Afeeld is a collection of playable intermedia and concrete art compositions that exist in the space between poetry and videogames.
One cannot do better in defining this collection of whimsically hip works by Liszkiewicz, a 2011 graduate of the M.F.A. in Media Arts Production from SUNY Buffalo (home to the Electronic Poetry Center). I will briefly comment on its different parts, each of which has its own look and feeld:
- “Alphabet Man” is a sequence of 12 images built from letters of the alphabet, featuring the adventures of the iconic Alphabet Man as he explores the materials of writing (letters) in order to create new structures, some of which could be considered words.
- “Feeldwork” presents the reader with 6 visual fields composed of letters, words, and characters, which respond to mouseovers and clicks to produce new words and meanings.
- “Count as One” is a fascinating set of 15 drawing/writing tools, which invite the reader to click on the screen multiple times to create a work of letter art which the reader can save. The most interesting aspect about this work is the insight it provides on the psychogeography of the screen, shaping our interaction as a kind of dérive. Do several (or all) the pieces and think about how the graphical information he provides on each piece shapes where you click on the screen.
- In “Concrete Games,” Liszkiewicz continues to transform our awareness of our screen interaction by using the visual structure and game dynamics of two videogames, Minesweeper and Asteroids, to guide us towards different types of artistic composition and play.
- The provocatively titled work “This is Visual Poetry” makes very little use of language and doesn’t look like what most people would define as poetry because it is the result of “glitches created and controlled with computer game software.” You be the judge…
- “Coda: I/O” presents the output of some of the above mentioned works, and are the result of an interaction and process rather than the process itself.
These works sit right in the middle of graphic art, poetics, and ludology and invite us to come and play.
Featured in ELO 2012 Media Art Show, & Avenues of Access
