Shari Margolin, Words in Flight, English Thesis (published online),15 December 1999, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York. Advisor: MichaelJoyce. http://vassun.vassar.edu/~shmargol/shari/thesis/eduardokac.html


SECRET

(Dissertation excerpt)

Eduardo Kac has been experimenting in visual poetries since the early1980s. He is probably most famous for what he entitles holopoetry, a kindof poetry that comes out at and towards the reader like a hologram would.Kac also creates digital poetry, in which the visible area changes by the"bending" of the screen. This type of viewing emphasizes perspective,and a reassurance of the reader's place as a mass, within a body. I believea more appropriate name for this type of digital poetry is remote (control)poetry. The reader has to use a control bar in order to move the poem incertain ways so that she can read it. One example of such poetry is "Secret."

"Secret" (http://www.ekac.org/Secret.wrl [Accessed 29 November1999].) begins with a view of a black screen containing several white dotsin the distance that appear to be stars, spread out across the screen,and a control bar at the bottom of the screen that has on it differentoptions, such as Walk, Look, Examine, and Point, that relate to mouse controlover the movement of the piece. These options are not intuitive and arenot explained. This sort of lack of guidance plays on both the idea thatthe computer is an impenetrable environment for most people, one that canbe physically explored, but not understood, and the conception of the mutelover, in which one has to play around with different techniques to figureout what pleasures, or works. One has to examine this text in order toread it.

To do so, the viewer must work her way through these movement options,moving her mouse to bring the dots, which eventually appear as words madeout of geographic forms such as cyclinders and cones, closer to her andfacing front so that they are readable. If she moves her mouse too quickly,the words fly by and are lost. Once the words move past the front of thescreen, they are very difficult to find again. The work disorients onein space, which seems odd because the reader is always in front of hercomputer screen.

Theorist Brian Lennon describes the purpose of "Secret" asfollows: "It is not mere user participation in an electronic workof art, some valorously 'active' cliking at a mouse, that is being soughthere; what is sought is, rather, a reflection of the vital ambiguitiesof life lived through technologies that change us, and our ways of livingand thinking, even as we change them responding to perceived evolutionsin our knowledge: a feedback loop linking contemporary cultural forcesand instrumental technologies into reciprocal and recombinant relations."(Lennon, Brian. "Screening a Digital Visual Poetics," Manuscriptin proof, to appear in _Configurations_ vol. 8 no. 1, 2000, pp. 23-24).What Lennon sees as important in this work, and hypertext in general, isthe reader's reaction to it and the resulting changes in both the readerand the work. He sees this work as recombinant, a result of a meshing ofprevious work(s) and a cultural reaction(s) to it.


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