Synesthetech

A new video piece of mine inspired by Duchamp’s Anémic Cinéma, meant as both an ode to and a parody of the original. It contains two digitally generated spirals, a drone made by slowing down a field recording of a ventilation system, and nine nonsense poems which were generated by passing text from Anemic Cinema’s Wikipedia page, IMDB entry, and YouTube comments through the Dada Poetry Generator. The text is read by the text-to-speech voice “Alex” in Mac OSX.

Poem texts:

POEM 1

two read as feature and
two alternation a and whimsical
by alternation a is as
alternation the spiral disk. be
It’s continue alternation be feature
spinning design, read rhymes and

POEM 2

Cinéma Dadaist, experimental Duchamp alternated
Duchamp puns Sélavy. made Duchamp
Duchamp. — French. Duchamp name
Anemic Anémic by — puns
whirling Rotoreliefs — with puns
a The Duchamp — French.

POEM 3

appeared sets a 1935 display
of when spinning a some
make phonograph up was (Animated
flat cardboard disks printer run
spun when set inventors’ display
were designs when the The

POEM 4

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POEM 5

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POEM 6

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POEM 7

should much of focusing It
especially several music Show and
reading in is Let’s Hootie
ago) Show mute repetitive too
and may desperate on do
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POEM 8

sound as Hide pianos… as
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POEM 9

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Might be old news but it’s new to me! Thanks, Jim.

So I stumbled across this Hall and Oates album cover the other day online, one I’d never seen before. And once I got over the initial shock value of the juxtaposition of Hall’s open shirt and the 1976-era product placement of a box of Ritz crackers (and that curious bottle of wine next to it), I noticed the even curious-er device on the table in front of Oates:

Is it an early all-in-one computer? That’s what I thought at first, since the context of the scene seems to be a songwriting session (what with Hall presumably writing out lyrics at the other end of the table). But then I noticed the antenna and two giant knobs on the side and thought maybe it was an early portable TV/radio combination device. Anyone out there have any clue what this thing really is? Whatever it is, I’d sure like to see the front of it…and find out if it had any influence on the chord structure of “Rich Girl.”