Project for Tachistoscope [Bottomless Pit]: A Review

Published in October of 2005, William Poundstone's work, "Project for Tachistoscope [Bottomless Pit]," is claimed to be, in so many words, "a quiet assault of, and perhaps on, icons."  I'd rather think of it as an act of October mischief or quite possibly a Halloween trick, for although I can appreciate it for it's artistic and literary moves, it certainly was no treat!  In fact, it seemed to be more of just one never ending stream of stress.

According to Poundstone, "Project for Tachistoscope" is, in general, a tip-of-the-hat to the histories of avant-garde and popular culture.  In the briefest of explanations, his work tells a story about a town with a bottomless pit.  This story is told via a display of rapid-fire words running in a loop set atop seemingly ambiguous icon images, with menacing music playing in the background and disturbing subliminal imagery flashing for mere milliseconds between words--I believe the words "quiet assault" may have been an understatement, Mr. Poundstone.  


Described in the author's notes, Poundstone mentions the "coincidence" that subliminal messaging and concrete poetry were both introduced as concepts at almost exactly the same time in history.  I suppose it stands to reason, then, upon viewing "Project," that Poundstone's work can  be closely related to that of concrete poetry, if one is asked to attribute it to a specific genre.  While it doesn't exactly take the same "shape" as concrete poetry would, forming words into images of the poem's subject, his work DOES mold the words into some form of its subject in that it uses the methods of the tachistoscope machine to present the text.  




Navigation of this work, is not exactly confusing, but definitely left up to the reader to decide where to start, despite the obvious "start" button in the middle of the home screen.  Should the reader choose to explore the "contextual paratext" first, there are seven icons displayed around the "start" button that only appear when the mouse is resting above said button, otherwise they disperse beyond the screen view of the reader.  These icons link the reader to other pages that provide additional information about the project, including: the historical background of the tachistoscope,  a brief explanation of the work and the best way for the reader to train his/her eyes throughout the experience, some historical background on the historical coincidence of and correlation between concrete poetry and subliminal messaging.  However, the freedom of navigating the page is only the reader's when exploring the paratext.




Should the reader choose to bypass all of the paratext and head straight for the "start" button, he/she is met with a very linear, very restrictive, and very frustrating experience.  By clicking "start," the reader hands the reigns over to the computer program.  Words flash extremely fast on the screen, along with cartoonish icon pictures and subliminal images while in the background unsettling sounds (dare I say music?) play, all making it very difficult to read and comprehend the actual story that is being told through the text.  The reader cannot pause or stop the words from jumping out at them every second.  If a word is missed, a word is missed.  But it's okay, because any words that were missed can be viewed again in approximately 10 minutes when the loop of words is brought back to the  beginning for yet another assault on its now highly suspecting victim.  Essentially, what this continuous flow of text does is create a situation in which the reader actually feels like he/she is falling into this never-ending stream of words, or bottomless pit (not-so-ironically the subject of the text).  If falling into a bottomless pit wasn't enough, the music is designed specifically to evoke specific feelings of uneasiness at specific moments in the text.  The subliminal imagery also has this effect, without the reader being necessarily aware of it. 


 For example:

 According to one reviewer from Yale University, 

"The experience is jarring and sparks all three sorts of help-seeking emotions–confusion about the meaning of the pit story and the flickering images, anxiety about the creepy subliminal images, frustration that the tedious, unnerving video can’t be paused or navigated. But not only does the work offer no viable solution to the conundrums it poses, the “help” it does provide is complicit in the same distressing provocation."

In this critique, the reviewer claims that the contextual material offered to the reader as supplemental information is just as confusing as the "main event" itself because it is non-linear and confusing as to its relation to the fictional text about a nondescript town with a bottomless pit problem.

In her essay, “Machine Poetics and Reading Machines: William Poundstone’s Electronic Literature and Bob Brown’s Readies," Jessica Pressman spend some time talking discussing what she calls "media archaeology" or “a method of examining the cultural conditions that make possible the emergence of new technologies, and recognizing that our reading practices are shaped by historical contexts and media formats renders media archaeology a vital practice for literary criticism.”  She uses Poundstone's Project for Tachistoscope" as an example of this, highlighting his use of cultural history in electronic literature to elicit “suspicious reading,” in which the reader is drawn in and forced to dig deeper into the text.  

Overall, as I mentioned previously, I can definitely appreciate what William Poundstone was trying to do with this piece.  While I believe he absolutely accomplished an evocative feeling of anxiety in his readers through his use of tachistoscope methods and subliminal messaging, I do not feel the need to ever revisit this piece for the simple fact that I prefer to immerse myself in literature that diminishes stress, not causes it.