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Pif Magazine
ISSN: 1094-2726
Published by:
Pif, LLC
PMB 248
4820 Yelm Hwy SE
Suite B
Lacey, WA 98503-4903
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By itself, so what? But the multimedia version of this poem discerns and vivifies the poem's unseen potential. We are presented with a four-drawer antique box, the type in which a child might have kept mementos. Upon clicking the first drawer, it opens to reveal the poem's first line and an old photograph of children crowded in front of a school. A single child in the photograph is darkened out. A scratchy ragtime tune plays, setting the piece in the past, connoting excitement and even chaos. The second drawer opens with a grunt and remains ajar only with the help of a red triangle onto which "I felt like I was the first" is scrawled. Click the triangle, and drawer #2 closes with an abrupt sigh. The third drawer opens to reveal a close-up of the darkened-out child now made visible. It is the author as a girl. The pronoun "I" is superimposed on her, and an hourglass fades in and out around her, emphasizing her indecision. An eerie music-box audio loop plays, irregular and foreboding. The fourth and final drawer opens halfway to the sound of a child laughing and playmates chattering, and we glimpse a toy girl upside down and smiling in a sandbox. A second click opens drawer #4 fully to reveal the last line of the poem and a toy boy beside the girl in the sandbox.
It's much more engaging than either the stand-alone poem or my pedantic description. This installation creates a tangible window into the author's experience, similar to the window through which the author herself reminisces. We are invited to explore the author's past, to feel her trepidation, to experience her isolation, to rejoice in the rewards of her risk. The poem is not only illustrated, it is objectified – literally transformed into an object that then becomes a vehicle for shared experience.
The credits say "Written by Erin Gholson. Realization by Entropy8." I agree. It took the designers at Entropy8 to realize and convey the experience that Erin Gholson was merely able to transcribe. Had Erin been a better poet, she could have possibly conveyed this experience (and maybe even a deeper one) through her writing. Nonetheless, meaningful experience is conveyed, and all via a hybrid technology called Macromedia Flash 4. (And oh yeah, some words are used too.)
Entropy8 is designer Aureia Harvey and her programming guru boyfriend. Harvey was first a sculptor, then a New York City performance artist, and finally a Web designer; so she's no stranger to endowing themes with dimension and weight. Harvey brings some of her own past to this piece, and in so doing, she re-interprets the author's original intent. (For instance, the boy in the sandbox suddenly makes the sandbox a metaphor for sex, which changes the meaning of the poem drastically. The boy is never mentioned in the stand-alone poem.) So what? Such is the nature of collaboration and mediation. If the resultant hybrid is good, then it's good. Whose art is this? Well, it is not just the poet's anymore. What kind of art is this? Is it literature? No, not really. Is it performance art? No. Programming? Well, no. Graphic design? Not exclusively. Is it a movie? No. It's a word-based multimedia Web collaboration.
Also of note in this month's Born is the poem "Flesh of a Mango." Its final realization reads more like a movie starring the text of the poem itself. As the text slowly fades from phrase to phrase, the background mirrors its meaning, but subtly, with colors and textures rather than recognizable images. Accompanied by a haunting ambient instrumental soundtrack, this piece blurs the senses, which is what the poem itself intends to do. In the end, as the poem's speaker beckons his lover to come to him at night bearing red wine and the flesh of a mango, vague forms materialize in the background – lovers embracing – and then they dissolve into what appears to be the mango itself.
Again, a world is created that is more than the sum of its parts, a world into which we are invited (or seduced, as the case may be). This is multimedia art at its best, more emotion than pretension. Multimedia performance art and multimedia gallery installations have always seemed hokey to me because their context necessarily forces them to scream, "Look at me! I'm art!" Even if the pieces are subtle, they become self-conscious because they are on some stage or in some gallery. But in your browser window, in the privacy of your own home, at your own pace, multimedia art seems more natural and intimate.
