Linguistic Differences

For this project I utilized the Max 7 programming language to create a program that will take random lines from poems I have written and recombine them into a completely new prose. The user interface is brightly colored with basic shapes making the scene of the sun either setting or rising. Which one of these is not important, merely the portrayal of the passing of time is what is meant to be conveyed. There is only the option to turn it on and off hidden within the sun where the “X” exists. The lines appear inside the largest lines of the reflections within the water. As a result, this screen will be shown as the main result of the program, and is meant to be projected onto a wall. Meanwhile, the code will be shown on the smaller, less visible screen of my laptop as it is working. Throughout this whole piece, there is an accompanying sound of what appears to be random computer data noise.

I was inspired by Alison Knowles’ “House of Dust” on display in the Beall Center for Art and Technology. The main reasoning behind this work is to explore not only the ideas explained prior, but the relationship of authorship when a program and computer are utilized for artistic practice. Is it a collaboration between the artist and computer? What about the artist and original program language creator? The owners and/or creators of the operating system? What about the company that makes the hardware itself? Or is it the artist’s own independent creation? There is no concrete answer to this question yet. However, in presenting this work to an audience, I hope to raise awareness of this strange paradox of authorship because, although it is more easily seen compared to when Knowles’ made her work, this quandary remains unsolved. Similarly, it will conceivably increase visibility of non-traditional, technology-based artistic mediums. After all, digital art is still considered in its infancy and is not often accepted as “real” art just as photography was more widely dismissed in its earlier years.

To create this piece, I utilized a previous work that I created in a different class using Max 7. The base code for the random poetry generator remains the same. However, I have altered the code to better reflect the ideas and functions I wanted to portray. Stand-in work was replaced with poetry of my own made specifically for this piece. Finally, I took the individual lines of the poems and ran them through a Morse code generator which produced a “.wav” file of the corresponding signal. Speeding these up, I coded the program to overlay the sound files over each other whenever the corresponding line is activated. The result is a migraine inducing signal noise incredibly similar to what is often heard on older computers.