Paper Archives | Cybertwigs

CYlent Blackout Poem: On Being and Nothingness

On Being and Nothingness

– A CYlent Blackout Poem –

She will apprehend transcendence.

It is a certain art form

an idea and

a negation of that idea;

the double property of human reality.

What I really am

is my transcendence.

I escape myself,

I can feel that I escape myself.

Transcendence changed

into infinity of excuses.

“On Being and Nothingness” CYlent I & II are a remediation of Jean-Paul Sarte’s Being and Nothingness, p. 98,99.

The term “CYlent” refers to a creative effect using lenticular motion images specifically designed to be viewed within virtual spaces by avatars (Cyber + Lenticular = CYlent).

Avatar (A Blackout Poem)

This blackout poem was created from pages 186-187 of Jostein Gaarder’s Sophie’s World.

I doubt very much that

the human body is a perfect machine.

Freedom does not happen in the body

it happens in the mind.

I decide to run,

to deny that there is a body.

Because even if I have the will

to rise above,

legs become weak

teeth fall out

the body ages.

I am deeply fascinated

by an illusion.

Human hands

muscles, nerves

veins and arteries

that can sometimes deceive

us into believing that

life is infinite.

Are you sitting comfortably?

You are going beforehand.

Analog

Because

time,

without her

did things to

my mind.

The Sky Was Surrounded

The sky

was surrounded by

a square. Life in a jar.

It is extraordinary.

But she was her own

secret hideout,

and these surroundings were,

between the two of us,

a tiny glimpse

into the magic.

Originally published at TheVirtualReview.

Fossils

What will truly matter?

When you are tired,

tired of being

(Stop to listen)

We had good things

to be. Good things

to say.

Essentials (A Blackout Poem)

There was only pencil, paper, time.

We made up our minds.. To learn.

Opposites Attract (A Blackout Poem)

Opposites Attract

Black. White. Black. White.

White. Black.

We’re high

on want. To want more

in an atmosphere of

things we never keep.

We’re so high

on the feeling of

desire.

The Poetics of Space

The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard. Looking for a favourite quote always takes hours because once you’re between the pages, it’s a spiralling walk back out.

(I heard myself close my eyes, then open them.)

All solitary dreamers know that they hear differently when they close their eyes. and when we want to think hard, to listen to the inner voice, or compose the tightly constructed key sentence that will express the very core of our thinking, is there one of us who hasn’t his thumb and forefinger pressed firmly against his lids? The ear knows then that the eyes are closed, it knows that it is responsible for the being who is thinking and writing. Relaxation will come when the eyes are reopened.

P.S. The first four words of this post take you to more.

Flicker

Some images flicker.

Like a never-ending disappearing act, they flicker, switching appearance over and over again, depending on how we perceive them.

Scott Kim’s True/False ambigram is one illusion that plays with the viewer’s perception. While there is a constant conflict between literal meanings, visually, neither can exist without the other, eternally embedded within the same structure.

True is embedded within false. False always contains True. Ambigram by Scott Kim

True is embedded within false. False always contains True. Metapictures thrive on such paradoxes.

If the illusion of these images depends on how we look at them, and the multistable shift of visual and verbal meanings occurs within our own minds, than maybe they are watching us too, watching us as we realize we are just as unstable and ever-shifting. And sometimes, we flicker.

The Metapicture

W.J.T. Mitchell explores how images provoke their own self-analysis, creating a dialogue within the image itself. He calls this unique type of image “metapictures.” Metapictures refer to their own making, they are self-reflective as they attempt to understand themselves.

“Pictures reveal and know themselves, where they reflect on the intersections of visuality, language, and similitude, where they engage in speculation on their nature and history” -W.J.T Mitchell

Self-reflexivity thrives through self-nesting recursive structures, commonly related to “russian dolls,” where one element is nested within another layer of its same form. In other cases, to be self-reflexive is to draw in the viewer to question the structure of the image. In effect, our experiences as viewers often become an extension of that structure. Metapictures elicit a double vision between language and visual experience; they interrogate the authority of language over image. In René Magritte’s The Treachery of Images, the relationship between the visual and the verbal is inseparable; without acknowledging the visible element of the picture the text itself also disappears with it, denying it the ability to negate the image in the first place. The beauty of a metapicture is its unfaltering curiosity and playfulness towards perception.

“If I had written ‘this is a pipe’ under my picture, I would have been lying!”

-Rene Magritte

Pact with Destiny (A Blackout Poem)

Pact with Destiny

-A Blackout Poem-

We evolve through, and with the changes of our lives. We discover an underlying potential, and extend our awareness of who we are, reaching beyond that fickle surface of our reality, as it appears in the present moment. That is the narrative we read, and write of ourselves.

I should have

the life I have,

stormy and turbulent,

but always reaching..

Positive Thinking

“The reader ‘puts on’ the poem as a mask. He becomes its ‘content’ by adjusting himself to use the poem as a means of perceiving the world” –Marshall McLuhan.