This post is also available in: Español (Spanish)
The default display for this series of “THOught-poEMS” is a looped linear sequence of stanzas displayed in randomized fonts hovering in random positions over randomized video clips, while a cluster of words flock towards the pointer’s location on the text. Jhave provides the reader with control over several variables: videos, font, position, and gives him the ability to toggle, play, or pause the presence of text, video, flocking words, and sound. Finally, the reader can choose to see the video singly or doubled with a mirror image of itself.
This all seems quite complex, but Jhave is wise to have a default that the reader can simply read, not needing to interact with the controls he places at their disposal, unobtrusively hidden away on the lower portion of the screen. This allows him to foreground the effect of layering his stanzas with videos of a variety of magnified liquids (with and without solids) and the sounds of water and air (in the variety of shapes: rain, flow, whistle, song, voice, wind, etc.). The alliterative, silky linguistic text of the poem itself explores how thought is grounded in the materiality of the body and brain, a biological machine referred to in Cyperpunk and computer culture as wetware.
My suggestion: have a tall glass of water, and then read the work in its default display, noting how you read the text as layered, then start exploring options and tweaking variables, asking yourself what each variable contributes to the experience of the poems.
