Fun with Flash

I’ve been learning Flash over the Winter Break and have learned enough to animate “the big box block” like I want it. Instead of trying to duplicate my animation from ppt, I used a more reactive approach, focusing on the music and on the composition that was emerging (both in terms of shape of the poem and meaning).

I found that I was able to use animation to mimic, emphasize, and contradict the soundtrack. First, I could make animations that corresponded in some direct way to the meaning of the sound. Second, the animation could enact representationally the meaning of the words. And third, the animation could be used to draw attention to the sounds by happening both in synch with the sounds or not (I found that the sounds stood out more sometimes when there was no animation happening concurrently).

The goal of this experiment is to start with the “traditional poem” (whatever that might mean: left justified margins, jagged right margins, stanzas, use of fragment, etc) and to “undo” or deconstruct that construct using the sound and animation. The ultimate goal of this project is the same as our Wakow problem—how to integrate sound, text and image. Although this particular manifestation lacks images, it attempts to make an image of the poem itself using animation. The words become the ‘actors’ in the movie, calling attention to the materiality of language and the relation of text to sound.

Each poem will have the following animation scheme:

1. Big box block: disappearing letters/words along with occasional movement
2. Modest, OK? : slow dissolve in concert with reading of poem
3. Dig down deeper: Christmas tree lighting effect with various words appearing at certain times. Start by having Doby Bowl sign flickering, as if it were a neon light going out. Then have the rest
   of the poem flicker out, with certain combinations soon appearing after that. One combinations could be letters spelling out “Tulsa spelled backwards is a slut.” Need to give rest of WaKOW some homework to create various combinations of the poem in the vein of Jen Bervin’s Nets.
4. Death/metal: words rearrange in motion. This should be the last poem because of the way it and the soundtrack ends.