BUSEEREHEREEEEEEEEEESE

Gilbert, initiated the Real Audio..

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Fiction -- story telling - has been a lifelong interest. My own fiction -- stories for print and radio — is generally comedic
and progresses more by association, i.e., by associative links between texts, than by the more familiar linear progression.
Adrift took a step beyond the association of texts. It dealt not just with unrelated subject matters but with unrelated and
only partially developed stories. Its idea of story, in other words, included the idea of many stories, any one of which might
be developed. Or not.

The texts | contributed centered around a harbor and its city. There was no sustained action, no central character, no plot.
The performance watcher was, in a sense, set adrift in a medium whose text content was fragments or pieces of potential
stories... each of which could be perceived differently by differently disposed observers. Or, given the demands placed on
the other senses by the work as a whole, ignored altogether.

In "Street Dreams That the Eye Can Cherish" (NYT 1/8/99), Herbert Muschamp speaks of looking as an architectural act.
“A city ,” he writes, “is constructed daily by the glancing perception of its parts."

| intended something similar in Adrift. Situated as the texts were, in a sensory context where visuals and sound rivalled for
attention, they were to be assembled like Mr. Muschamp's city, by the glancing perception of parts that caught or focused
the attention of the viewer, however briefly.

There were associations, shared language and shared sentiments in the Adrift texts. And if focused on, they could give rise
to meaning. To my meaning. In the initial performances, for instance, there were numerous head references: decapitated
heads, heads suspended in liquid nitrogen, heads to be filled with memories and new systems.

At the same time movement was stalled, The ferry boat, which was at the center of the early versions, drifted, "making no
headway against the soft white billows..." The story didn't get ahead. It didn't have a head -- It was without a hierarchy,
without structure, without continuity.

Now and again a phrase or paragraph, properly placed, did suggest that the fragments were parts of a larger, more inclu-
sive story . The phrase: "The circumstances are unexceptional", for instance, appeared in early versions of Adrift. When
used at the end of the performance, it suggested some modest form of closure, a kind of summing up for all the fragments
that preceded. A way of saying: There's nothing exceptional in what you've read. All of this happens all the time; i
a part of the stream of potential stories here to be perceived (or not), and to be differently perceived by differently moti-
vated observers.

When the same phrase, "The circumstances are unexceptional” was used elsewhere, it failed to carry the same weight and
implied closure only to what preceded it.

‘Still the fragments were never entirely distinct. The associative links were there. And it was my hope that the reader would
feel that they belonged together, although in what way was left to him/her to determine.

What happened?

The client or viewing page was a divided page, with Walczak's streaming vrml filling the upper part of the page while my
streaming text appeared in the lower half. At that time, and | believe even now, streaming text into vrml is a complicated
affair, and the technology not fully developed to accomplish it. It was and remained one of the many goals toward which
we aspired.

Still there were things that we could do, When we reviewed our first performances | was struck with two things: first, that
many of my texts were too long. It was almost impossible, given the transformation the whole work was constantly under-
going, to focus on and understand a long paragraph. Second, too often, the texts did not appear to integrate or even relate
to Walczak's vrml.

it was the latter that initiated changes in my java application.

Henceforth my texts would relate by colour , placement and movement -- to Walczak's VRML. They would become parts of
the setting/landscape as well as conveyors of content.

At the same time Walczak, prior to performance, placed some of my texts in his vrml creating yet another link between our
disparate contributions, and defining yet another relationship between Adrift texts,