This site has been created to describe an interactive supplement to my thesis installation (installed April 12-21, 2002). For a more detailed description of story, please read my thesis statement.

>> brief thesis description:
It is the aim of my thesis work to convey the struggle to preserve meaning as it travels through an imperfect system of communication, that of text and language. The piece will consist of an installation space with multiple adjacent video projections depicting fractured scenes from a narrative whole. This narrative tells a story of an author who is concerned with the fact that her words are subject to innumerable translations by her readers because of their varying frames of reference. She is disturbed that her thoughts are potentially misrepresented, that she is essentially losing control of the text to her readers. Itıs not enough that each individual word could port countless nuances depending on the reader, but each reader could decide differently on the order in which to read pages, or omit the reading of certain sections entirely. They could be swapping out sections of novels intermittently so that the very context of the words change. Words could be selected individually and reassembled to create a new text within a text. If all these possibilities exist for reading a novel, then where does that leave the author? The reader assumes the role of the author and the author is no more. So the character/author resolves to tighten control on her words, on language, and seeks to rid her work of any possible misrepresentation. The author delves deeper into the struggle and whittles more and more language away to get at the "root" of meaning; she believes she is purifying her method of communication (attempts to use words, fractions, symbols void of cultural baggage) so nothing could be lost in the process of encoding/decoding. Yet the more and more she "refines" her language, the semiotics of the world around her no longer make sense and at moments they seem to be just a bunch of garbled syllables or odd blips and beeps.

The narrative whole will consist of multiple interwoven fractures conveyed by various visual means: dramatic manifestation of the story (actor + action); the writing/typing of he authorıs story; random abstractions of the authorıs text (would include encryption, deterioration, and reassembling of words to create a story within the story); archival footage depicting supporting concepts (such as penmanship lessons, organizational processes, encryption techniques). In the center of the space will be a slightly larger than normal book with blank pages. The authorıs text will be projected down onto the pages. Each word will shift periodically into synonyms which would perpetually change the landscape of the text and slightly vary the interpretation of the reading. Text and image will be driven via Director.

>>interactive facet:
Because there are degenerative aspects to some of the projected text, I would need a way to reset the Director program(s) so that upon entry into the space, a visitor would be able to witness the origins of that degeneration. As long as there is a presence in the space, the program will not reset itself ­ it will only reset on the occasion of entry/departure.

I wish to avoid starting/restarting the Director projector application (because it always displays the Macromedia splash screen ­ is there a way to avoid this?), so instead the best way I can fathom to interact with a running Director projector application is through external text files. This basic technical scenario would conceivably go like this: person enters space, triggers sensor, sensor sends signal to STAMP microcontroller, STAMP writes simple text file (yes/no, true/false, 1/0), Director app continually checks this text file, if it sees a yes/true/1 it will then rewrite the text file to no/false/0 and reset itself.