activeReader

"activeReader turned out to be a joke on myself. I started the project shortly after reading Bruce Andrew's CyberText Yearbook (2003) article, "Electronic Poetics." At the time, I was frustrated by his suggestion that the role of the Digital Poet is to make interfaces in which the reader becomes the writer. I didn't want to be a programmer, I wanted to write poems. I thought, 'Well, I'll show them' and set about creating such an environment, sure that no one would want to engage with it more than once.

If the readers were going to write, they would need words. Since I didn't want any undue influence on their texts, I randomly picked words from Andrew's essay, over 250 of them. I chose a quote that would serve well as an epigraph. I made some reading and writing animations. And then I programmed it all to be interactive.

I expected my readers to get bored with it, for the piece to fail. I had not invented anything new (the magnets on my fridge proved that), I had not highlighted any particular aspect of the human condition, I didn't have any content. I was sure that activeReader was a one-liner.

Now, I think I was wrong. A single generation of new words on the screen may not hold attention for long, but the opportunity to begin again with a blank slate and new juxtapositions constantly beckons. The challenge is endless; activeReader never fails to amuse me.

Bio

Elizabeth Knipe is a digital writer and experimental video artist who has a tendency to convert simple ideas into interactive electronic installations and web-based media. Though she has a non-poetic day job, she finds that a certain poetic justice is involved. Elizabeth has screened her videos nationwide and read at E-Poetry events in London, New York, West Virginia, and Buffalo. She received her MFA from the Department of Media Study at the University at Buffalo. See a selection of her work online at dreamdilation.com" -- from The Iowa Review Web, Volume 9, Number 2, July 2008