“The Dreamlife of Letters” by Brian Kim Stefans

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Open “The Dreamlife of Letters” by Brian Kim Stefans

This 11-minute silent film in Flash is a second-generation response to an essay by Rachel Blau DuPlessis about an essay on sexuality by erotic novelist Dodie Bellamy. His initial response to DuPlessis’ piece was to extract its words, place them in alphabetical order, and write a series of concrete poems with them (available here). Fortunately for us, he was unsatisfied with the result and created this graceful work of kinetic poetry that is as much a testament to his talent as to why Flash became such an important piece of authoring software.

Find a quiet, solitary space to lose yourself in this piece because to glance away for a moment can mean missing out on a gorgeous sequence in which signifiers dance.

Screen shot from “The Dreamlife of Letters” by Brian Kim Stefans. Orange background with black text. The letters “de” are placed in the middle of the screen with ends of a word around it. For example, on top of “de” there are the words “lite”, putting these words together would spell “delite”. Text (without including the letters d and e in front of them): “lite, ntist, lft, light, licious”.

Featured in The Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 1.