Suicide in an Airplane

Suicide in an Airplane is a flash-based algorithmic poem/painting in black and white. Poet Brian Kim Stefans, using text derived from pages of The New York Times, has created a work in which terms associated with a hijacking incident randomly appear on the screen. The words, which have the appearance of pencil doodling, break into separate letters and chaotically bounce around the screen, sometimes disintegrating on impact with other text, other times moving about in what seems to be a floating anagram. Accompanied by tone cluster piano chords in a composition by Leo Ornstein, the text seems to pulse with the music. At times, letters fly into objects constructed of other text and explode in sync with music that mimics the scream of jet engines.

(Source: Electronic Literature Exhibition catalogue description by Andrea Nelms)