Whereas "The Epic of the
Machine" creates pictures by a graphical choreography of
text (another version of kinetic poetry?), the next
example's visualisation is based on real images. 
"Trost
der Bilder" by
Jürgen Daibers and Jochen Metzgers is the prizewinner
of a German competition for literature on the internet in
1998 (see review
in dichtung-digital). The title translates as "Consolation
of Images". Actually, it should be entitled "Consolation of
Stories", since the work itself consists of several short
stories which can be read by clicking on them in a table of
contents. One of these stories, entitled "Die
Schaufensterpuppe" ("The Mannequin"), is about a man who
falls in love with a mannequin. What we
see is a text
with a part of the mannequin's
face in the margin.
The text translates as follows.
My friend had
fallen in love with a mannequin from the winter
collection from Horten. After closing he would stand in
front of the window for hours no matter how cold out it
was. He was aware of the strangeness of his love,
however, he wanted to be near the mannequin at any
price.
One evening he hid
himself in a changing room in the women's section. Once
the light was turned out and the room was empty he
sneaked over to her. "I took her out of the window and
released her arms and legs from their unnatural
position", he later told me.
The next file presents the
second part of text and the second part of the mannequin's
face.
He set the
mannequin onto a chair. He did not undress her. He did
not touch her improperly. "I just was sitting in front of
her and looking at her. Everybody claims that her eyes
are glassy and lifeless. But she looked at me. I swear
she looked at me, in a way nobody ever has looked at
me."
Next day P. was
discovered by the store detective.
Having determined that
nothing was stolen the director abstained from a report.
P was banned from the store. He now shops at a different
chain. His sweetheart disappeared in March, just when the
first buds were to be seen on the branches of cherry
trees. The color of her face had peeled off; she wasn't
suitable for the spring collection.
There is no real sadness or even melancholy in these eyes
since this is not a real person who could have reasons from
her past. Nevertheless, her eyes look sad, and therefore
they are intriguing, at least for those who have grown up in
a culture where romantics, decadents, or whoever else may
labor under the burden of ennui have declared that
melancholia ennobles the soul. Those who agree that
melancholia distinguishes one from the clueless, happy
masses may also understand why the man in this story acts as
he does.
The notion of melancholia
easily fits with another concept: to live in imagination.
The love for a mannequin is exactly about this. It applies
to the myths of Pygmalion and Narcissus to the extent that
in both cases the object of love comes out of the lover
himself. Needless to say, love for a person who is not a
genuine other signifies an escape from real life. The title
"Consolation of Images" makes perfectly sense if one reads
it as "Consolation of Imagination".
From here we might draw a
connection to the reading process in general, since this too
is a materialization of life in our fantasy. The joy of the
aesthetic process is the joy of creation. According to
constructivists, reading is nothing more than an
autobiographical act or, if I may say so, to hook up with
one's own personality. The assigning of meaning to words is
conditioned by how our history, that is to say who we are,
has shaped our understanding of them. However, in the case
under discussion this process of imagination is limited, for
the mannequin is not described with words but shown as an
image. The language of images dispenses with the language of
words. Only because the mannequin does not materialize in
language can it be taken away. The deeper meaning of this
piece lies in the feature of intermediality, as well as in
the programming of the reading process, which may be called
the feature of performance or animation.
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