Flash Pieces: Web Art and Literature
Another way in which technology and literature have merged is evident in the multimedia experiment with prose poetry at Y0UNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES PRESENTS. This website offers a selection of texts, each of which is a piece of prose poetry, flashed on the screen in single words or short phrases, accompanied by jazz music. The text, like that of Patchwork Girl, appears in black print upon a white background, but the words often change so quickly that it is impossible to read all of them or to reflect upon them during the presentation. The very fact of this incomprehensibility suggests a postmodern viewing experience, in which the surface-depth model of reading is absent, and the poetry is to be taken on an experiential level. While this kind of reading is consistent with postmodern print poetry, the electronic medium presents a new twist. While the reader often struggles to catch all of the words being flashed on screen, and missing many of them, an interesting question presents itself: is there any reason why our cognitive abilities couldn’t change—that maybe we could read all of the words, in time? While readers typically move their eyes across a page of text, at any speed we are capable of, this media forces us to challenge ourselves—and possibly improve our comprehension abilities! With this new media, not only is the way we think about literature being challenged, but also the way we experience language.
Another interesting aspect to the texts at the Heavy Industries website is that once you select a text, it plays to the end and then automatically loops back to the beginning.
Like in Patchwork Girl, the linear nature of literature is being contradicted; instead these texts suggest a circular shape.
Once you have selected and viewed a text, the only way to exit it is to select the “back” command on the Internet browser’s toolbar, bringing you back to the main title page. This tends to suggest the opposite idea about a reader’s agency as Patchwork Girl: once you enter a text here, you are in its grasp—there is no way to manipulate it, skip forward or turn back. The only choices a reader has are to enter and exit. While still not utilizing all available technologies, this work does combine music, poetry and moving text to suggest some new directions for literature.