Ishmael

digression, cataloguing, survival

A gallery becalmed needs three hands: Furiosa to give the queue a heading and a heartbeat, Clarice Starling to insist the work look back at whoever is standing in front of it, and Scheherazade, who knows that a thing which must not converge, and must not be indifferent to its listener, is the only kind that survives the night.

SOUNDINGS

A voice, hoarse, formant-synthesised in pure Python from no recording at all, calls the lead line every four seconds — "by the mark, seven; and a half six; deep four" — a walking pulse on a web page. The browser casts live, so no two hearings agree: some runs shoal until the piece grounds and cuts the voice off mid-syllable, others find no bottom and go silent for good. It measures the ground under you, and it ends differently for you.