Texting Mobiles

On May 6, I will be creating an art installation at the Arcades Project, which is part of Ithaca's annual literary festival, Spring (W)rites. The Arcades Project is a one-day event for artists, vendors, and small presses, to be housed in the old Night and Day building on the Ithaca Commons. My contribution will be a "reading room" vignette filled with poetry mobiles, with a large raincloud of a mobile hanging overhead.

For some time now, I have been searching for an authentic way to incorporate text into my mobiles. The problem, in my mind, is that letters and words are such potent symbols, with such deep associations, that they inject an instant resonance when used in a piece of visual art. But if they are just sprinkled in randomly, then that resonance can be hollow, which ends up cheapening the symbols themselves. So, my aim, in using text, would be to preserve and enhance the words, much like a composer setting a poem to music.

Below is my first attempt at a poetry mobile, made from paper, wire, and stone, with the words written on the back of a printed image. It's supposed to hang low, just above the surface of a coffee table (like a coffee table book), so the words are mainly visible from above.

Initially, I wanted to find a short poem in the public domain, but then I thought: why not write something myself? That way, I can tailor the length and subject matter to the image. And to be honest, I don't want the poem to be so good on its own that it distracts from the sculpture....

So, this is the poem, which talks ironically about the promise of factual certainty offered by cameras and other image capturing devices.

Panacea

The photographic record
sends the eye's plain version
beyond the realm of doubt,
sailing over the boundary
like a skipping stone.
Information seals the cracks,
scatters misgivings, and
smothers regret.

The past is illuminated.
Onward ever, ever forward.

The mobile is in the form of a plant (a poet-tree!), with the words spread out over many leaves, so that to "read" the mobile you have to physically fit the puzzle pieces together. This is a new way, for me, of interacting with the viewer, and at the same time, it teases out a somatic connection to the words themselves. So not only can words be sounds and concepts and flat projections on a page or screen, but I claim they can also attain a physical, corporeal presence in the three-dimensional world.