Today's Times Circuits section takes a look at the free-associative wonder that is Northwestern PhD candidate David Ayman Shamma's doctoral project, "Imagination Information."
"Imagination Environment" starts with a live television news broadcast that is displayed at the center of a wall-mounted array of nine computer monitors. A software program scans the broadcast's closed-caption stream and selects keywords that prompt Internet searches for images. Seconds after the live audio is heard, the news broadcast is surrounded by pertinent photographs and illustrations on adjacent screens, as well as some images completely unrelated."The words tend to be linked to a strange combination of images that are on point and strikingly bizarre," Professor Hammond said.
The cinetrix is in a class that often takes an installation approach to films, placing them in conversation or pointing up incongruities in the nation's cinematic consciousness during a given period. And she was trapped in a couple of airports this past weekend, with their all-CNN or -ESPN miasma of images. So this project is right up her street. Of course, she was a fan of E.B.N. from waaaaay back.
And admit it, you want to see what the Interwebnet does with Eminem's flow.
