Walid Raad's The Atlas Group Archive (1989-2004) is a transmedial, fictional 'archive' which supposedly encompasses donated testimonies on the war in Lebanon (1974-1991), including diary logs, photographs (some of which contain notes), and videos, archived on theatlasgroup.org. Apart from being published on the website, Raad's project has been exhibited in different galleries around the world.
Walid Raad's The Atlas Group Archive (1989-2004) is a transmedial, fictional 'archive' which supposedly encompasses donated testimonies on the war in Lebanon (1974-1991), including diary logs, photographs (some of which contain notes), and videos, archived on theatlasgroup.org. In this case, the fictionality of the archive creates an archive where no real archive exists. The entire archive is transmedially constructed, in which the layering of content in each image becomes the key feature. There is, for example, a document named "Let's be honest the weather helped" (1998) contains a series of black-and-white images of buildings with colored dots on them, which supposedly signify various types of bullet hits (see fig. 1). The dots cover the whole area of bullet impact, so this media filter makes it impossible to verify if there were indeed bullet hits, and let alone which color the bullet tips were. The transmediality of the project is thus a means in conveying the impossibility of an archive and the unrepresentability of trauma. Medial borders are crossed through layering of content, reinforcing and destabilizing the truth value of testimony. Apart from being published on the website, Raad's project has been exhibited in different galleries around the world.
The Atlas Group Archive can be seen as an instance of 'traveling memory' (Erll), a term to describe the dynamics of commemoration in the current age of globalization. Analyzing The Atlas Group Archive as an instance of traveling memory, I argue that the internal and external institutional context of the archive largely influences its ability to become a traveling memory which "has brought forth global media cultures" (Erll). I compare the effects of the different interfaces in which this work has appeared. Apart from being published on a website, Raad's project has been exhibited in art galleries around the world. Academics have often pointed to the ways in which The Atlas Group Archive plays with the blurring of fact and fiction. I take this observation to the next level by reframing it as the engagement with decontextualisation and recontextualisation. In my analysis, each context becomes an integral part of the images, a layer of content providing meaning. In the online archive, the images function as an icon of the material notebook, and the black background of the images functions as an index, signifying that the images are uncropped and therefore authentic . In the context presentation of the exhibition, however, these images function as icons and index primarily to show that absence of their referentiality. The notebook does not exist and the black background is part of the artwork. I analyze the project's narrative function's using Manovich's criteria for narrativity in databases: the distinction between 'text', 'story', and 'fabula'. Though highly transmedial and fragmented, The Atlas Group Archive accommodates to this model, as it uses multimedia (a 'text' across media borders) to narrate the Lebanese war ('story'), colored by narration of events experienced by actors ('fabula'), and together these three elements form an archival format. According to Benjamin, the opposition between information and storytelling resides in the fact that "while the [storyteller] was inclined to borrow from the miraculous, it is indispensable for information to sound plausible" (101). In the case of The Atlas Group Archive, we might say that these two categories are combined. The fabula is miraculous, but the contextualisation of text and story into information makes the unity plausible. The Atlas Group Archive's narrative functions by the virtue of fragmentation, which becomes an integral part of the content: it fills gaps while at the same time creating them.
(source: author's abstract)
The Computer Wore Heels is an interactive book app for the iPad that shares the little known story of a group of female mathematicians, some as young as 18, who did secret ballistics research for the US Army during WWII. A handful of these human 'computers' went on to serve as the programmers of ENIAC, the first multi-purpose electronic computer. The app is based on the documentary film Top Secret Rosies: The Female Computers of WWII (LeAnn Erickson 2010), and aims to bring this story to younger students in the hopes of giving today's teens role models that might encourage them to study math, science and computer science. The app's design resembles a girl's diary from the 1940's with the narrative unfolding as an adventure story. Readers may access primary research documents such as original WWII era letters, photographs and mathematical equations actually completed by the story's subjects. There are also numerous audio and video clips that expand on story plot points or events.
(source: Kid e-Lit booklet)
Traces is a collage of text, spoken word, sound, and digital projection. The text forms durational video and audio composed into 17 sections (excerpts included), which are triggered over the course of an hour in a continuous fashion. The video was designed to be incomplete and unfold over time--drawing attention to the chance encounter each person may have with it. It does not reveal the totality of its content, part of which falls outside of the frame. I worked with archival materials as I built this project (oral histories and personal collections). I was interested in these sorts of personal collections being displayed and open for perusal. As private spaces become redefined by digital possibilities, information is readily transferred from one form into another and meaning is subtracted and added along the way. Traces is my own collection. Photographs become data, which initiate recordings that are transcribed and then re-recorded. These then become projected text, and finally transform into granulated rhythmic pulsations and fragments of words, which becomes a vastly layered resonant soundscape felt as vibration through the body.
