Axolotls and Perfume Bottles: Forms of Translation, Experimental Texts Rewritten As Migrations To Digital Media
This presentation, "Axolotls and Perfume Bottles", was delivered by Strickland and Luesebrink as part of the ELO 2017 panel, "Forms of Translation: Experimental Texts Rewritten As Migrations To Digital Media". Its ELMCIP record includes a PowerPoint file with extensive embedded movies, and the script for the presentation, both exactly as delivered.
The first portion discusses Regina Celia Pinto's work Viewing Axolotls, her transformation of Julio Cortazar's 1952 story "Axolotl", which she considers together with Gustavo Bernardo's book on Vilem Flusser.
The second portion discusses the transformations and migrations of the authors' work To Be Here As Stone Is from print to multiple digital incarnations. The perfume bottle referenced is associated with this poem in the print version of Strickland's True North.
As the script says, "If Viewing Axolotls outlines a path to the interior humid space of aquarium tank or nightmare brain--always crossing over into confined space--To Be Here As Stone Is traces a path that breaks out from the interior of a perfume bottle to a cosmic location."
[Archivist's note: the content presented at the conference was in PPTM (macro-enabled MS PowerPoint file) and DOC (MS Word) formats. To prevent the spread of malicious macros, neither of these formats may be uploaded to ELMCIP. Following the "translation" theme of this panel, I have therefore saved the PPTM as a PPT file, and the DOC as PDF, before uploading the attachments. I have checked that both still read/play as they were presented; if you prefer, you may download and re-convert them. As the slide presentation (56 MB) contains multiple video segments demonstrating the two works, please allow sufficient time for all elements to fully load. On certain slides the presence of video segments is indicated by a change to the cursor (and mentioned in the script).]
"If Viewing Axolotls outlines a path to the interior humid space of aquarium tank or nightmare brain--always crossing over into confined space--To Be Here As Stone Is traces a path that breaks out from the interior of a perfume bottle to a cosmic location."
"Texts are transformed when migrated from print to digital form. Beyond multimedia, interactivity, or possible insertions by a reader, the very structure of a digital work is itself a translation, an architectural design shaped by the technology of its era. A migrated work is also transformed by contextualization within an idiosyncratic website."
