2 Works by Tennessee Rice Dixon (and others): "Scrutiny in the Great
Round," and "Count": Article by Jennifer (1) and Alan (2)

[ It's as if I'm looking at a breathing body, Scrutiny in the Great
Round, and Count, by Tennessee Rice Dixon, two of the most obsessing
CD-ROM works I have seen. There are no _objects_ in them, no screen
areas set-aside for control. There are part-objects, flows,
transparencies. One moves as the cursor shape-changes, but the movement
is not linear - i.e. left does not "mean" _back,_ and right _front._ The
world is murky, irresolute, dark, morphing, dissolute. In Scrutiny,
there are 'sun' and 'moon,' and in Count (which is still undergoing
development), there are 'male' and 'female.' But these are ongoing
processes, always in flux. Scrutiny in the Great Round is by Calliope
Media, with Dixon, Jim Gasperini, and Charlie Morrow (sounds and music.)
]

When meaning falls apart, does meaning come together?
When meaning comes together, does meaning fall apart?

Jennifer says she really likes the work because it is very wet, that you
can see beneath the surface but you can also see the surface, it is very
wonderful that way. And there are many things beneath the surface, but
they are not things, they are glistenings. You might ask about the glis-
tenings, but they are male and female sometimes and sometimes moon and
sun, and I love running with the moon, not with the sun. It is the dark-
ness that is so wonderful; all these murmurs appear from the darkness,
unlike any other CD-ROM I have seen, and the configuration is placed way
out of the way. With Count, I did have to Apple-Q(uit) out of the work,
which is a good way of leaving the world, of course, you can't leave a
world from within it, which is why I like being there, it surrounds me.
( Sometimes if you hit the escape key, there you are, an escape. But
the id continues its (CD-ROM) whirl, the moment's incoherence. )

Does living the world mean leaving the world?
Does leaving the world meaning living the world?

These worlds are chthonic and inchoate, of and through the earth. Part-
objects, emergences from the _chora,_ appear, only to disappear, invert,
reverse, hold themselves breathless. The pace of the works are the pace
and speed of breathing, leaning over the console, believing the screen.

Does breathing mean breathing the world into being breathing?
Does the world breathe? Does the world breathe for a little while?

It's as if you're clicking on sections of things that may never have
been whole, fragments without objects, with the nineteenth-century dream
of totality only that (within the imaginary), emergences or gestures
that have never been completed - accompanied by nostalgias, yearnings.
Because you want completeness and lose yourself in the space, which is
the con- tainer for all the incompletes, making them, _as-if_ they were
whole (again). And you want your loss; you cultivate, caress, your loss,
as if that, through some empathetic being (in the world) will return
with a word or a sign.

Are there any objects, are there any wholes?
Are objects just a telling, then a naming of the telling-wholes?

Tennessee is here and I ask her about memory. Do both works deal with
mem- ory? Yes, she can say that they do. Memory and remembering.
Memories of what, Jennifer asks. Memories as fabric or landscapes of
memories she says. Memory field or landscape where you find what
memories are present, or what memories come to be there. Inviting
memories, how the memory takes form. Inviting parts of memories. I ask
if there are any complete memories in the first place. Tennessee says
they are always forming. Tennessee can visualize a memory. Memory
changes over time. Her memory switches. So I say, Jennifer says, there
is a field of memories. ( Jennifer remembers fields or architectures of
memories, that so clearly, memory is not [it] the thing itself, not part
and parcel, but a reconstruction. From what? Cues, from broken logics
that an organism takes into the truth. And such architectures!
Memory-palaces, alcoves, chests of drawers. Mnemonics, as if the world
were in reach, as if the past were always already present. But the world
slides out - or rather, we slide, always against the grain. It's as if
one can imagine the heat-death of the cosmos, embers billions of years
hence - no time, no object, no sight, or site, or citation, mem- ory
gone from memory, hipster gone-world, nothing to record [it]. )

Does memory mean the world?
Does meaning remember the world?

