ScruTiny in the Great Round is a multimedia work of art. It integrates original artwork and collage elements drawn from various times and traditions: still images, video, and animations; original poems and text excerpts from sources such as Blake, biology textbooks, and the Bhagavad-Gita; and sounds, including treated voice, sounds from nature, and music.
ScruTiny in the Great Round is an evocation of the erotic alchemical drama of procreation. Traveling in time through a ground of chlorophyll and blood, we explore the interplay between the masculine and feminine aspects of life. Presented in ten scenes, each with multiple layers of images, text, and sound, it shows the slow evolution of events of the heart, the familiar and the mysterious, from the cellular level to the collective unconscious╤contraction and release, preparation and longing, humor and dreams.
About the Authors
ScruTiny in the Great Round is based on a book of the same title by Tennessee Rice Dixon. The book was published in 1993 by Granary Books, New York City, in an edition of 22 hand-worked copies. Steve Clay was instrumental in the creation of the book.
Tennessee Rice Dixon
Artist/Writer/Graphic Designer/Animator/Voices
Ms. Dixon is an artist who lives in New York City. Her work has been exhibited internationally and can be found in numerous collections including the Getty Center, The New York Public Library, Museum of Modern Art Library, Yale University, and Stanford University. This is her first work of software.
Mr. Gasperini is a writer and interactive designer based in New York and Paris. He is best known for HIDDEN AGENDA, a dramatic political simulation for Mac and IBM PC published by Springboard and Scholastic. In recent years he has designed interactive works for CD-ROM, CD-i, and 3DO for various clients in New York, California, Germany, and France. He is a contributing writer and CD-ROM critic for WIRED.
Charlie Morrow
Composer
Mr. Morrow is a composer, performer, and event maker based in New York and Vermont. At the time of the New Voices/New Visions contest he had not yet begun to work on the project. The sounds on the ScruTiny demo give a good idea of the intended aural aesthetic but will be greatly enhanced in the final version.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Bob Stein and the organizers of New Voices/New Visions for spurring us into action. There is nothing like a deadline to get the adrenaline flowing. For help with sounds and programming, we would like to thank Vegard Brenna, John Dowdell, Ruth Ely, David Furlow, and Bill Gasperini. Text excerpts from the works of John Donne and William Butler Yeats are used in the first scene.
ScruTiny is a lyrically interactive work. It uses large, colored ╥sprite cursors╙ to offer the user a choice of mode, pace, and perspective.
In the current work-in-progress the Sun cursor represents the interactive mode, allowing detailed choices within a scene, while the Moon cursor shows longer linked sequences of the same material. In the opening scene, there is also the Full Moon cursor. When this cursor appears, clicking once will play a linear version of ScruTiny, showing most of each scene in sequence. This is like the choice a reader makes in reading a poem: a single line may be read and reread, or a stanza, or the entire poem. In the finished work, there will also be thematic differences between the Sun and Moon cursors.
The Bird cursor moves us back and forth through the scenes. It may be found by moving the Sun or Moon cursor to the right or left of the screen. Leaving the cursor at the lower edge of the screen for a few seconds will automatically move you to the next scene.
Moving the cursor to the bottom of the screen hides all navigation devices. Any sequence may be interrupted by clicking once or twice. The sound level may be adjusted up or down by pressing the One through Seven keys on your keyboard.
Use of a screensaver while ScruTiny is playing may result in the distracting reappearance of the Macintosh system arrow cursor. If this happens, please quit the program and start again.
We hope you enjoy this excerpt. If are interested in seeing the finished work, please contact Calliope Media.
This excerpt consists of a Director projector and an associated file of linked material. It requires a Macintosh running QuickTime 2.0 and a double-speed CD-ROM drive, preferably with 8 MB RAM. It will show best on a 14-inch monitor set to 256 colors.
ScruTiny is currently a work in progress. A hybrid Mac/PC disk will be published in the fall of 1995 by Calliope Media, 1526 Cloverfield Boulevard, Santa Monica, CA 90404-3502. 310.829.1100, fax 310.829.7044.