(Source: ELO Conference: First Encounters 2014)
Shawn Curtis, Armature construction
Scriptpoemas (2005-) is a collection of poems or “poemas” which is still being written by Antero de Alda. He was described by Rui Torres as an explorer of “new paths for computer-animated poetry” (Torres, 2008). These short and (apparently) ready-to-consume poems were created using Flash, Javascript and ActionScript and they often enact the activity or attribute described in their title. Each poem seems to convey the literal meaning of the words used to describe them: the “poem in prison” is presented behind bars, the “spherical poem” can be described as a round object. However, as soon as the poems are activated by the reader, new details begin to surface. Antero de Alda makes use of the digital environment to uncover the many faces of a poem and the evasiveness of language. The arbitrariness of signs is, after all, widely explored by Alda in each poem. Nothing is what it seems and icons, concepts or famous photographs are defamiliarized and turned into traps designed to betray the reader’s senses. Verses, stanzas and verbal language are reshaped as, or intertwined with, icons, images, sounds and animations. These are not straightforward representations of objects, but particles of an ongoing reflection on language, literature and life.
So far, the following poems have been included in Scriptpoemas: Poema a 33 Rpm [33 RPM poem]; Poema Avariado [broken poem]; Poema na Prisão [poem in prison]; Poema para Jogar [playable poem]; Poema Suicida [suicidal poem]; Poema Pornográfico [pornographic poem]; Poema Zoom; Túnel de Poemas [tunnel of poems]; Sementeira de Poemas [seedbed of poems]; Poema Negro [dark poem]; Poema Ilegível [unreadable poem]; Poema Objecto; Poema Graffiti; Poema Embrião [embrio poem]; Poema Código de Barras [barcode poem]; Poema Habitado [inhabited poem]; Poema de Pedra [stone poem]; Poema Camuflado [undercover poem]; Poema Em Viagem [travelling poem]; Poema Trapezista [trapeze poem]; Poema à Lupa [poem through a magnifying glass]; Galeria de Poemas [gallery of poems]; Poema Puzzle; Livro de Poemas [book of poems]; Poema de Artifício [fireworks’ poem]; Poema Relógio [clock poem]; Poema Tremido [shaky poem]; Arquivo de Poemas [poems’ archive]; Poema na Tv [poem on TV]; Poema de Natal [Christmas poem]; Para não Esquecer [not to forget]; Manta de Poemas [quilt of poems]; Poema Carambola [carom poem]; Poema Carambola 1; Poema Reflexo [reflection poem]; Poema Escondido [hidden poem]; Poema Mensagem [message poem]; Poema de Passagem [stop by poem]; Poema Cinético [kinetic poem]; Poema Translúcido [translucent poem]; Poema Iluminado [illuminated poem]; Poema Diário [daily poem]; Poema Saltitante [hopping poem]; Poema Festivo [merry poem]; Poema em Construção [poem under construction]; Poema Intermitente [intermittent poem]; Poema Adesivo [adhesive poem]; Poema Declamado [recited poem]; Poema Declamado 1; Poema às Moscas [dusty old poem]; Poema às Feras [poem thrown to the beasts]; Poemas Entrelaçados [interlaced poems]; Poema (Im)Possível [(im)possible poem]; Poema no Espaço [poem in space]; Poema Esférico [spherical poem]; Poema Caleidoscópio [kaleidoscopical poem]; Poema Cibernético [cybernetic poem]; Poema Dactilografado [typed poem]; Poema Galáctico [galactic poem]; Poema em Código [poem in code]; Poema Arrastado [dragged poem]; Poema Colorido [colorful poem]; Poema Serpente [serpent poem]; Poema Centrífugo [centrifugal poem]; Googlepoema; Poema Telegráfico [telegraphic poem]; Poema Antifascista [anti-fascist poem]; Poema Psicadélico [psychedelic poem]; Poema Esqueleto [skeleton poem]; Poema Matrix; Poema Cativo [captive poem]; Poema Óptico [optical poem]; Poema Rotativo [rotative poem]; Poema Em Casa [poem at home]; Poema Subaquático [underwater poem]; Poema de Amor [love poem]; Poema por Tamanho [custom size poem]; Poema do Mar [sea poem]; Poema Ao Luar [poem under the moonlight]; Poema à Janela [poem at the window]; Poema de Pesquisa [research poem]; Poema Americano [American poem]; Micropoema; Poema Circulante [circulating poem]; Poema Flutuante [floating poem]; Poema ao Vento [poem to the wind]; Poema Elástico [elastic poem]; O Rasto do Poema [the poem’s trace].
