William Seaman's interactive installation "Passage Sets / One Pulls Pivots at the Tip of the Tongue" makes it possible to combine an interactive videodisk, a navigable poem and an automatic poem-generator to create a poetic network.

"Passage Sets / One Pulls Pivots at the Tip of the Tongue" combines interactive videodisc, a navigable poem, and an automatic poem generator which work simultaneously to create a poetic network. The work is drawn from architectural images shot in and around Tokyo, Japan, contrasting the past and present while alluding to the future; in Karlsruhe, Germany, a selection of antiquated vehicles cross, dock and continue on their trajectories; and in photographic panoramas shot in Sydney, Australia, nature branches / trees and displaced / dismantled architectural sites / ruins are observed. Studio images of a set of female and male dancer /participants generating a series of abstract movement / gestures are also included. These movements allude to future sensual telecommunication interactions via gesture recognition. The subject matter is presented as a poetic set of musings/projections dealing with notions of sensuality / sexuality and identity in cyberspace in contrast with the "nature" of actual spaces, distance and physical travel.

A series of "sets" of relative poetic fragments are continously in a state of both random and viewer driven flux. The viewer is actively involved with decoding these particles of meaning, forming an accumulated network of associations. These encoded architectures reflect a superimposition or collision of psychological spaces. The notion that one person in one part of the world can interact in a sensual/sexual manner with another person existing elsewhere, or with phantom identities engendered by the computer, is an area of reflection. It is as if the viewer is in one space, looking at another space (as menu system), navigating a superimposed alternate poetic linguistic space, which in turn triggers related associational video spaces. Simultaneously, a poem generator constructs a second linguistic space which also triggers associations. The conceptual superimposition of the entirety of these spaces defines an open work and generates a floating/shifting mind space for the viewer. Information technologies are forming new kinds of hybrid spaces. "Passage Sets" poetically reflects on this potential future environment of sensual communication and exchange.

A "set" of stills form a series of panoramas of a collection of eight spaces. Theviewer observes this on a data projector functioning as a navigational menu system. On each of 125 menu screens is a Haiku-like section from a poem superimposed over the image as a spatial collage. The viewer can navigate these spaces by moving the cursor over different parts of the image / screen. If they motion to the top of the screen, the perspective is altered and the viewer pans up, if the viewer motions to the left, the camera pans left, if the viewer motions to the right . . . then right, if the viewer motions toward the bottom ofthe screen . . . then the camera pans down.

The poem is architectural / spatial and can work in any direction. The viewer can also look at overviews of the panoramas as well as jump to a series of alternate "mapped" spaces. A kind of "mapping" of particular environments is explored. Words are presented scattered across the still image (and become part of the image itself). If a viewer clicks on one of these words, then a new menu is called up. This new menu functions as a poem generator. This chosen "word" is loaded into one of the linguistic slots of the poem generator. Each word included is cross referenced back to a particular visual menu screen. Thus this also become a means of navigation through the menus, as well as a site of association and construction of meaning. These stills are particularly physical in their look including hard and soft surfaces, dirt, decay, and debris.

The poem generator consists of four lists, two vertical and two horizontal. As the viewer moves the cursor over particular parts of the screen, the lists are made visible. The viewer can scroll through the lists by motioning the cursor left and right on the horizontal lists or up and down on the vertical lists. One word at a time gets blown up and becomes an "active" word. If the viewer clicks on this "active" word, they are driven to the menu still which contains it. Once the viewer chooses one word, they can move to another list and make it active.This process continues with four lists which when read make up new Haiku-like statements. The viewer can click on any of these words to navigate through the poem and to observe the word's original context in the poem.

This work presents an exciting form of navigable poetry. It explores a fascinating mix of language / image / sound relations. It deals specifically withsensuality / sexuality in relation to new media technology in meta-manner.