Extinction Elegies: a post-Fukushima interactive video-poem tht introduces mutations into the DNA of meaning.
ARTIST STATEMENT: Nuclear reactors are built to last for about 30 years. After that, the spent fuel needs to be stored for thousands of years. Zero-fault is unknown in all human endeavours. Culture fissions. Extinction Elegies is about the fragile instability of received meaning at both biological and social levels.
(Source: Artist's description on the project site)
TECHNE: The display of Extinction Elegies is non-linear and changes over repeated readings. For every time the entire poem is read (by the current reader), a mutant word(s) is introduced into every verse. In other words, after reading all the verses once, the next loop all the verses will contain one word replaced; after two reading loops, two words are replaced, etc... When the number of loops or mutation-rate exceeds the number of words in a verse, individual letters are replaced with words and all the verses disintegrate into untenable bloated nonsense.
INTERACTIVITY: Click on video, then use the LEFT or RIGHT arrow keys on yr keyboard to get new verses & the UP or DOWN arrow keys on yr keyboard to increase or decrease mutation. Alternatively, after the first time all the verses are read, the mutation rate auto-increases and buttons appear (at top and bottom of screen) which permit direct control of mutation rate.
For information on nuclear power, I am indebted to Rosalie Bertell and FaireWinds. Soundtrack (produced using Ableton's Tension) available for free download on Bandcamp. Most footage shot (March 2011) at La Societe des Plantes in Kamouraska using a Canon T2i with 50mm 1.8 lens (Author's note)
Critical writing that references this work:
