SS Kinetic Poetry
I wish we were still in the era of Flash because I really mourn the loss of all those pieces of digital art. It feels as devastating as losing entire libraries worth of knowledge, a modern Alexandria. The reading itself was fine and while I felt I cerebrally understood what the text meant, Lotus Blossom really made it clear to me how technology and the medium affected the quality and meaning of a text. The inclusion of sound, rhythm, multilinguist, and flashing light captured my attention in a way videos have never done so before. If I blinked or paused the video, or looked away, I would have missed a crucial part of the story. The text flashed in time with the music and repetitive phrases kept me on edge. I also found it very interesting that while Starswars one letter at a time and Lotus Blossom had similarities (white background, text in time with music), Lotus Blossom was easier to understand and read because of the animation she employs and the repetition she uses. The lack of color and other visual amenities also highlighted the words we are meant to focus on.
My bring-it-to-the-table this week is a video that textualizes lines from a movie, KickAss, into an animated work. I had trouble first deciding if this was even a valid example but chose it ultimately because of the similar techniques used by Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries. Similarly, they use timed sequences of language that correlate to audio and employ artistic methods to display the wording. These techniques are common, especially in the world of music as musicians often release two types of music videos: one they star in, either dancing or following an artistic, theatrical role, and a music video for lyrics, where the words are presented in interesting ways with copious amounts of animation.
It is disappointing that all the work on Flash was lost, I can't imagine being a user of Flash and losing your work. I'm glad you also mentioned how much the medium and use of technology can impact the text and how it is conveyed. With a lot of works we have seen, I can not imagine them in any other way, like a concrete plain text. It is great that there are so many more ways to express something and present your work. It makes me wonder what will be developed in the future that we don't know of yet.
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