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Journal Log 153.17Ab4F
Hive Mind
(upon introducing the android to cicadas for the first time)
The song of the cicadas reverberates through the space between my temples like the fluorescent flicker of a light left on too long, ballast beginning to fail. Although I do not speak their language, the insects’ words spill onto the blank page of my psyche in a haphazard regurgitation of half-formed thoughts and semi-incoherent babble. The pang in the dark recesses of my mind grows louder, echoing the drone and coming to crescendo in a shrill cacophony to rival even the bestworst of Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music. It is unstoppable and unrelenting. As I the ability to focus lose, shift and morph thoughts another together into one, incessant brrage battling the incessant incssent incssnt barrage on my senses. To. No. Avail. I can see and smell and taste the hhhhhuuuuuuummmmmmmmmmmmmmm now – it fills my breath caged within the hollow void of my chest, throbs and echoes choke trying to choke-hold-out the heart b-b-b-beat of my rhythm. I ask the brain focus microchip mindscape from whence my flow thoughts, “Is this to computer a feeeeling as death?”
There 1s n0 reply, n0t even 1n b1nary.
Jennifer Weigel
Our latest Podcast is a prose poem about an AI, or android, experiencing the hum of cicadas for the first time. The inspiration behind this piece? Reflecting upon what this experience might entail, the author considered her first year as an Art student in Kansas when there happened to be three large groups of cicadas all emerging at the same time. The world was abuzz as each group tried to drown out the sound of the others. It was both deafening and terrifying… We present “Hive Mind”, by Jennifer Weigel.
You can listen to the podcast on the player below, or subscribe to “Litro Lab” on Spotify or iTunes.
Podcast: Embed
Did you like this podcast? Listen to “The Boat Ride” by Jane Downs, next.
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Jennifer Weigel is a multi-disciplinary mixed media conceptual artist. Weigel utilizes a wide range of media to convey her ideas, including assemblage, drawing, fibers, installation, jewellery, painting, performance, photography, sculpture, video and writing. Much of her work touches on themes of beauty, identity (especially gender identity), memory & forgetting, and institutional critique.
About Jennifer Weigel
Jennifer Weigel is a multi-disciplinary mixed media conceptual artist. Weigel utilizes a wide range of media to convey her ideas, including assemblage, drawing, fibers, installation, jewelry, painting, performance, photography, sculpture, video and writing. Much of her work touches on themes of beauty, identity (especially gender identity), memory & forgetting, and institutional critique.
