america

"america" is an experimental executable created by Alan Sondheim using Microsoft Visual Basic (VBA). Like most of his experiments with VBA, this piece revolves around the use of glitch as commentary upon a central image, in this case an American flag. The program eventually becomes unresponsive by design. 

"The programs are operating in the space between analog and digital, although totally grounded in the digital. How much can mathesis transform semantics? All of them except for bee.exe are determined and therefore the metaphorical application of the machinic to the world. 

The code is simply vb-wise and somewhat complex in terms of nesting and recursion. I tend to work well with trignometric functions, which near the limits, say, of tangent and cotangent, can resonate with the limits of the computation itself. 

Furthermore these images are interpreted in terms of the underlying photographs - a lichen-like growth upon them, empathetic and cohering. In turn, they modify, deconstruct. 

What are they deconstructing? Language, meaning, symbols, the symbolic. Through erasure and the growth of form."

"9/11 date floss, wrackish angle of the building, flagged, marked like a
leaning gravestone.  hysteria panic worm advances, burgeons, a burst
collective bowel pools, layers of screaming distress morph to hard edged
white noise."

-- Alan Sondheim