
Stills of the animated videotex (minitel) poem "Recaos" (1986), Eduardo Kac
When viewers logged on, the first saw the letter C on the lower right
corner of the screen. The letter A appeared above the C, followed by a
series of letters O moving upwards. This motion was against the default
mode of the videotex medium, which refreshed pages with slow top-to-bottom
scans. Like a light beam, the letter was "reflected" by the top
margin of the screen and redirected down and to the left. It changed into
the letter S and moved swiftly across the screen horizontally. Up to this
point all letters were red. Once the letter S reached the rightmost margin
of the screen, the acrostic SOS was formed in blue at the center. The animation
then came to halt, leaving the viewer with the image of the infinite symbol.
Note: The word "chaos" is not mispelled. The
piece was created in Portuguese. The correct spelling of "chaos"
in Portuguese is "caos".
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