Street Vendor's Kinetescope
Ink on vellum
63 x 36 inches
A mobile, human-powered animation machine can be made out of a street vendor’s cart, a viewfinder retrofit with battery (or solar-powered) strobe light, and various gears on expandable arms. Animations drawn in circular episodes on the surface of the gears can be put in motion by the viewer (whose headgear limits the focus of the reading to single frames) or viewed as one supra-historical composition. Inspired by Octavia Butler and her Hugo-award winning story "Speech Sounds" in response to her vision of a post-apocalyptic Los Angeles where everyone has lost their ability to read, write and speak. (Recently republished in Reload: Rethinking Women in Cyberculture)