Still Standing

Still Standing

Like Camille Utterback's Text Rain and other interactive installations in its genre, Still Standing invites participants to use their bodies as reading instruments. In order to read the poetic content of Nadeau and Lewis's installation, that is, the viewer must remain perfectly still, her stillness causing the video-projected text to assemble as if attracted to a magnet. The structure of the work, along with its poetic content, might seem to suggest that reading requires cognitive rather than bodily engagement, that stillness is a necessary prerequisite. But the activity of standing still requires rigorous muscular control, such that Still Standing serves to remind us that reading is a fundamentally embodied activity.

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Author description: Still Standing was produced in collaboration with Jason E. Lewis. It is an interactive installation that invites participants to stay motionless and contemplate its poetic content, a poem titled "seeking sedation". Nowadays, designs are created to be decrypted and enjoyed at a glance, requiring no attention span. The piece evolved as a response to the "collapse of the interval"; a phenomenon of fast pace culture that rarely allows us a moment to stop and observe; a habit that weakens the fragile approach towards design with dynamic typography. The installation consists of an amalgam of characters projected on the wall as if they were resting on the floor. When a participant walks in front of the projection, the first reaction of the text is to act as if it was being kicked, pushed by the person's feet. When the participant stops for a short moment, the text is attracted towards his position and moves up, like water soaking his body. The participant can then enjoy a motionless moment and contemplate the textual content that becomes more and more legible. When the user is done and decides to start moving again, the text falls back to the floor and wait for a new interaction.

Instructions: The video documentation of Still Standing does not require any action from the user.

Previous publication: Still Standing premiered at inter-inactivity, DAC 2005, Copenhagen, DK.

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.