svevedikt

By Ottar Ormstad

Svevedikt (trans: poetry floating in the air) consists of seven parts, each in a loop. Every poem is created out of Norwegian words, fixed in the same position all through the animation, but revealed in different degrees. Each poem starts up exposing a few letters. The number of letters is increasing until all of them are seen. Then the number of letters is reduced in a new way. The words are selected in a non-semantic way, and each viewer will experience this differently. Both the images and the sound of the letters when read are important for the experience.

Ormstad, a Norwegian poet active since the 1960s, has created a series of animated concrete poems (with Christian Yde Frostholm, originally published at the Danish afsnitp). The animation and sounds that in printed visual poems were metaphorical promises are now realized through digital media, allowing for processes of change and movement. The work echoes the Concretist poets of the 1950s and 60s and reminds the reader of the continued presence of visual poetry in many languages, across media forms.