Ether-1

The flash animations reside inside a radio style interface. While this interface may appear to be a rather retrograde step, limiting the visitor?s options for participation, it was chosen because I wanted to convey the message, from the outset, that there is nothing to do here. I wanted to actively discourage the desire to roll all over the screen, clicking incessantly on every object in order to "see what happens." I want the viewer to be patient, to just watch and listen, even if only for a short period of time. I believe that one of the negative aspects of interactive art is that it encourages the desire to explore the interface at the expense of the content.

The animations are arranged on the radio dial in the order of their file size (from top to bottom), and their CPU overhead (from left to right).

content

The pieces range from simple evolving and random noise patterns, to self generating poetry based on the work of the Italian and Russian Futurists, such as F.T. Marinetti , Mayakovsky and Khlebnikov, based around the theme of "radio" (Cf. Telegraphic Language). They are based on scripts, which generate random, evolving and permutational sequences and structures, and have no determined duration. In most cases I would think of them as musical compositions with visuals, rather than animations with sound. However, this is not to say that the sound is more important than the graphics. I like to think of ether-1 as an online album of experimental music.

the project

This is an ongoing project, some pieces will be modified over time, some will disappear, and others will take their place. Ether-2 is planned to consist of contributions from other artists (a kind of compilation album). And Ether-3 will perhaps be a "remix? project where different artists tweak, recode and otherwise mess with the work of other artists.