Rachid & Rosetta
direct link:
http://www.reluctant.ca/rosetta/
project info:
http://www.rashid-and-rosetta.org
http://www.rashid-and-rosetta.org/ros_andrew_e.html
I began with the idea of 'code cracking' which refers to a very instrumental idea of translation: that one word represents one idea or thing which is identical in another language. The piece focusses on translation as a process where it is the incommensurateness of meaning that is amplified and extrapolated. My contribution to this multi-artist web project will be a text and sound based work which uses a database of poems to generate and display content according to themes selected by the viewer. Themes like 'love', 'death', 'war', 'separation' 'the land', and so on will be selected and a fabric of text and sound will be assembled from the data base. Reload the page or click on another word and a new assemblage of words, phrases, meanings will appear. The piece explores the relationship of content to form in new media work. Is what we normally call 'content' (on the web) or 'theme' in literature really the meaning of the work? Do new media and the world of the electronic virtual have a place for 'meaning'? Or does they turn meaning into gibberish in order to fill up space? This piece will explore where meaning can coalesce in the space between language and the simple software-generated structures of the web.
