looppool

First produced in 1998, Bas Böttcher’s looppool marks a specific generational moment in the history of online poetry and netart. Simple yet delightful, its palindrome title playfully describes the Sisyphean loop of wandering red billiard balls through a textual maze composed of scattered objects, thoughts, and actions. The reader can either passively watch as these spherical flaneurs wander along the pre-selected path or click to alter their course. Rather than convey the sense of an infinite possibility space, the paths of these poems are highly constrained. Like a Möbius strip, there is no outside to this looppool and regardless of the direction taken, the leisurely poem will wander forever along an unbroken loop.

(Source: editorial statement, Electronic Literature Collection, Volume Three)