Afternoon, A Story

ABOUT WORDSON WORKS Words on Works are short, infmal statements about new artworksin which art and technology coexist or merge. Some artists in this section use nontraditional language that echoes the work itselfand is expressiveo f their visions. Some emphasizewhat the work is about and/or what it means to them. Otherschoose to detail visual or technical aspectsof the work. In the spirit of Leonardo, the infmation thqr contain is what the artists themselves have chosen to say about their own work. GEO-SONIC Bill Buchen and Mary Buchen, Sonic Architecture,P.O. Box 20873, TompkinsSquare Station,New York, NY 10009,U.S.A. GEO-SONIC(1988) is an artworkfor computer that explores sound, language and geographics. It is a collage of sounds,speech and calligraphyfrom around the world that leads the participant in associative global dreams and journeys. Soundssampled by the artists are digitized and played back,juxtaposed with on-screen visual imagery (by use of a track-ball activated cursor). Visual elements include calligraphy from written language around the world and digitized historical and contemporary maps. GEMONZCequates geographic place with sound, languageand symbols, and exploresthe relationship of sounds and visual symbolswith people. It includes Aeolian pigeons from Bali (flutes attached to birds), the Brooklyn Bridge (before it was paved over), donkey caravans from Nepal, New York City fire sirens, Minnesota prairie tornado sirens, Thailand tribeswomencalling pigs, Indonesian frogs and Venice church bells. on three planes: the sonic plane (speech/sounds/music), the calligraphic plane (character as symbol) and the geographic plane (national or continental boundary as symbol). These planes exist as programming concepts and are not seen on the SectionEditor:Judy Malloy In the GEMONICsystem, data exists screen. The vertices where planes meet are interactive access points that can be entered or clicked on with a track ball to create interaction (a sound is heard or an image occurs on the screen). For example, a link can be made along a plane or from one plane to another-Tokyo Bells/Venice Bells; a link can be made through the globe/the transparent earth-Moscow USSR/Moscow Idaho; a link can be made through the atmosphere-rain in Bangkok/rain in Seattle (sonicplane); a link can be made through the oceans-sonar from the Atlantic Ocean to theJava Sea; a link can be made through a symbol along planesChinese symbol for lake (calligraphic plane)/sound of lake Titicaca (sonic plane)/outline of lake Michigan (geographic plane). POINT OF REFERENCE Madelon Hooykaasand Elsa Stansfield, Grote Bickersstraat 44 c, 1013Ks Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The video installation Point of Refmenu (1990) (Fig. 1) is a threechannel video, sixchannel audio installation.It consists of five triangular bookcases and 108videotape storage books. rocky island in a sea of information. The work has a continually shifting point of reference that has similarities to the processes of memory. On one monitor, written psychologicaltexts (on memory) flip to pages of early books on astronomy and the earth. A finger traces the position of our planet on a solar diagram by Copernicus (1543).Simultaneously,another channel shows composite imagesfrom a F i i . 1. Madelon Hooykaasand Elsa Stamfield, Puitd of l&jkrence, installation, Foundationfor VisualArts, Amsterdam , the NetherPoint o f Refmenuis visually like a dark lands,1990. PfJitdof R$ereneeconsistsof video channels,radio channels andbookcaseswithvideotape storagebooks. (Photo:white BW) camera that scans the book-linedwalls of a seventeenthcentury library. On the third video channel is a portrait of a man. His thoughts are projected into a triangular form, like a mind’s eye. These images are references to our earlier videotapes such as TheMuseum of M e m q videotape series (1985). The audio channels contain, among other things, low whisperingvoices that remain indecipherable from every angle around this work. Point of Refmce was shown at Foundation for Visual Arts, Amsterdam, in 1990;at Foundation Het Kijkhuis, the Hague, the Netherlands, in 1991; and at the European Media Festival, Osnabruck, Germany,in 1991.Asinglechannel version of Point of Refmce (13 min, stereo) premiered on the NetherlandsArt Channel and was a part of Le Mois de la Photographie B Montreal,Canada, in 1991. AFTERNOON, A STORY MichaelJoyce, Center for Narrative and Technology,JCC,Jackson, MI 49201, U.S.A. E...