Sound Tracks to Reality

sothemobhrset didaaik haphazardnosbener’abraidescape ambivalenceail will counterbrace the tooledfrsrhseductiongauge umbilicalsamenessnetwork droningintomilitantcerlainty the clothed glassheart it indestructible Fig. 3.Jim Rosenberg, screendump fromIntergmrn 9, poetry (forMacintosh computers), 1994. The Ztzfmptam are densepoemswithan altered linguisticstructure that are built up i n layers with bit-mappedgraphics. recent electronicworks include DiagramsSeries4,availableonline on the Well, and Intergrams 1-1 1 (Fig.3), forthcomingfrom Eastgate Systems. This note describes his feeling toward his “semanticmethod,”developed over manyyears and now carried out entirely on a computer. THINK ABOUT THEPEOPLE NOW/TI-€INKABOUT THE MEDIA Now Paul Sermon, Department of Fine Art, University of Reading, Reading, Berkshire, United Kingdom. E-mail: The Monday after the Remembrance Day Ceremonyin Whitehall, London (Sunday,11November 1990),I was faced by the media announcement of a man’s “protest”which took him into Whitehallwhere he covered himself in petrol and set light to himself while running toward the Cenotaph: This was the hornfyingmoment when a young demonstrator turned himself into a human torch in London’s Whitehallyesterday. He doused himself in petrol and set himself ablaze as the Queen led the Remembrance Day Ceremony at the nearby Cenotaph. Shocked crowds saw a sheet of flame flare from the barefoot protester. He was seriouslyill in hospital last night. -Daily Mirror 12November 1990 They had come to remember the victims of war. But as they stood in silence the horror of human pain shattered their peace. Women screamed, wept and collapsed in terror as a young man engulfed in 10 ft of flames ran through the crowd and jumped a barrier - running toward the Queen and other royals . He had doused his head and body in petrol and with a flick of a cigarette lighter turned himself into a fireball shouting:Think about people now. -Today 12November 1990 At the time I had no idea that this event could filter itsway into my work. My initial interest was with the extreme media blackout which followed.Only the tabloid newspapers covered the event,with the exception of small mentions in the more formal papers. Nothing was reported the followingday in the newspapers or on the television. Soon after the event, I started developing hypermedia.The hypermedia remembrance ThinkAbout ThePeople Now [11 is essentially about being in the right or wrong place at the right or wrong time. The user starts at WestminsterTube Station.B y moving thejoystick in desired directions, the user can travel around Whitehall through animated scenesof video footage. Pathsoften cross over, allowing the user to swap paths and enter other referential analogiesto this dimension of reality. Diagrammaticinformation and newspaper coverageare alwaysat hand. The user may never discover the event that takes place at 11A.M. during the two-minute silence.However, he or she may hear an ambulance go past, or hear someone else mutter horrified words. Through decision-makingprocesses, users end up in any one of 64 positions around Whitehall-including the choice of settingfire to themselves. The user’s position within the Whitehall environment during the incidentrepresents conflictingperceptions of the event. The hypermedia environment,projected onto a screen by a video projector , forms one half of this installation. On the reverse side of this screen, another video projection is being made. A text-scrollingprogram picks up text messages delivered to my electronic mailbox and sends them to the video projector. The telematic aspect of this installation allows network users from around the world to voice their opinions about the incident that took place and address the ambiguity of the whole event. This side of the screen/installation is titled ThinkAbout TheMedia Now. Note 1. Hardware:Hyper-MediaProgramme for the Amiga 2000, ElectronicMail Terminal; Software: Deluxe Paint111,Video 111. SOUND TRACKS TO REALITY Walter Siegfried,Faustlestr.8, D-8000 Munich 2, Germany. The Max Mueller Bhavan in Bombay, India, organized a congress on Spacein 1991.I was invited to participate and proposed a guided tour through the congress area within the National Center of PerformingArts (NCPA). around in the NCPA area, I allowed myself to be guided by the numerous sounds around me. They provided me with an acousticaltopographyof the area. I collected them during the whole time span. Out of this collection,I produced a tape with various acoustical...