Page_maze

The first work of the project When a Page Becomes a Maze shows one of the pages from the book 'The Language of New Media', by Lev Manovich, through which several small red circles move. Each circle is accompanied by a sound in loop whose duration corresponds to the duration of the movements of each circle (each circle has its own animation length). As the circles keep coming, new loops of sound start to be executed, and the result becomes more complex. This result is never constant because, as the loops have different durations, there is no possibility to occur any loop which could be recognizable by the user.

Visually, the work tries to reveal the pattern formed by the empty spaces among the words of a text page; this pattern is rather labyrinthic and similar to urban maps. The work with sound intends to reinforce this labyrinthic experience, when it presents sounds that in the beginning have a recognizable structure, but, due to the close distance between the melodic lines, become less and less recognizable separately as the work progresses.

In the second part of the work, there is a gradual disappearance of the page words, and the entry of new circles, accompanied by new sounds. As the words disappear, the circles routes become more visible, and the sounds are gradually changed. At last, there is the option of showing the first page again, without any sound, waiting for the users intervention, so that the work restarts.

Our goal is, from this work, to develop other animations, each of which would be based on one page of a different book. Among other possible books that will be used, there are Fices (Fictions), by Jorge Luis Borges, and pages of unconventional books, like menus and handbooks. As the index of the work, we have chosen a passage from Through the Looking-Glass, by Lewis Carroll, when the garden in which Alice walks becomes a maze: she sees a hill, walks toward it, but never manages to reach it, returning every time to the starting point.