new modes of reading [between the lines]
"It is not my mode of thought that has caused my misfortunes, but the mode of thought of others" -Marquis de Sade
BETWEEN THE LINES is a reading installation that explores the way we interpret pieces of broken text or narratives and how context influences the way we read them.
I was given to choose between three different bodies of text: songwriting (Lady Gaga's lyrics from both her albums), speech (Barack Obama) and narrative (collection of short stories by Jorge Luis Borges).
I picked Lady Gaga and decided to deconstruct the lyrics not only from their original context (music) but juxtaposing them against two different texts that also had different ways of reading: Sigmund Freud's essay on Female Sexuality and Valerie Solanas's SCUM manifesto (Society for Cutting Up Men).
The computer is set to randomly select the same idea within the three corpus by a 15 second interval through a predetermined XML schema. Displaying them in the same screen, creates a new reading/meaning experience for the spectator. The set up of the installation establishes a context about the nature of the three separate texts which is women and the many faceted interpretations and opinions that revolve around females, sexuality, addiction and capricious matters. The spectator penetrates a white chamber where individually enters into a large scaled projection of the broken narratives and forced to sit pretty much on their back to read- this way the reader succumbs to the different meanings that are created without any previous notion of the proceedings of the text that is being read.
The reader is allowed to have two phases of interpretation: one without no previous context (reader entering chamber) and one where the nature of the texts is revealed, right after each individual session.
The logic of the XML schema was determined to a preset series of conceptual values that I found within the bodies of text in sets of ideas (not sentences or specific words) and that where applied to all three texts:
idea name="ego"
idea name="sex"
idea name="demand"
idea name="need"
idea name="money"
idea name="gaga"
idea name="drama"
idea name="tease"
idea name="statement"
idea name="addiction"
What is interesting about this schema is that it can have a large number of interpretations because of the randomness of the display. Eventhough each piece of the broken text is placed in a different typeface, it is still open enough to have the spectator create new meaning without predisposition or setting a context. It would be really interesting to see how the text would behave against other types of written corpora that also talk about women in the same fashion as the chosen texts do (poetry, novela, newspaper articles, etc) and have some way of recording the various readings. Another approach of changing the behavior of the text could be putting it against three or more manuscripts by the same author or by the same genre.
What does the reader think about the writer when presented to a body of broken narratives?
What does the reader build into the broken narrative?
What would happen if the computer was to choose random ideas or different patterns of ideas? (instead of choosing the random same idea in the text, choosing three different, or two different or setting it to choose in a particular numerical pattern like music which is the nature of the Lady Gaga's text).
Comparative results of structures and readings could lead to the development of another piece that involved the multiple experiences and decoding of the text.
Instructor: Anne Burdick
Guest Lecturer: Ewan Branda
BETWEEN THE LINES is a reading installation that explores the way we interpret pieces of broken text or narratives and how context influences the way we read them.
I was given to choose between three different bodies of text: songwriting (Lady Gaga's lyrics from both her albums), speech (Barack Obama) and narrative (collection of short stories by Jorge Luis Borges).
I picked Lady Gaga and decided to deconstruct the lyrics not only from their original context (music) but juxtaposing them against two different texts that also had different ways of reading: Sigmund Freud's essay on Female Sexuality and Valerie Solanas's SCUM manifesto (Society for Cutting Up Men).
The computer is set to randomly select the same idea within the three corpus by a 15 second interval through a predetermined XML schema. Displaying them in the same screen, creates a new reading/meaning experience for the spectator. The set up of the installation establishes a context about the nature of the three separate texts which is women and the many faceted interpretations and opinions that revolve around females, sexuality, addiction and capricious matters. The spectator penetrates a white chamber where individually enters into a large scaled projection of the broken narratives and forced to sit pretty much on their back to read- this way the reader succumbs to the different meanings that are created without any previous notion of the proceedings of the text that is being read.
The reader is allowed to have two phases of interpretation: one without no previous context (reader entering chamber) and one where the nature of the texts is revealed, right after each individual session.
between the lines [text] from ana rifa! on Vimeo.
The logic of the XML schema was determined to a preset series of conceptual values that I found within the bodies of text in sets of ideas (not sentences or specific words) and that where applied to all three texts:
idea name="ego"
idea name="sex"
idea name="demand"
idea name="need"
idea name="money"
idea name="gaga"
idea name="drama"
idea name="tease"
idea name="statement"
idea name="addiction"
What is interesting about this schema is that it can have a large number of interpretations because of the randomness of the display. Eventhough each piece of the broken text is placed in a different typeface, it is still open enough to have the spectator create new meaning without predisposition or setting a context. It would be really interesting to see how the text would behave against other types of written corpora that also talk about women in the same fashion as the chosen texts do (poetry, novela, newspaper articles, etc) and have some way of recording the various readings. Another approach of changing the behavior of the text could be putting it against three or more manuscripts by the same author or by the same genre.
between the lines [installation] from ana rifa! on Vimeo.
What does the reader think about the writer when presented to a body of broken narratives?
What does the reader build into the broken narrative?
What would happen if the computer was to choose random ideas or different patterns of ideas? (instead of choosing the random same idea in the text, choosing three different, or two different or setting it to choose in a particular numerical pattern like music which is the nature of the Lady Gaga's text).
Comparative results of structures and readings could lead to the development of another piece that involved the multiple experiences and decoding of the text.
Instructor: Anne Burdick
{image 1}Guest Lecturer: Ewan Branda