“Still Standing”, a new media poetry instillation is a crafty piece of work. The adaptive text is engrossing to see and the shape of the body serving as a template is engaging. The interactivity is merely being, while is akin to just sitting and reading, but forming the reading platform with the human body.

I think of the examples of digital media portrayed on http://www.dreamingmethods.com and think of how engrossed the reader has to be to read the content. The effects, presentation, and style of writing is designed to be viewed on a computer and could not function as a print text. The poem could be viewed in either media but settles in the “in between”. It seems to act as an artifact more than media. Some great inventions had predecessors that served little to nothing in terms of usefulness and practicality in the eyes of the user.  In the past, that’s been the virtual boy to the Nintendo 3DS, the laser disc to the dvd, the PDA to the smart phone, and more. And this technology is, while unique and interesting, not terribly mainstream or convenient that is has been picked up yet. The “in-between” literature has not found a home and I believe it will evolve as the technology advances and the ideas make the form more accessible.

As for the actual nature of the text, it’s a pretty significant comment one the business of today’s society. Not that it has not been busy in the past, but it seems with the digital age, people are more engaged with their devices than ever before. People become almost cyborgs as the devices act as extensions of the communicative behaviors. Now, the device used to manifest the poem becomes an extension of our perceptions of reading.

This “in-between” text is unique in it’s qualities and it is a media that can be modified and exported with ease, as opposed to a book, which would require a secondary editing, printing, and shipping process. It is just strange to see the media presented as an embodiment of the self instead of merely squares of text like the ones above this sentence.