Listen to MP3 Commentary by
Pete Moraites and Eric Scott
(Salvador Dalek)

Twitterpation
Hands / ASL - Alyson Boote

This piece began with my long time fascination with sign language and led me to begin learning ASL.

The intention was to make poetry with hands, by exploring the ideas of hypnotic poetry or poetic hypnosis, and by using the hands as fluid dancing forms… in those bits the poetry of hands resembles ASL like ee cummings poetry resembles a dictionary… they use the same forms and structures.

This piece was my first collaboration with Alyson Boote. We darkened a room and shot some video with a flashlight playing over her dancing hands in shining white gloves. Aly’s hands are beautiful and expressive in motion. This is a piece I always intended to expand and explore further.

We picked the track from a disc I’d made of some of the cinemathematica material. Once I stitched the music and visuals together, they just clicked. Now it’s like simpletongue, I feel like they were made to go together.

Recently I added in some ASL pencil animation from the 500pages set… I have some more ASL drawings in my journals which I’m gonna start layering in as well.