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,
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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'.