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An interactive poster that plays Baudelaire's Invitation to the Voyage as sound and light.

The poem is split into 98 sections, each paired with a song. An algorithm measures each word and plays a matching length of its song, from a random point every time, so the piece never sounds the same twice. As it plays, a light behind the poster marks the square being read.

It asks what reading becomes when a machine does part of it.

Jury Commendation (Balmer Hählen), INTL Poster Festival 2024. Shown in the PCD25@Porto "Sense of Wonder" online exhibition.

Credits

  • Concept & Design – Dimitris Lelakis
  • Creative Coding – Athanasios Katsougiannis
  • Type – Tempos Mono by @keller_samara & Diatype from @abcdinamo

URL

Acoustic Poem

  • Acoustic Poem poster: Baudelaire's Invitation to the Voyage in numbered words over a grid of song cards The poem in numbered words over a grid of song cards.
  • Detail of the Acoustic Poem installation, the word Gleaming over transparent sleeves holding song cards
  • Top corner of the poster on its wooden board, the opening lines over pockets of numbered song cards
  • The algorithm: a word, its length, a slice of song.
  • A single illuminated square glowing among the song cards and poem fragments of Acoustic Poem A square lights up as its song plays.
  • Grid of song cards listing artist, length and year, layered behind the poem's words furniture and voluptuous
  • Angled view of the clear sleeve sheet lifting off the poster, the large numbered poem text behind it
  • Clear sheet of song card pockets curling forward from the Acoustic Poem poster on its hooks
  • Visitor lifting the transparent song card layer to read the Baudelaire poem printed underneath
  • Acoustic Poem poster leaning in a studio next to an orange lamp, catching warm side light
  • INTL Poster Festival 2024 exhibition wall, three rows of selected posters with Acoustic Poem among them At the INTL Poster Festival 2024.
  • Acoustic Poem hanging among the selected posters at the INTL Poster Festival 2024 exhibition
  • Visitor at the INTL Poster Festival 2024 exhibition, the pale Acoustic Poem sheet in the middle row