"In the Leyden Jar Project, Cole Swensen and I present our own, very individual celebration of the history of interdisciplinary creativity. These poems don’t merely chart a history of science. Sulfur globes, paper horses, concreted humors, tiny wooden mannequins, “gaseous mixtures that used to be boys,” and the lips of the Venus electrificata are some of the many inhabitants of this cabinet of curiosities while we are ourselves moths caught by the kite that electricity built and “annealed to the surface of the night.” Our perception is subtly shifted as the visible and invisible word-waves of the electro-magnetic spectrum wash over us: “The human / as an experimental technology not unlike / the tethered thunder / rumbling over Marly / translating Franklin into village lightning.” I was thrilled to receive these thirty-six poems sent in bits and bytes at the speed of light from Paris and even more delighted to present Swensen’s voice recorded digitally in Providence, Rhode Island to you now. Wielding her brush with a deft hand, Cole Swensen paints a delectable landscape electrified by the many figures of the Leyden Jar’s curious past. When a jar is touched, a signal is sent to the microprocessor, which causes it to play a recording of one of the thirty-six poems in this book each jar ‘contains’ three poems, which are played according to the length of time that the jar has been touched. These conductive metal surfaces are connected to an Arduino microprocessor stored in a compartment below the bottom shelf of jars. The translucence of the acrylic and the glass are contrasted by the bands of gold (leaf over copper foil) encircling each of the jars. Reading has always been a tactile, visual, and auditory experience, though generally when we read a traditional book we 'hear' the voice of the author in our minds as we ‘voice’ the text internally. The pages of The Leyden Jar Project return us to the oral origins of poetry, while the project as a whole explores the deep history of technology.Ĭreated in an edition of twelve, the Leyden Jar Project consists of an acrylic box and twelve glass jars. Pushing the boundaries of book-ness, the twelve Leyden Jars of the book sculpture speak out loud when touched.
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