Radio Salience

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Description (in English): 

"Radio Salience" is an image-text-sound instrument with certain game-like features.  The player (user? listener? reader?) watches an array of four image panels, showing component slices from various larger images.  When any two slices match, slot-machine style, a click will initiate a poetastic moment.  There is no score, so no way to win, lose, or escape.  Radio is all.

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"I have known that which the Greeks do not know -- uncertainty" (Borges).

Just another entry in the Babylon Lottery, this project explores indeterminacy, accident, and resonance, taking as its muse the breathless voice of the airwaves, or radio.   What did those Greeks know, anyway?

Some may ask, are we yet reading?  Well, somebody had to, but in most cases they weren't human. No sirens were harmed, and no one is like to drown.  Also, this is once again not a game. Though what you will see is certainly playable, there is no real contest, no score, no leveling.  Let's play Twister, let's play Risk.

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The screen is divided into four panes, each containing a changing image: actually, a pair of images stacked atop one another, with the upper constantly fading, up or down. Though the colors of these images have been distorted, you'll notice some of them fit together, either as slices of a single picture, or elements of a series.  When two or more of the four panes belong to a single set, click the mouse.  You'll see the full image, accompanied by a gloss or reading. However, if you click while none of the four images match, play is over.  (You can always restart.)  You can only match on an image while it is at least 50% opaque, so be careful about clicking when one of the panes seems ambiguous. If you don't want to listen all the way through a reading, just click.

(Source: Author's description)

Technical notes: 

Multimedia, interactive instrument, implemented in Adobe Flash (ActionScript 2).

Graphics were produced with Poser 7 and Vue 6 Esprit, many using assets licensed from Digital Art Zone, Renderosity, and other invaluable sources.  Ambient sound was fabricated from various materials, including some lovely samples from Sounddogs.  Digital vocals were done in NextUp's TextAloud, using voices from AT&T,  NeoSpeech and RealSpeak.

Screen shots: 
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Record posted by: 
Stuart Moulthrop