“The Infinite Line”, a European Premiere

© Sarah Kenderdine & Jeffrey Shaw

© Sarah Kenderdine & Jeffrey Shaw

“The Infinite Line” interactive exhibit will run at ZKM (Zentrum für Kunst und Medien) in Karlsruhe from 09 September 2017 to 28 January 2018.

Sarah Kenderdine, Jeffrey Shaw, Edwin Thumboo

A European premiere, The Infinite Line (2014) proposes new modes of spectatorship in the performance of poetry.

Continuing the tradition of the literary movement OuLiPo, the “workshop of potential literature,” this interactive installation gives visitors the opportunity to recombine the poetic ensemble of Singaporean poet Edwin Thumboo. Twenty-seven seminal poems are redefined as polyvocal readings, which de- and reconstruct his original oeuvre, creating renewed vectors of meaning. Using an immersive 360° panoramic projection environment visitors engage with twenty-seven life-sized video recitals by Thumboo.

The application software allows visitors to reassemble a matrix of individual lines of poetry in a “live” rereading of key texts: the viewer uses a physical microphone as a pointing device, enabling him or her to move a virtual microphone in front of the lineup of Thumboo videos. Whichever figure of Thumboo the microphone points to will be activated to perform the reading. Moving the microphone from one clip to another will interrupt the ongoing reading at the conclusion of a phrase and jump-cut to the reading from the newly chosen clip. The Thumboo videos always continue their readings from the point at which the previous viewer stopped them. The resulting indeterminate assemblages of sequences/fragments of Thumboo’s oeuvre of twenty-seven poems offer new optics and an infinite number of interpretations of these poems, and of the man.

Software: Leith Chan