Digital Design Installation Project: Articulation of Rainer Maria Rilke’s “ Duino Elegy #1”.
Documenting the Process.
Last week our Digital Design class presented digital installation pieces. We produced installations, which involved digital media. My digital component was printed text and a recording of my reading the poem; whereas the physical installation element was fabric.
Before I began working on this project I had a vivid image of a screen with printed text soaking up diluted India ink, eating the text as it made its way upwards. After many unsuccessful attempts to defy gravity, the concept needed to be changed (it was impossible to get the inky water to rise up all the way to the top). As a result, it was suggested to me that the piece should be about the process of making it and not the final result. So I decided to really work with changing the fabric I was working with (tarleton) from a crispy white surface to something entirely different. The process involved many stages, some of which incorporated using resists and chemicals utilized in the print-making studio, some of which were about giving screens a bath in the nearest puddle. Even though the finalized version of the installation was arranged in a particular way as a result of the aesthetic considerations and decisions, it was about the transformation of fabric from one state to another. And fun it was!
Metaphorically and symbolically, the material underwent another transition in the process: the surface accepted text, Rilke’s poetry. For me, the implications of retrieving text from the virtual world, printing it up thus turning it into its physical dimension, and finally uniting it with a transformed surface are endless. The process raised questions: what are physical and virtual realities? What is reality? At which point does text shed its linguistic function to participate in the ritual of visualization? The entire process of working with all these materials and working with text is an enigmatic and mystical endeavor; mystical and enigmatic like the beauty of Rilke’s words.
I do not wish to discuss the poetic and metaphoric implications the piece may evoke but rather present all the bits and pieces here. Also included is the artist statement I handed in with the project. Because there are many layers of meaning to this project, the statement speaks only of some of them.
Here is the text used in the project. It is from the First Elegy of the famous Duino Elegies.
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i hope i was able to capture the angelic voices speaking through his poem…
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Rainer Maria Rilke: Duino Elegies
First Elegy.
Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels' hierarchies?
and even if one of them pressed me suddenly against his heart:
I would be consumed in that overwhelming existence.
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we are still just able to endure,
and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.
Every angel is terrifying.
And so I hold myself back and swallow the call-note of my dark sobbing.
Ah, whom can we ever turn to in our need?
Not angels, not humans, and already the knowing animals are aware
that we are not really at home in our interpreted world.
Perhaps there remains for us some tree on a hillside, which every day we can take into our vision;
there remains for us yesterday's street and the loyalty of a habit so much at ease
when it stayed with us that it moved in and never left.
Oh and night: there is night, when a wind full of infinite space gnaws at our faces.
Whom would it not remain for--that longed-after, mildly disillusioning presence,
which the solitary heart so painfully meets.
Is it any less difficult for lovers?
But they keep on using each other to hide their own fate.
Don't you know yet?
Fling the emptiness out of your arms into the spaces we breathe;
perhaps the birds will feel the expanded air with more passionate flying.
(this text is from here: http://www.mat.upm.es/~jcm/rilke-terror.html)
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