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Dawn by Reiner Strasser and Alan Sondheim is a mutli-modal poem/story that employs text, images, audio, and movement to tell a story that is larger than the sum of its parts. Cumulatively these media merge into one work where before a work would at best be able to employ an image and text. Furthermore these media combine to form a meta-media, that is that of a video, as the work resists interaction and plays on a loop as a video would. A simple non-elit text could not work on such a varied spectrum simultaneously.
As new media become part of the canon of literature the use of more than one mode of representation will refine its uses, but this particular work shows an efficacious complimentary rather than supplementary use of what Hayles calls a major characteristic of elit; elit ‘tends to be multimodal.’
Dawn by Reiner Strasser and Alan Sondheim is a mutli-modal poem/story that employs text, images, audio, and movement to tell a story that is larger than the sum of its parts. Each aspect of the story is chosen specifically to elicit a certain response. The imagery is pastoral and tranquil containing no traces of the human world with the exception of one scene where a harrowing figure stands mid turn on the banks of a river. The audio is similar in quality to ‘white noise’ rather than a busy vocal track. It has a sense of natural rhythm that is enforced by the pictures that fade in and out.
The text is sparse and entirely un-flowery, employing repetition much as the audio does. The words alone could cause a sort of kinesthetic ‘coldness’ (the story is rather chilling) but the images combined with the audio serve to take the bitterness out of the story and instead replace it with a feint glimmer of hope and rebirth. Thus a multitude of media exactly formulate a mood for the reader.
Waggle Dance. Bees forage and scout for the most appropriate nectar for the hive and communicate the location of said treasures in a remarkably calculated way. Western honeybees perform one of two dances upon returning from a successful food foray. The two dances correlate to relative distance from the hive, with ‘waggle dance’ relating to far away food, and the ‘round dance’ (a shorter version of the waggle dance) means that food is closer by. The intensity and speed of the dance stand for the quality of the pollen and nectar; faster and more frenzied means more delectable meal stuffs.
Other indicators, such as how many turns the bee takes during the dance correlate to the direction of the food.
On top of the visible dance, bees communicate through an odor system. The returning scout carries the scent of the bounty she finds and shares it with her allies. They can then piece together the correct route using the scent of the meal as well as the directions gleaned from the dance.
In this way the waggle dance correlates to exactitude in its extreme use of differing movements that create a roadmap; ‘order out of [seeming] noise (the dance).’
Dot Matrix. A dot matrix printer is fed directions from a print server or computer and then composes an image (whether pictorial, graphical, or textual) line by line. This feat is accomplished by the print head laying dots down on a single line and then moving up to the next line similar to how an old school typewriter writes one line at a time. The dots then create the image which is perceived as a single whole but is really created from hundreds or possibly thousands of precisely laid dots.
Much like a crystal which creates a final form from intricate inner workings that layer upon one another, so too does a dot matrix printer create a refined image from a collection of plotted points aligned.
A close up
Exactitude is the preciseness and thoroughness of wording that also conveys the subtleties of thought and imagination. It is the quality that can paint an entire landscape in the mind through the use of particularly chosen words and wording. It is how a story becomes a reality to the reader by arbitrary symbols on a page (text).
Calvino emblemizes exactitude as a crystal with an’ invariance of internal forms’ and vagueness as flame that has a ‘constancy of external forms in spite of relentless internal agitation.’ The crystal accomplishes beauty through the precise alignment of elements while flame becomes beauty through ‘order out of noise.’
Precise Alignment
Order out of Noice
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