My current body of work is about the way that language can help or hinder communication and the expression of new ideas. When people decide to use only the terms, structures and meanings they have inherited from the past, language can limit the ideas that can be thought of or described. In a medium like poetry, language is constantly being reinvented and can be an imaginative, elastic tool to create and carry new ways of thinking. I have designed a lightweight, durable, self-contained structure that I call a Poetry Machine. It is a foam and resin booth that has optical sensors embedded in the walls. Moving closer to a sensor will elicit a spoken word. A pre-recorded vocabulary (solicited from friends, colleagues, family, former students and so on) will provide visitors with a selection of diverse color, texture and meaning from which to construct unexpected phrases.

Each word will be spoken faster the closer a person moves to the sensor, so that movement inside the booth will generate streams of language with varying emotional intensity. There are two modes of operation inside the structure. The first is a “learning module”, a kind of “follow the poet” in a dance-machine mode. I have deconstructed and recoded samples of poetry from a number of historical and contemporary poets. These samples appear as a series of flashing lights in the walls of the structure. Each light marks the location of a sensor that will trigger a particular part of speech (single nouns, verb infinitives, adverbs etc.). If a visitor follows the light pattern with their hands, they can reconstruct the structures of the poets but with new, randomly generated words. At any time the visitor may also choose a “free form” mode in which they can trigger any sensor in any order. It is my hope that visitors to the booth will be supported in a sense of their own creative potential, and would ultimately perhaps supplement the prepared vocabulary with their own.

The booth is designed to be easy to move from one location to another and to survive public interaction. The wiring is built into the walls and all of the electronics for media control and playback, as well as batteries for remote operation, are in the base. The set up and take down of the structure can be accomplished within a couple of hours or less.

My intention for this booth is that it should be able to move out of the gallery and into public spaces. This fulfils a twin impulse to move the activity of art galleries more into public space, and to move the general public more into artistic discourse. For a full listing of venue locations and times see below.

For a complete description of the CoCA event, including guest Artist Jesse Allison, Panelists John Boylan, Tina Hoggatt, Ries Miemi & Peter Reiquam, and spoken word Performance Artists Laura "Piece" Kelly, Christa Bell and Iese, please click here.

Funding to support this project was received from the Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs, City of Seattle, as well as Artist Trust, Seattle.

To see more of my work, please visit juliacole.net