Letters of BIT

2000

Kenji Komoto (JP)

"Letters of BIT" is an interactive game with words. It encompasses three works providing examples of misunderstanding, connotation and the multi-layered complexity of linguistic meanings and characters.

In "Dropping Text", the falling motion of geometric elements can be interrupted and reversed by touching them with the cursor. The elements float back to the top of the screen and are transformed into a line of text made up of words expressing random statements.

The work "Loupe" visualizes the double meaning corresponding to the function of a jeweler's magnifying glass in enlarging an object when, in a transferred sense, an object is "taken under the loupe." In the enlargement provided by a loupe that can be positioned above sentences, there appear the letters of words that relativize the statements made by those sentences, or that transform them into their opposite.

"Emotions" blends the ideographical meaning(s) of Japanese characters with alphabetical aspects. The characters change in accordance with the English-language meanings that are evoked upon contact of the cursor with particular points on the character, and they appear as script.