The first thing most people do when they wake up in the morning is take a shower.  While the process seems somewhat involved and meticulous—shampoo hair, lather loofah, remember between the toes, etc.—the body is pretty much on auto-pilot, running off of the familiarity of an everyday process, while the brain is still struggling to wake up.  At this point, at least for me, it is almost impossible to produce a single, discernible thought; waking up is a process.  Ah is a digital and visual representation of this evolving stream of consciousness.

The program presents itself as a horizontal, linear, scrolling “marquee” of letters and words that can overlap and pass those preceding it.  The first letters seem like a random display of a’s, h’s, l’s, and o’s that overlap one another, but then quickly scramble into a song-long arrangement of “la”s and “oh”s: the morning’s first attempt at conscious thought manifests as singing in the shower.

The level of complexity of the letters increases, mingling into whole words that sometimes compound into sentence fragments.

But what’s really interesting is that even though the content has become more complex, the stream of consciousness associated with it still remains linear and muddled.  Letters and words are still able to overlap and/or race past one another.  In the sense of waking up during a morning shower, an individual becomes increasingly able to formulate complete thoughts after the passing of some time, however their mind is still one-tracked and still finds it hard to differentiate between one thought and another.  This sense is inflicted upon the reader who is trying to made heads-or-tales of the words scrolling before them.  The “narrative” projects the waking-state of the showerer’s mind onto the reader, who in turn is made to feel disoriented and nonsensical.

Once the brain awakens and becomes functional, the linear format that represents the stream of conscience is abandoned and is taken place by a double-helix sort of shape.

The mind is now capable of multiple streams of thought, which range from the “oh lala oh la oh” singing to contemplating Einstein and the manifestation and passing of time that has occurred during the shower.  Letters, words, and sentences are more easily discernible and both the mind and the viewer can comprehend them more easily.  A question to ponder, however, is that after struggling to find meaning within the previously muddled thoughts, is it the stream of consciousness that has cleared up, or is the mind, the showerer, the audience that are now more adept at reading between the lines?