Diagrams
Series 6 is the latest in a life-long series of
Diagram Poems, the earliest experimentations for which began in
1968. Although I have been making interactive works since 1988, Diagrams Series 6 is actually
my first work written in a fully interactive way: from beginning to
end in one interactive environment where the word object is playable
at every stage of its development, from temporary unassembled scrap
all the way to its final location in a finished piece. This
environment is part of an ongoing project which I call Hypertext in
the Open Air, and is implemented in a programming system called
Squeak. It allows the works to be played on all popular computing
platforms, including Macintosh, BSD, Linux, and Windows.
Diagrams Series 6 strives
to return to the intense diagrammicity of some of my earlier
non-interactive works, Diagrams Series 4 and Diagrams
Series 3. The diagram notation acts as a kind of
external syntax, allowing word objects to carry interactivity deep
inside the sentence. Interactivity, in turn, allows for
juxtapositions to be opened so that the layers in a cluster can
occupy the same space and yet be legible. A problem we all have: a
multiplicity, we must all occupy the same world space, do no harm,
and yet be free. Carrying multiplicity inside the thought, inside
the sentence: the thought as world. At a time when our world is in
deep painful need of more multiplicity of thought.
