Meridiend
Michael Filimowicz
MERIDIEND is a work of net art combining literary writing and digital photography to explore a variant of psychogeography, defined by Guy Debord as "the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals" and as "a technique of rapid passage through varied ambiences."
The approach to psychogeography in MERIDIEND is to explore the interstices between writing and the real places that served in some way as a point of contact for these texts. Neither text nor image "explain" or "caption" the other, but rather viewing and reading relies on the memory of each, as texts and images are not viewable simultaneously. Furthermore, this approach rejects the "anti-ruralism" of the Situationist dérive with its urban obsessions, and engages the poetic and dialectical tensions between city and country.
The interface instantiates a dérive for the interactor, who can drift amongst these texts and images in either random or systematic fashion. Once the image has been replaced by its accompanying text, it cannot be easily gotten back to unless an effort has been made by the viewer-reader-drifter to keep track of their moves.
If you haven't already, click here to engage with MERIDIEND.Michael Filimowicz is a new media artist working in the areas of sound, experimental video, creative writing, net art, public art and digital photography. As a writer he has published poetry, fiction and philosophy, and as a sound designer he has mixed soundtracks for film and television. He is on the faculty in the School of Interactive Arts and Technology at Simon Fraser University.
