INFINITE FRACTURE

This essays samples from the texts, images, and narration of the work of Charles Bernstein, Carolyn Burke, Lewis Caroll, Roger L. Conover, Nina Fonoroff, Mina Loy, Man Ray, Pascale, Ad Reinhardt, Robert Smithson, William Carlos Williams and others whose names I cannot find. Use the index to be directed to web sites which provide information about the people and works referenced. Writing the text was a game of leap frog; I began with a set of readings around and by Mina Loy. From there I made associations to other texts, images, and films. Quotations from all the sources created a map of relations in which I situated some of my own fragmentary writings and memories. Although the sources that I have used create a particular web of connections, the work is perhaps more involved in an elaboration of an approach to "reading" which is not media specific. The original piece was an image/text essay written for 81/2 by 11 paper. I used the opportunity afforded by a four week stay at Dartington College of Arts as Performance Writing Artist in Residence to develop it into a web piece. I approached the project as a translation and attempted to respond to the possibilities and restrictions the Web offers. The work unfolds in a multitude of browser windows, and although the project follows a particular path I hope that the reader/viewer will take advantage of the mobility of the windows to create her own connections and associations. By leaving all the windows on the desktop one can always go back to points of reference. I was also taken with the way a reader would have to travel back through the work in order to remove it from his or her desktop. This project was an experiment in trying to imagine how one might write in this "space." I hope it can contribute to a larger conversation. Writers who are interested in an approach to critical writing which involves an acknowledgment of the relations between form and content should be at the forefront of explorations of writing for new media. Perhaps the strict codification that limits writing in some print media can be avoided in this arena and all the possibilities for responding to ideas and works can be explored without having to take on a particular "voice" in order be considered "academic" or "poetic" or "theoretical" or "personal".