JA19: Hazel Smith, 2005, The Writing Experiment

Allen and Unwin: Crows Nest

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Also on The Writing Experiment website is beer by Australian performance poet and cyberwriter, Komninos Zervos (republished-a). This piece morphs the word 'beer' into many other words (for example, 'been' and 'beef, and subsequently 'help', 'yell' and 'tell'): it moves from one word to another by changing some letters and not others. However, the morphing concerns the shape of the letters and words as much as their linguistic import: sometimes the words appear as half-shape, half-word, sometimes as only shape. Zervos's brightly coloured and dynamic n cannot be programmed has more elements and combines user-interaction triggered by mouse movements with animation (republished-b).

It consists of a whole alphabet that keeps receding, disappearing and rotating, and from which the letter V emerges, changes shape, and repositions itself on different parts of the screen. There are other 'u's of different colours and sizes-some static, some moving-and the visuals are accompanied by a partly verbal soundtrack. By means of animation the piece plays on a number of verbal relationships: between V and 'you; between the alphabet and individual letters; and between the letters themselves (U upside down looks like 'n').

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Other exciting examples of animated texts can be found in the work of Jim Andrews, Peter Howard and Ana Maria Uribe, as well as other pieces by Komninos Zervos, Jason Nelson and Brian Kim Stefans. The work of most of these web artists can be found on their individual websites.

 

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The soundtrack can, of course, be verbal. Komninos Zervos's u cannot be programmed (republished-b) has an interactive soundtrack in which the words 'u cannot be programmed' are reiterated amongst sometimes superimposed variations such as 'u cannot be erased/hypertexted/cybersexed'.