William Kentridge - "The Refusal of Time"

I went to the MOMA to see William Kentridge's exhibit entitled "The Refusal of Time." It was on the second floor, and the installation was comprised of a mechanical, moving wooden centerpiece with five screens around it. The screens were all very large, and showed different scenes of animation, filming, and even music. At first, each screen just showed five different clocks, all moving at different rhythms, which gradually sped up in an exponential fashion. The scenes then show an old man walking amongst book pages, then cuts to different figures speaking different storylines. Finally, an empty black space is shown, with white figures appearing that seem to allude to stars. Finally, an animation shows with black silohuettes.

The wooden sculpture in the center was a very complex and impressive piece of work. It contained many parts and was huge. It reminded me of an engine of sorts, especially one with steampunk aesthetics and themes.

"The Refusal of Time" is referencing the fact that everyone knows that they're going to die, but of course will try to resist death with every instinct and action. I looked up what Kentridge said about the exhibit, and he stated that it wasn't about escaping mortality itself, but escaping the pressures that mortality imposes onto us. I think that time and death go hand-in-hand, and by giving this concept of escaping mortality the name of refusing time, Kentridge does something very interesting and unexpected to set up the frame behind his exhibit.

Final: Text Adventure Essay in MS Word

I wanted to experiment with a few different forms of media for my final. As we were getting into the concept of a labyrinth and how it relates to the repetition of time, I thought that the form of a text adventure game would demonstrate these ideas perfectly. To emulate the effects of a text adventure game, I used Microsoft Word and video capturing software to record my typing and subsequently the text that I copied-and-pasted from another document. This became the interface between the user of the game and the computer / narrator of the game. I then began a playthrough of the "game." In the first run, I make a lot of bad choices, choices that would have negative consequences in the real world, and so that translated to the game. Each bad choice I made would lead to a subsequent event / conflict, and with enough bad choices, you lose the game, meaning that you failed to rescue the princess you promised to save. At first, I seem reluctant to play the game, but the story (Around 2000 words of text) draws me in, and I decide to restart the game and play it through. This time, I learn from my mistakes and seemingly make all the right choices, and the events are completely different than the first playthrough. Still, though, in the end, the princess dies, and the ending screen shows me attempting to restart the game for yet another run.

I also put an indie rock song that I synced with the video to help make it more engaging. I also sped up the gameplay to over 150% than the speed at which it actually occurred, to give it a brisk, game-like pace.

I enjoy writing fiction, and while this story is as stereotypical and archetypical as it gets, I still had fun writing it, and it's definitely a medium that I never thought about working with before (A video of text). It was a pretty unique project, and it's a piece that I would put in my portfolio for its concepts as an art piece as well as to present the writing itself.