Are you working within a space or architecture of memories? What is the
place of the memory? Tennessee says it's similar to a dream in that it
has a place; bits and pieces come forward the more one talks. Jennifer
says it's not exactly a shallow space, but a space of unfoldings, sub-
terranean poolings. Tennessee says it's as if it were on a big flat
fabric, as if there were a surface to that fabric - there are layers and
layers - there is a surface element - what you can see is what comes to
the surface - it appears two-dimensional - Tennessee can imagine it has
many dimensions. Tennessee sees depth because her mind tells her it's
there, but the surface of it is flat, and the mind goes way past flat.

Is the world a pool gathered on the surface of a slight incline?
Do you swim down the incline, do you crawl back, gasping for air?

Folds and fabrics intersecting a flat surface… In that sense, Jennifer
says, you only see a portion of it at once, but it also shares a lot of
characteristics with, say, the Rococo. There aren't vistas, but turned
away into corners or traveling across corners or paths. (Think of the
Asam Brothers.) I think of the Rococo as encrusted, interrupted.
Tennessee thinks of finding, uncovering, digging up. The incrustation is
almost par- adoxical I say, because you look at the surface and are
stopped by it, but at the same time, it hides and produces an indefinite
feeling of depth.

Are there petals for the flowers, spikes for the stems?
Are there petals for the stems, stems for the spiked petalled flowers?

Jennifer wants to ask Tennessee about dichotomies, male and female, sun
and moon, in and out. She says they could be passed off as
storybook-like, but then, there are spirals, plants, leaves, limbs,
spheres, statues that are morphing - in fact says Jennifer, the whole
thing is morphing - but Tennessee says is striking a nerve, even though
a little corny. As if they're archetypes, or a mood, the music or whole
visuals, the timing creates. Tennessee feels there is something
emotional and wet that allows one to have a fantasy - that allows one to
have a place in one's sexual being, in a non-judgmental way.

Are there fantasies when gleaming are objects dreaming?
Are objects waking in fantasies, always becoming-objects?

Jennifer says she prefers the moon route to the sun route in Scrutiny.
That she was almost repulsed by the sun route. Tennessee says most
people did the sun route, that it was clear and obvious. But I preferred
the moon route, said Jennifer, which was dark and then crescent and then
dark again. In Count, you move more with the sound input levels, and an
image of an egg, which is more diffuse, almost invisible at times. And
in Count, even the cursor's movements change gridlines, move faces ever
so slowly across the screen, change whole countries, as if they remained
the same only slightly different thereafter.

Is one always out of focus, always moving slightly differently?
Is there one moving, are there may moving ones and manies?

Jennifer asks Tennessee about mysticism. Do you, Tennessee, see a
spirit- ual element to your work? Tennessee says what do you think. I
think yes, but I'm always suspicious of the same, what kind of space
it's taking me to. Tennessee says that Scrutiny is full of archetypes,
but Jennifer says they're so piled up and torn apart that they're
capable of widely varying readings. Rough sky in the background with the
Planter and the Potter and the seeds which looked like stars with sky in
them and the Pot looking like a mirror, which I related to the mirror in
Shinto. Tennessee says that many of the images are like cutouts, but for
Jennifer, the cutouts are always as if they're on the move or
disassociating from each other. Nothing _coheres_ except the space and
time in their entirety - things move and split off, ruptured, tearing,
in silence against brilliant music. The surface crinkles, morphs, comes
back to the place where it had been - once the moon was clicked, the sun
was clicked. You never go anywhere except inside, Jennifer said.
Tennessee says the animations don't change anything, which she finds
annoying (depending on whom she's looking at it with), but I find the
lack of change intensive, going deeper.

Is lack of change that very slight change that returns to lack?
Is the fullness of being that knowledge of very slight change?

It's always the pace of the world, a world, Jennifer says, in which I
find myself dispersed among glitterings in the dark, and spirals,
leaves, text curled down the page, mothers-fathers everywhere, turns
towards births and deaths, the round of existence, sphere of everything
that is.

Are you Jennifer, Tennessee?
Are you Tennessee, Jennifer?

Jennifer gives this to Tennessee to read.

[This essay was published in an earlier format in Aporia, a zine edited
by Ryan Whyte in Toronto.]