika). The project promotes no single 'author', and we keep dogma chained outside the gate. It is not a tame place, though, and artful innuendo is evident.

R3/\/\1X\/\/0RX is also a playful environment - as with much 'creative discourse' - and we are always surprised and delighted by the remixes. We respond to each other, to newsworthy events, and to trends in politics or art. Some works have been remixed several times and represent a creative dialogue that utilizes social software to explore 'open source', "a philosophy ... that promotes free redistribution" (Wikipedia). We sometimes post completely new work because R3/\/\1X\/\/0RX needs to be fed. In regards artistic practice, R3/\/\1X\/\/0RX is unabashedly new media - 'born digital' - but the project has roots in photography, literature, audio technology, film, animation, poetry, computer programming, dada and outsider art.

R3/\/\1X\/\/0RX is a creative micro-community. Most members were brought together, initially, by the trAce Online Writing Community. R3/\/\1X\/\/0RX continues in a spirit of learning and sharing - in the original spirit of the World Wide Web. Some members have won awards of one kind or another for digital art and writing. Often, in the heat of working on a complex project, a person needs to let off steam - R3/\/\1X\/\/0RX is a place for that, as well.

R3/\/\1X\/\/0RX is an accumulation of spontaneous ideas that spawn at random intervals, a flexible community, an adaptable entity that has been shown in a variety of ways - performed live at festivals and conferences, or remixed live as part of DJ/VJ events. The gallery page of 'selected works' has been created to 'open the project up', so to speak, with a visual interface, separate from the blog. It is presented as an online journal of digital art and writing that spans 2006 to 2012.

UPDATE: the R3/\/\1X\/\/0RX - selected works web page is no longer available but the R3M1XW0RX archive is accessible here: http://remixworx.com/

A transmedial project centered around a novel originally published chapter by chapter on a blog, and later published as a Kindle book for sale on Amazon. A number of other elements make part of the story, including a CD soundtrack, an unmarked vinyl album, art installations in galleries and a series of stickers implemented in London.

Born out of a Sinfonia by Johann Sebastian Bach, hypnotically played by Glenn Gould, this poem brings the reader into the setting of a hospital or care home, in which an old person seems to be living  his last hours in a state between waking and sleeping. WARNING: CAN MAKE PEOPLE CRY! Slaaplied has been published in Dutch, English, German and Czech. 

A mash-up of Dadaist technique and VJ stylings, this Flash movie is the product of an "antagonist remix" by babel vs. escha. Seven scenes provide enigmatic observations on the nature of contemporary life, on seeing and being seen, understanding and miscommunication, destruction and creation. The texts in the piece are generated randomly as the piece runs, so the reader's experience of the piece is never exactly the same twice. 

(Description from Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 1.)

A kinetic poem reflecting on the death of the author's father that uses the car wash as a metaphor for passing between worlds.

This 2005 piece distinguishes itself from most of YHCHI's earlier work in two ways: it is brief (about 2 minutes long) and it uses an Okinawan folk song (perhaps a version of "Asadoya Yunta") rather than jazz. This compelling story is perfectly synchronized to the music, powerfully narrating the thought process of a woman who seems to by dying on the floor, trying to get up, but unable to. The chords played on the sanshin set a regular tempo for the song and poem, but its heartbeat-like rhythm slows down into an abrupt silence at the end of the song, marking Betty Nkomos' death.For a more detailed reading of this poem, read pgs. 157-161 of Giovanna Di Rosario's dissertation, "Electronic Poetry: Understanding Poetry in the Digital Environment."

(Source: Leonardo Flores, I ♥ E-Poetry)