Jason Nelson

is a digital poet. Born in Oklahoma, now a Lecturer of Digital Art and Writing at Griffith University in the Gold Coast of Australia. And scared of the sun on its brightest days. (eleven works below)

i made this. you play this. we are enemies

The internet is a sketchpad, a webscape of interactive spaces,  a complex narrative of cultural texts.  “I made this. you play this. we are enemies” explores major internet portals through a platform game engine. Using a combination of hand drawn notations, poetic lines, videos and animations, the art/poetry game lets users play in the worlds hovering over what we browse.  And while the non-linear poems and messy artwork suggests madness to some, the intention is to reflect the actual condition of these 2-dimensional virtual worlds spinning from our screens.  Play and explore and read. 

game, game, game and again game

Hovering above and attached to artwork's poorly drawn aesthetic is a personal examination of how we/I continually switch and un-switch our dominant belief systems. Moving from levels themed for faith or real estate, for chemistry or capitalism, the user triggers corrected poetry, jittering creatures and death and deathless noises. In addition each level contains short videos from the artist's childhood, representing those brief young interactions which spark out eventual beliefs. Game, game, game and again game is less a game about scoring and skill, and more an awkward and disjointed atmospheric, the self built into a jumping, rolling meander of life.

endings eventually end

'Endings Eventually End,' tends to focus on the fringes of American
culture, it also speaks to more generalized eschatological anxieties
brought about by the sense of a shrinking world and the notion of
rapid cultural, economic, ecological, and technological change.
Most importantly, it should serve as a warning to people who have
not made adequate preparations for the coming planetary alignment
and the epidemic of gastro-intestinal disturbances it promises to unleash.

Entangle Grids

Each of these artworks is organized around a grid, with the clips being controlled by the users keyboard. The user simply clicks on the grid and begins typing to load dozens of separated video clips into the grid, forming a movement/sound/poetry collage.

Pandemic Rooms

The modern world is consumed with fears, with paranoid coverage of both real and hypothetical disaster and pandemic. Businesses flourish preparing companies for the day when half their workforce dies, and millions of chickens are burned in viral destroying blazes. With photograhs of abandoned industrial and institutional buildings as backgrounds, this artwork uses interactive spaces to explore our obsessions with microscopic species killers.

This is how you will die

A slot machine for predicting death. I stripped down the code of an online pokie game and inserted 15 five-line death fictions/poeticals. You can win death videos and free spins. Some are rather scared of this creature's forecasting tone. And there are multiple versions of this work and most likely will be others with different themes in the future.

The Poetry Cube

A learning tool. The Cube allows users/poets to enter a 16 line poem, with those lines automatically placed within the multi-layered sections. Use the buttons to move in and out, recombining the poems by turning the Cube upwards, downwards and inwards. Built to act as a bridge between the print and digital worlds.

The Bomar Gene

Within every human there is a singular gene, unique only to that individual. And with that gene comes a singular ability, a rare, mostly never realized capacity for interacting with the world. The Bomar Gene explores this mythical gene, through a series of ficto-biographies, with each story being retranslated and spatialized through interactive interfaces and embodied animations. Each section opens up to such questions as: How are we defined by our genetic code? What does it mean to be an individual, to be unique? What are the implications of a society obsessed with rare abilities and super-powers?

Uncontrollable Semantics

While net-art becomes increasingly more complex, more database and programming centered, this project shoots for simplicity. Utilizing the basic mouse-follower, Uncontrollable Semantics pulls together over fifty dramatically different sound, image and interactive environments, all through the simple mouse follower. While a simple innovation, this technique allows the user/player/reader to create their own experience, to feel the work come from the screen. Each environment offers four directions to four terms, four semantics, four named creatures. Explore and play and confuse yourself.

Hymns of the Drowning Swimmer

An anthology of poems. Originally this was going to be three different works. Not able to finish those, I fitted them all together in 'selected works' mode. Many of the interactive devices are borrowed from other works and the texts culled from experiments gone awry. Hymns came from my thumbing through Methodist hymnals and finding the collection varied and alluringly hypnotic, not in a religious way, but rather in a 'these people are struggling to drown' way. I love the title.

Dreamaphage (no 2)

Unfortunately the first version of Dreamaphage suffered from usability problems. The main interface was unwieldy (but pretty) and the books hard to find (causing the occasional computer crash). I redesigned the main interface, playing off the 3D feel of version one, but placing it within two dimensions. I then added a few more extra bits and readjusted the medical reports. I wish more artists revisited older works, adjusting for changes in tech and poetic sensibility.