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Created 29th November, 2010 All information on this page is provided by students on WR30230: Textual Interventions (2010/2011) To add further information, e-mail your critical profile to jpm@aber.ac.uk Polarity's Child ... Links ... Moving Text, 2010 ... Moving Text, 2011 Amelia Spencer I chose this particular animation for it simplicity and ability to communicate emotions through basic shapes and words. There is something very human about the movement of the original 'string' as it forms arguments, flirts and laughs with the viewer. The use of a 'string' as a starting point for each little animation I found really interesting, particularly once 'poidog' is reached and Waber explains that 'words are like strings' - and he is right. The string is used to convey emotions and relationships in the same way as words are. The actual words Waber uses in the animation are very basic, monosyllables that are given great depth when coupled with movement. For example a flirtatious 'yes' peeping around the edges of the screen before bursting into the centre in full view and 'ha' which rocks from left to right, building momentum as each side's laughter increases. Simplicity is what makes Waber's animation so clever. Waber uses the idea of strings as a starting point to explain how we use words. Each 'string' comes to life in the individual animations, not only forming familiar words but giving them character and feeling to demonstrate emotions, conversations, relationships and anatomy. The movement of each word allows Waber to show how these words can be interpreted in a real, 3D world. This one is a much truncated version of Scott McCloud's excellent and perfectly timed lecture about 'understanding comics.' The original one is about 15 minutes long, so this is probably more palatable and watchable for anyone who's not particularly interested in comics.....although, I can't imagine anyone not being interested in them!!!
Your seminar reminded me a lot, especially the fish one, of a book I read called 'The Raw Shark Texts' by Stephen Hall. This short film is a brief interpretation (with the lovely Tilda Swinton!) of the ideas and concepts the novel embodies.
http://www.squidoo.com/rawsharktexts I chose this link because I like that it is interactive and that the reader can choose what bits to look at and at what pace. The different voices in the piece are interesting as they illustrate a variety of different perspectives of 'life'. In response to the Moving Texts Lecture I have chosen Oni Buchanan – The Mandrake Vehicles http://www.conduit.org/online/buchanan/buchanan.html I chose this poem after watching her lecture on digital poetry on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14E9lGZzZTk&NR=1
I loved the idea of the different layers of the poem itself relating to the different effects of the different quantities of the mandrake. The subject choice also appealed to me as it is a plant surrounded by such folklore and legend that it is already rich with poetic material. In terms of actual layout I enjoyed being able to scroll backwards and forwards through the layers to discover the source of each new set of words, and the extra level of meaning this gave each successive poem. http://collection.eliterature.org/1/works/niemi__stud_poetry/StudPoetry.html I know technically, it's not a poem, but I think it is very clever, the kind of thing you could get addicted to playing and before long you've lost an hour of your time! It makes you think about words and how they link together, and it made me look at all the words on the screen and try to work out if they were significant to each other - I wasn't quite sure if the poet intended there to be any pattern, but it certainly makes you think about whether there is. The animated text I have chosen is 'TRY' by Thomas Bell: I chose this text because it frustrated me, I felt like I didn't have much time to actually absorb each thing before something else popped up. I thought that my reaction to the text encapsulated the meaning of it, the scribbles to me signified anger. Thomas Bell took a poem or quotation from Philip Whalen, who was a Zen Buddhist. The peaceful nature of Whalen's words are destroyed by Bell's destructive doodling, possibly denoting our lack of tolerance? ‘Construction’ by Tammy McGovern http://epc.buffalo.edu/ezines/lume/moment1/mcgovern/construction.html The fact that the words appear and vanish makes the poem interesting, because you find yourself drawn back again and again to try and discover every single word. This makes the poem quite fun at first and there is the sensation that the reader is plucking up the words out of nothing. Since the words are hidden and so scattered, there doesn’t seem to be any particular message that McGovern is trying to deliver. Instead, McGovern is giving over the words to the reader and, as the title of the poem suggests, giving the reader complete power to construct their own text, and so for each individual there will be a different piece and a different interpretation of McGovern’s creation. Polarity's Child ... Links ... Moving Text, 2010 ... Moving Text, 2011 |