Co-Author with Yvonne Lau
Standing in front of the long dripping curtain, watching the imaginary mountains drift on the space.
While I was learning “Recursive” program, the process of object repeat itself punches me. It reminds me about the mountain drawing of Chinese ink painting. From the long frame canvas, if you see it from a further distance, there are stacks of mountains, one mountain behind another mountain towards the higher direction, which creates an illusion of high-and-far perspective. See it from a closer distance, layers of large and small, thick and thin, lighter and darker strokes compose each mountain. Though there are different qualities of stroke, but the strokes are repeating themselves with different patterns. Composition of the painting is base on different ways of repetition.
A well-known Sung Dynasty poet and critic, Su Dong Bo, used to comment a Tang Dynasty poet and painter Wang Wei’s works, “there is painting in his poem, and there is poem in his painting.” By reading the poem, which stimulate our various senses, which create a synesthetic experience.
Han characters are pictograms, while character is deriving from picture, we read as well as visual. I picked a few familiar Classic Chinese Five word Mountain Water poems to be generated by the program. The poems have 2-2-1 or 2-1-2 groups of rhythm in every sentence, which enhance the musical sense. By using the “Recursive” program, the self-generated texts repeat themselves base on the rhythm slowly appear on the canvas. The familiar poem becomes unfamiliar. We are no longer reading the poem linearly from left to right, from top to bottom. Instead, there are patterns of texts spread on canvas, which create a visual poetry. The disruptive script conflicts our sense.
Different from Calligrammes, you may not see the distinctive meaning on it’s own, but you may witness the abstract spatial rhythm while the word floating and flying in front of your eyes. The computer program emphases the typographic and repetitive arrangement of script on space. Your brain cannot deny understanding of characters. The pattern and repetition of characters somewhat create a unique experience. The experience introduces a new way of reading the same Classic Chinese poem.
“Recursive” computer algorithm becomes a process that can be visualized through the repetition of the same character on the canvas. The repetition of the word “mountain” (山) induces a kind of perspective somehow we sense numerous “mountains” in front of us. The sprinkle of scripts introduce us different things we see along the way of visiting mountain.
What amazes me about the unpredictable “Recursive” function is every time the poem is generated by the same step, but the return appears on the canvas will never be the same. If I assume each poem is a mountain, then each time the program generate the same mountain, we would come across different ways of seeing, reading, sensing and thinking of the same mountain. The visual experience enlightens our imagination.
你問我詩的意義是什麼？我會說詩是幻變的，寫詩是詩人的表達，喜愛讀詩的人往往會把喜愛的詩重覆閱讀，詩的詩意是能讓讀者於文字找尋自己的想象。 看詩的過程是讀者對文字的理解於腦海產生互動的意象。
學習遞歸程式時，遞歸的過程，函數不斷引用自身。令我聯想到水墨山水畫那高遠的意象，是一重重山堆疊形成，而每座山又由大大少少不斷重覆的筆觸產生。 山水畫喜歡以長卷去襯托連綿高遠的山峰，遠看那使人神往無窮遠山景致，近看卻驚嘆水墨節奏的無盡變化。
那我在想“可能利用遞歸程式的衍生特性將山水詩變成山水畫嗎？”漢字是表意字，單看字形本身就使觀者有所聯想。 我嘗試運用古代五言山水詩， 透過電腦遞歸程式重覆的特性， 文字沒有循規蹈矩於線上行走，讀詩不再從左至右，由上而下。 文字在空間產生了視覺節奏。 經歴電腦程式的運算，同一首詩每一次都會產生不同的閱讀。 觀眾在白色的長形布幕前，詩一句句在空間似隨意但又非隨機的逐步呈現。
如果說紀堯姆.．阿波利奈爾的《图画诗》是以巨匠的描述構圖去表現詩的意象。 《簾卷詩》 那文字在空間的連綿流動，可會令觀眾感受字中有畫，畫中有詩？ 觀眾可曾感受到遞歸程式帶給你的詩意？
Recent Comments