The Word the Play Attaching at a Wide Interval

performancespace out into the audience , and allowsfor some.moresubtle control over the balance between music and environmentalsoundscape.The environmentalsound containssuch elements as murmured voices, singing (verydistanced),traffic and cityatmosphere , altered soundsfrom nature, and other similar environmentalbuilding blocks. There is also a purely musical environmentof music that is algorithmicallygenerated, controlled by the interactivemotion sensorsbuilt into the set. Povall and Mitchellare cocreating the electronicscorefor the piece, each developingtheir own sound environmentswhich ultimatelycombine to become a singlesound score. The composersshare common data that was generated directlyby the performers through actual and virtual triggers.The real triggersare light-sensingdevices built into the set; the virtual triggersare createdwithin an Amiga computer, using a digitizedview of the stage.The dancersare able to change the music, soundscape,video imageryand stagelighting environmentby moving through programmabletriggers in the virtualspace of the computer screen. KathleenSmith’schoreographyis designed to take maximum advantage of the virtualspace. PALM-SIZE PLASTIC W E SERIES Joe Rosen,P.O. Box 225, Midwood Station,Brooklyn, NYl1230, USA. Email: Skeletor,Flyingspeck,and Electronic CompositionNo. 1are three works which comprisethe PalmSue Plastic Case series--a collectionof interactive computer-artprojectscompleted betweenJune and Septemberof 1992. The seriestitle is named for the 2-X-2-X- ‘%in palm-size plastic cases used to house the customdesigned hardware controllersthat accompanyeach of the three projects. All of the projects in the serieswere builtwith the intent of exploringalternativemethods of hardwareinput to software programs.Aprimarygoal in each was to incorporate a mind-andbody interplaybetween users and onscreencomputer objectsand images. casesis hand decoratedwith imagery that is representationalof the action the individualprojectperforms. Each of the collection’sthree plastic Internal hardwarewas configuredand assembledwith parts gathered together from mail-orderelectronicssupplycatalogs and Radio Shackretail stores. Software programs for each project were customcoded using a combmation of BASIC and C or Pascal programming languages.A brief descriptionof each project in the seriesfollows. skeletorallowsits user to interactively explorethe yin andyangbalance between life and death.Bypressinga button on top of the Skeeborhardware controller,the program’s user can repeatedlykill and bring back to life primitive on-screenrepresentations(i.e. simpleblack-and-whitegeometricdrawings and animations)of a skeleton-lie head. FZyingspeckis a computersimulation that gives the illusion of how a floating speck of dustmight appearif observed many times magnified under a microscopelens .The program’suser has the abilityto move the animateddustspeck around the computerscreenby spinning twoknobson theFlyingspeckhardware controller. TheEledwnic ComposationNo. 1gives usersan opportunityto create computerized interpretationsof Dutch modernist De Stijlpaintings.Upon startingthe pre gram,a stream of coloredrectangles begin a continuoussweepacross the computer screen.The color bias and sue of the individualrectanglescan be instantlychangedby adjustinga slider and thumbwheel on the “Electronic CompositionNo. 1”hardwarecontroller. THE WORD THE PLAY ATTACHING AT AWIDE INTERVAL Waterbird -Washoe Jim Rosenberg,RD #1,Box 236, Grindstone,PA 15442,U.S.A. E-mail: Combination from a fixed palpable set given in advance:the word is compos ite, an objectwith partsfrom a small number of choices:syllable, phoneme, letter ofthe alphabet,the word is an assemblyof sounds,of letters,a play of referencelesstokens into breathable sign object (q.v. Demda):the familiar narrow interval. In compositionby vocabularythe intervaliswider: a fixed set of words, composedin advance of the poem where the word is atomic, a moveablecatalysis object (signstuff d i s solved,a resonance token indivisible but with valence):the compositeis wider than the word,wordsare brought together as a kind of super-word, phrase as self-mobileword molecule, divisible and yet acting onlyas the clump. The units shiftup one notch in scale,phrase acting in syntax as the word does normally.Vocabulary, word-set: the piecesset out for play as beings are whole, alive, not to be dismembered .A play at a wider intervak the word not as supplement-ofbut as activatorof resonance: like the enzyme, it disappearshavingmerely activatedan energy reaction of presences one pos sesses already.The word is not a @t, is not an epiphany,only a bending of the resonancespacenearby. The real stuff of poetry is still human lives, as it always has been, notwithstandingthat the play occurs, screenwise,in a machine. That the super-word holds, can chord-achieveits precipitationof the oraclekey: the word is reencounteredas a member of the word setwith a chance present location:the word is new, new to this place, newer than...