The Dazzle as Question

The Dazzle as Question "uses the time-based nature of digital media to examine the construction of a lyric voice in new media. Through the voice of an 'old school artist' fascinated by computers and their potential for artistic expression, the poem uses the rhetoric of left and right sides of the brain to create a kind of cyborg voice by blending the logical capabilities of the computer and left side of the brain with the creative artistic human side. Part of this construction is evoked by the images of fountain pens, a writing technology iconically associated with poets (writing in solitude, as their imagination soars), and a desktop mouse (inscribing binary code onto bitmapped metaphorical interfaces). If writing allowed the transition of the lyric poem from the public to the private domain, does the networked computer reverse that, or is it the self constructed by these technologies that changes?

As you read this poem, notice how the speaker's thought patterns change progressively over time, as each line is delivered through time and spatial portioning. For example, see how the language captured in the image above reads differently as displayed over time as the poem plays. And as you witness the human/machine hybridization of the language in the poem, consider whether what you're listening to is a heartbeat or a metronome." -- from I Love E-Poetry

"Claire Allan Dinsmore is a writer, artist, and the editor and designer of Cauldron & Net: a journal of the arts & new media. She has completed MFA studies at Cranbrook Academy of Art and holds a BFA from Parsons School of Design/The New School for Social Research. Ms. Dinsmore has exhibited worldwide and been published as an artist, critic, essayist and poet. Her work is in the permanent collections of the American Craft Museum, The Smithsonian and The Montreal Museum of Art, as well as within numerous private collections. In 1999 she was selected as a Pushcart Prize nominee. Presently she is a web designer and president of Studio Cleo where she works as a new media artist and indulges herself in such anachronistic pursuits as bookmaking and metalwork." -- from frAme, Issue 5, 2001