Fw: New Work by Myron Turner on Sporkworld

"Timeline" by Myron Turner is the second work featured in the Guest A=
rtists section of Sporkworld. It is a piece of software art which allows us=
ers to create a sequence of images and texts using an interface which is a =
simplified version of a timeline-based nonlinear editing program. (Nonlinea=
r editors are programs for creating videos or film in which one assembles c=
lips along a timeline, with the ability to reorder the sequence and trim th=
e clips in the editor without affecting the original videotape itself. On p=
ersonal computers, the popular NLEs are Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere, and =
Avid. Professional filmmakers often use dedicated editing machines with bui=
lt-in software, although there have been a few recent films that were edite=
d using a Macintosh or PC-based NLE program.) "Timeline" gives users a sele=
ction of images and texts created by Turner, so that the work is both a pro=
gram and an interactive illustrated poem.


Users can save the sequences they create on the Timeline site, and we=
are looking forward to seeing how people will use the Timeline program and=
images as starting points for their own creations.

Here is Turner's description of "Timeline":

"Timeline" is based on an analogy with video editing suites. The us=
er creates a "Timeline" project by selecting a sequence of images each of w=
hich is associated with a default text that can be edited in all or part. T=
he sequence can then be "played" back, i.e. the images and their texts sequ=
ence forward on a time delay. This presented a challenge when it came to wr=
iting the default texts. They had to make some sense no matter what positio=
n they held in the sequence. If image A is associated with text 1 and image=
B with text 2, the texual narrative had to make some sense even if image B=
came before image A in the sequencing.

The images which Timeline uses were all based on the images in the =
poem. The Internet, Google in particular, gave me a wealth of imagistic ana=
logies and puns for the feelings out of which the poem grew. It was like be=
ing put into the Renaissance frame of mind where everything in the universe=
found its way back to the centrality of Man by virtue of analogy. The user=
, by contrast, starts with a given universe of images. But they can be arra=
nged in a vast array of image sequences, and because you can edit and/or cr=
eate your own texts, the orignal poem gives rise many poems and to an enorm=
ous range of human experience.

There are many reasons why the metaphor of the timeline appealed to=
me. There are the obvious associations with time and aging. But the timeli=
ne embodies a particular kind of time–that is, it lets you replay and revi=
ew, much as we replay for ourselves the images and words that make up our l=
ives. On the one hand there is the sense that there's a continuous flow, so=
mewhere a whole video that makes up our lives, but on the other there's the=
sense of the fragmentary and the random. "Timeline" is a metaphor for this=
contradiction. The user of "Timeline" creates a poem out of random acts, i=
.e. selecting images from a database of images each of which is associated =
with a few lines from the original poem.





Millie Niss
[email protected]
http://www.sporkworld.org