References: Torres, Rui (2008). "Scriptpoemas' introduction", in http://www.anterodealda.com/scriptpoemas.htm.
Trincheras de Mequinenza by Félix Remírez (2007) is an epistolary diary of a Republican soldier during the Ebro War. The work includes multimedia elements -photographies of real facts and landscapes were the conflict took place and songs from that period-and multi-windows in which historical descriptions of facts and biographies of the most important people in the battle appear.
Trincheras de Mequinenza de Félix Remírez (2007) es el diario epistolar de un soldado republicano durante la batalla del Ebro. La obra aúna el texto con elementos multimedia (fotografías de hechos reales y paisajes donde se desarrolló el enfrentamiento así como canciones de la época) y multi-ventanas en las que van apareciendo descripciones históricas de los hechos y biografías de las personas más relevantes de la batalla.
The Aleph is his initial project attempting to observe and understand the world through photographs on the Web. The Aleph system collects photographs tagged with certain words or phrases, extracts a given number of faces from them, and composes a collective face in realtime. "10000 Faces at Funeral, The Aleph" and "10000 Faces at Birthday Party, The Aleph" are companion pieces created by the system using 10,000 faces extracted from photos tagged 'funeral' and 'birthday party,' respectively.
In the film ”when” Ottar Ormstad is transferring his practice as concrete poet to the realm of a programmable networked space, blending his poetry with specially composed modern music with electronic elements. His b/w photographs developed in the darkroom are presented in combination with words in different languages, some of them exceeded into ”letter-carpets”. Some sentences are from well known songs or films, other letter-combinations are invented by the author.
The film is telling a story about life and death, basically from the standpoint of cars, rotten in a field in Sweden. The narrative is very open, and each viewer may experience the film very differently. This is also dependent upon the language background, any translation is – intentionally – not given.
when has been screened at festivals for experimental short film, so far in France, Romania, Russia and Norway.
Produced in HD 16:9 (FinalCutPro), 07:00 min.
B/w photographs shot on Kodak Tri-X with two Minolta SRT 101 cameras with original Rokkor lenses.
Animation (Ina Pillat) and music (Jens Petter Nilsen and Hallvard W. Hagen from Xploding Plastix) in close collaboration with the artist.
Poem using images and video of sheep wearing words. A voice reads words when the mouse hovers over the appropriate photo.
“Negro en ovejas” es un poema ovino en formato digital que reproduce la instancia en negro de una imbricación ovina, esto es, la implicación de la palabra y la oveja en entramado de poesía interactiva que equipara el texto que las ovejas van formando por el prado con las variantes posibles en el artefacto electrónico. Se trata entonces de varios niveles de interacción y acción poéticas. Primero es el proceso de la construcción del texto, el poema-base formado por palabras que tienen sentido en sí mismas pero adquieren nuevos por interacción con otras (el sustantivo “Sol” y el verbo “Es” se transfieren al plural “Soles” por proximidad o contacto). Una vez construidas las piezas, se asignan a ovejas que libres irán formando poemas en un performance de acción y balidos que adquiere entidad propia. Por último, transcrito el encuentro al artefacto digital, el/la navegante en Internet puede acceder a reproducir el proceso en interacción cibernética y de intercambio de autoridad creadora y especies: el/la cibernauta, como las ovejas, construye la experiencia poética, hermanándose a su vez con ellas. La reproducción en [la revista] "Mandorla" captura acaso algunos de los versos a modo de sugerencia y propuesta en una última dimensión mediática. (Tina Escaja; Mandorla. Nueva escritura de las Américas / New Writing from the Americas. 16 (2013): 596-614.)
Heldén's usual sophisticated visual language has here been cast aside in preference for a strictly simple HTML construction where texts, photographs and the urging to keep moving forwards drive the reading of this short work (next, next...). The work shows how digital techniques can allow for relatively simple arrangements of text and images that still belong in a digital environment. (Description by Maria Engberg, for ELINOR) Heldéns typiska sofistiskerade bildspråk har här lämnats för en stramt enkel html-konstruktion där texten, fotografier, och uppmaningen att röra sig framåt driver läsningen av det korta verket (next, next…). Verket visar på hur digital teknik också tillåter relatvit enkla arrangemang av text och bild som dock hör hemma i den digitala miljön. (Maria Engberg / ELINOR)