Too Much Cold Medicine or It's Raining Text!

I decided that I really wanted to post some ideas to you guys, particularly because I am out sick (like a dog) and so I won't get to participate in Caroline's project and bat around thoughts, you know, corporeally.

I love playing with words. I love mad-libs. I love magnetic poetry. I've often wondered about how to make a piece of work that involves some of the exciting elements of those games. The joy and accessibility of the play, the productivity of the constraint, the leveling of the playing field, the interactivity, the group dynamic. So, in web-surfing text art et al, I came across this piece by Camille Utterback called Text Rain and I think it is fun and worth discussing, and gets at some of these questions. To encourage you to link on through to the piece and then open the quicktime documentation (I highly recommend the larger file, the small file is all pixel-y) the piece is an interactive projection field where falling letters respond to bodies, umbrellas, and other objects placed in their paths and bounce around the objects. You can see in the documentation the way that the audience engages in the piece, playing with the rules of the letters, trying to contain or disperse it, trying to make sense or destroy sense. There is a poem that the letters are culled from, about bodies and text so the website says, and it begs the question of where the author is. Is it the author of the poem? Or in this case, does it have something to do with bodies in particular? What about when there is no poem, just letters? What would the interceding bodies be then? What about absent bodies (like mine? :)

Ok, and also, speaking of mad-libs and art, can we maybe do this mad-libs-ifesto as a class? Cause I think it is AMAZING!

Don't get this cold. It BLOWS.

Also, what about writing in all caps? Why is that so what it is? Ok, too much cold medicine, obviously. Do not compare this post to the last one! It is crazy. Have a good class, guys, and I'lll be back with you next week. More bloggers please!