CAVE writing text editor

“The Defacement of Desire” by Braxton Soderman and Roxanne Carter

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Screen shot from “The Defacement of Desire” by Braxton Soderman and Roxanne Carter. An empty room with pictures of women as walls and, also, as the floor. In the middle there is a rectangle with a distorted text that is not very readable.
Open “The Defacement of Desire” by Braxton Soderman and Roxanne Carter

This collaborative poem is designed as an installation at Brown University’s CAVE, a cube-shaped room equipped with projection in all six directions, surround sound, and multiple input devices, such as 3D goggles, gloves, and head tracking. Soderman and Carter use this last input significantly in this work as described in their artists’ statement:

Surrounded by four giant close-ups of cinematic starlets gazing down upon you, there is no choice but to look (or look away). Using the built-in “headtracking” feature of the Cave, a portion of the starlet’s face in your line of sight fades away, thus interrupting the (masculine) desire to possess through the gaze: you cannot help but see through what you desire to possess.

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“Snowblind” by Braxton Soderman and Roxanne Carter

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Screen capture from “Snowblind” by Braxton Soderman and Roxanne Carter. Black backround with white computer symbols like money symbols, numbers,numeric symbol, percentage asterisks, etc. Text “Nothing left to abstract/ an aggregate”.
Open “Snowblind” by Braxton Soderman and Roxanne Carter

This collaborative poem was written for the CAVE at Brown University and is a relatively simple yet compelling argument for this kind of writing, initiated by Robert Coover in 2002. Other CAVE works reviewed in this blog have published video documentation of a performance, which is a far cry from the real deal, but considering it takes time and money to travel to Brown University to use their CAVE (and a prohibitive amount of money to build one), this will do. Soderman and Carter have gone a step further by providing access to the Cave Text Editor and the source files for readers to explore the work and run a preview of it.

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“Screen” by Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Josh Carroll, Robert Coover, et. al.

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screen
Open “Screen” by Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Josh Carroll, Robert Coover, et. al.

Okay, I admit it: I want a CAVE. And after watching this video, you will too. But unless you have a lot of money (about a million dollars) to build one and specialized personnel to operate it, or have access to one of the couple dozen ones in existence around the world, you may have to satisfy yourself with a video of a performance of “Screen.”

The poetic texts displayed place us in a room where a couple’s relationship is on the verge of collapse. The language flies at the reader at an accelerating rate until the very structure of the lines of text can no longer cohere and falls into an unreadable mess of light— the visual “ink” for writing in the CAVE. Talk about an immersive reading and playing experience!

Let the fund-raising begin!

Featured in Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 2.

 

“Up Against the Screen Mother Fuckers” by Justin Katko

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Screen capture from "Up Against the Screen Mother Fuckers" by Justin Katko. Tunnel-like image with a a color sequence that resembles that of a rainbow as the image delves deeper into the tunnel.
Open “Up Against the Screen Mother Fuckers” by Justin Katko

Designed to be presented in The Cave at Brown University (an immersive virtual reality space) this manifesto poem is presented here in a greatly diminished form: a small Quicktime window without a fullscreen option. As such, rather than being a full on assault on the senses and aesthetic sensibilities, it seem like an harmless little annoyance, which is a pity, because it is a fascinating work.

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