Mapping Lightning, and other comments

I plan to work with the Lightning is a Yellow Fork for my mapping project. I originally wanted to make a website--a sort of hypertext maze of links (for what better place is there than Cyberspace to create this type of matrix?), through which I could explore the "blooming" effect of the poem and define certain branches of it. I'm not sure how feasible this idea is, because what I envision: a grand network of pages, each with an individual video, interactive game, animations, and other stimulating effects that would represent a venturing onto a particular branch, is far from what I can realistically create. My bank of web-design skills is meager. But my bank of video editing skills is slightly less in the red, so I think I'll pursue mapping through a video medium after all.

I want to first explore the literal meaning of the poem, and show something suggestive of figures dining up in heaven, a fork and other eating utensils tumbling down from the sky, images of lightning blending into the tines on a silver fork. I also want to relate the idea of lightning, electricity, and divinity to the brain. The lynch-pin would be the idea of existence. From a biological perspective, which may or may not be more reliable (but is certainly best supported by the limits of our sensing systems), everything we conceive is based on electricity, the impulses of sparks, quarks. I can't help but bind the light in the sky to the light that forks through the human brain, both elementally identical, both a signal, a glimpse into the secrets of existence and the way things operate--from the macroscopic (the Universe) to the microscopic (the Brain or Mind).

Here is what a mapping of my current mental map of a poem (a mapping of an idea in another's mind itself) looks like:




More to come, including a detailed breakdown of what and why I placed things where they are in the current view, which in itself entails a deeper explanation or exploration of this particular branch I've chosen to hop on.

--UPDATE--

My main goal was to explore (and demonstrate the result of which) the various manifestations of electricity--in the sky, in the mind, and in the heavens--both as a physical and conceptual projection. And following naturally from the idea of the heavens is the idea of existence and the systems of thought that humans devise in order to understand life, and indeed, in order to "live."

The prevailing background (moving) image is, of course, of a lightning storm, the sound effects of which I added and synchronized separately. I liked the grainy low-contrast black and white quality of the storm footage because it helped fashion a heavier--stormier--mood, and also creates a tone of electrical disturbance and buzz that courses throughout the brain. The mechanism of the heavens, like that of the mind ("the black box"), is one of the greatest natural mysteries, and the lack of film clarity helps illustrate this fact.

I synchronized the first rumbles of thunder with flashes of neuronal cells and the tines of a fork, instead of lightning. It was striking to me, even more so than I had predicted, how the images I found of neurons superimposed so well onto images of lightning; extended branching are key characteristics of both, and perhaps this form in the neuron is a consequence of accommodating the natural tendency of lightning to bifurcate iteratively. The lightning is a yellow fork, and so is its medium (I suppose you could call the neuron that), except the "tables" for neurons would be the brain itself, and the "cutlery" dropped thoughts themselves, evidence of neuronal actions, as lightning is evidence of movement in the heavens (take it scientifically and deem this activity to be electrical current/collision of charged particles, or take it philosophically and deem it the wrath of god, or perhaps the wink of some supernatural eye).

I had a white house flying in from the upper corner of the sky/viewing frame as the voice recording moved into the part of the poem describing "mansions" in the sky. The curtains flutter in some imperceptible breeze (God's breath? Your own breath that drives the conductance of electricity down dendritic spines?), mysterious and ominous in the shadows they cast (depending on what associations you might have with that image), yet bright and alluring at the same time; you want to enter the house of those potentially "awful" figures in the sky/you want to investigate the gears that drive existence, but entrance beyond those gates may preclude return--indeed, the billowing of the curtains insinuate a motion driven by a movement from presence to absence. The arched window off to the side is, furthermore, reminiscent of a cathedral window, bringing into the frame a monumental construct for human consciousness: religion. Around this time, one can hear a low, sustained Gregorian monk chant emerge from the tails of the poetry reading, as well as the overtone layer of Islamic prayer song. Religious systems evolve around one concept, and merge in harmony, a declaration of consciousness, a consequence of consciousness, and the final query of human existence.

Throughout most of the moving image, I have overlayed two tracks--one of neuronal "chirping" (electrical activity transcribed into sound; our cells are singing to each other!!) and the other a continuous electrical buzz. These represent the sound of information transmission carried on within and without our bodies. All the while, this clip is transferring information directly to you, as well as indirectly, via the presentation of recordings of information transmission.

I also recorded myself reading several lines from Hart Crane's "The Tunnel," a poem in which the author delves into the underground (the ventral face of heaven:its reflection:its evil twin), using the subway (another electrically-powered vehicle) to course through projections aimed from the back of his mind--frightening, dark images of Poe, gritty urban life, loneliness, the night. The lines are barely audible under the audio layers already present, but represent nonetheless, another point of entry into this exploration of existence and electrical projection of images as evidence of thought. I love exploring audio, and will definitely be playing around more with ways of tickling the aural pathway in future projects.