Extinction Elegies:
a post-Fukushima interactive video-poem tht introduces mutations into the DNA of meaning.
Video-Words-Music-Code: glia.ca
Duration: 3 minutes variable loop.
First performed at E-Poetry 18.05.2011
ARTIST STATEMENT
Nuclear reactors are built to last for about 30 years.
After that, the spent fuel needs to be stored for thousands of years.
Zero-fault is unknown in all human endeavours.
Culture fissions.
Extinction Elegies is about the fragile instability of received meaning at both biological and social levels.
TECHNE
The display of Extinction Elegies is non-linear and changes over repeated readings.
For every time the entire poem is read (by the current reader), a mutant word(s) is introduced into every verse.
In other words, after reading all the verses once, the next loop all the verses will contain one word replaced; after two reading loops, two words are replaced, etc... When the number of loops or mutation-rate exceeds the number of words in a verse, individual letters are replaced with words and all the verses disintegrate into untenable bloated nonsense.
INTERACTIVITY (FLASH version notes obsolete circa 2021)
Click on video, then use the LEFT or RIGHT arrow keys on yr keyboard to get new verses
& the UP or DOWN arrow keys on yr keyboard to increase or decrease mutation.
Alternatively, after the first time all the verses are read, the mutation rate auto-increases
and buttons appear (at top and bottom of screen) which permit direct control of mutation rate.
CREDITS
For information on nuclear power, I am endebted to Rosalie Bertell and FaireWinds.
Soundtrack (produced using Ableton's Tension) available for free download on Bandcamp.
Most footage shot (March 2011) at La Societe des Plantes in Kamouraska using a Canon T2i with 50mm 1.8 lens.