WORDSTUFFS : The CITY and the BODY (1998)

The work concerns the interface between the city and the body. It dislocates the concepts of a definable and locatable cityscape, and of a unified, gendered subject. It creates new assemblies and configurations of the body and the city. It thereby reconfigures them into a 'hyperscape', a postmodern site which is heterogeneous, global, and constantly changing, and which opens up new political and subjective spaces.

The piece was commissioned by the Australian Film Commission, for the STUFFART site, and was available there from July 98-June 99. One of the specifications was that the piece had to occupy less than 1.4Mb, hence the title of the site. This also necessitated mainly using MIDI-sounds, and a few small sound files, and including hypertexts running directly in the browser. The piece is now available on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation site.

The sound components of this piece are of two types. On the title page there is a midi-file, of reconstructed drum n’ bass music, with a controller permitting choice of position in the file to play, and dynamic. This and all the other midi-files in the piece are designed as palindromes (playing forwards and backwards). The javascript link ‘SOUND BEATS’ from the title page opens either a random selection of three midi-files, chosen afresh each time the link is activated from a larger group of files; or a visual ‘cityscape’ on which an image of a body is superimposed. When the midi-files are available, the participant may play with up to four at once, including that from the title page. When the screener drives the mouse over the ‘cityscape’ image, a series of words appear and city and body soundscapes play. The link labeled ‘Word Wired Web’ leads to a moving network of words, with which the user can interact, and there are ‘jerk’ and ‘rattle’ sounds associated with certain movements of this Java applet. Throughout the work, several sound fields occasionally self-activate if not activated by the user.

Artist

• Dean, Roger T

Works by Same Artist

• Walking the Faultlines (2000)