Hey Now is a collaborative experiment in New Media Poetry. It is minimally "interactive", requiring the reader/viewer to click on the pacing man whenever he appears. The piece began as an idea: following the artist Christo's work ("wrapped" objects like Running Fence, Wrapped Pont Neuf, etc.) -- what would wrapped language look be like? How would it look or sound? Our initial discussions revolved around thinking through the act of wrapping, covering or hiding language; the physical and metaphorical transformation of language while it is wrapped; the final act of unveiling language that has now acquired "full" or "new" meaning because it has been partially hidden.
Out of these discussions, over five months, came Hey Now. Hey Now was composed with a sense that the opportunities and demands of composing Web-based literature and art -- like many other New Media practices -- have their roots in the shared notion of community that was integral to the development of the internet. Collaborative work redefines artistic labor in complicated ways. It allows us to reconsider both our work and our identities as artists/writers/programmers -- to literally see them anew. The entire project was done via the internet: Swiss and Nakamura have not met.
(Source: 2002 ELO State of the Arts gallery)
