The ball drops, hits a line and bounces It makes a pretty sound and drops, Hits a line and bounces, Another ball drops, hits a line and bounces It mak-mak- a pre-pre-tty-tty so-so-und and dro-dro-ps… They overlay and intertwine, you reach and Shape the path they take, control for a moment, Control is illusion thereof as chaos ensues, And the whole is mysteriously alive, Hacking the sense with which you perceive A single moment in life. The one that is the artist that made this, Puffs a heavy laced smoke that smacks Of chemical hacks that drop, hit a line and bounce Your sense of conscious space, a sound, Distorted sense of where things are a ball drops… The one that we speak to in awe, he looks, On with stoned arrogance, of the person that, Intuits formulaic graphic weaves as part of Reality, not random fields but magical strings, Like a physicist that only sees art. Multiple parallel moments in life. The one that reflects on the beauty of this system, Many years later thinking that this was apex, The most in interactive digital technology art, And discovers its author transformed in tone, Disappointed in the system that shaped his work. This one senses, all is clear… the world Does not like new people, they are a threat To its function, because they see folds Between things that could fall apart, And so it must protect itself… New curious minds enquire. They do not care much about what is rule, And how things should or shouldn’t work, They discover space again, anew, and When the ball drops, hits a line and bounces It makes a pretty sound and drops. And makes a splash inside a mind, A space is shaped where one was not before, It leads to room to take control of the moment, Even if illusion, one that is conscious, Of universe and, of being alive. And time is cycling, dropping and bouncing, pretty sounds... By Yates for JTNimoy
JTNimoy passed away – I’d met once and maintained a bit of an email conversation over the years, to me one of the most influential digital creatives I have known.
The interactive art JTNimoy made is some of the best in my opinion, Ball Dropping still is such a perfect piece it should be part of educational curricula blending physics gravity puzzles with sound. And the suggestion that sound resonant frequency relates to the size of an object.
Earlier this year, knowing things were difficult I’d written a poem to try to convey appreciation for the work. She’d said it was good.