ReVerse Butcher

NationalPoetryMonth.ca April 1, 2023

Burning Batteries by ReVerse Butcher is published on NationalPoetryMonth.ca on April 1, 2023

From ReVerse Butcher

‘Burning Batteries’ is a 2min visual poetry (VISPO) work exploring the intersection between poetry & visual art. Historically, poetry as an artform has always been an early-adopter of new technologies, & quick to explore hybrid art-forms. ‘Burning Batteries’ begins stylistically in the tradition of experimental genres such as the cut-up, collage, permutation, altered book, & erasure poem, & but uses cutting-edge technology to imagine the spatial, & future-poetic.

Poetry need not be what lies flat on a page. Poetry has always been one of the more democratic & adaptable artforms. I call these kinds of poems that I’ve developed, ‘spatial poems’ because, regardless of if they are video or still images, they encourage the reader to think about, & experience, text & space in an unorthodox way. For me, text has never been just a 2 dimensional thing, & when I started incorporating VR into my creative workflow, it again expanded my thinking of what is possible with VISPO. Video, however, is a more accessible form to present these kinds of works, as not everyone has access to a VR headset. So even if I am dreaming up something 3D or immersive, I often must think about how to exhibit these kinds of works in an accessible way that still gets the spatial concepts across clearly. It’s about striking an acceptable creative balance between the thing I see & hear in my head, which is immersive, & the current technological exhibition & distribution constraints. 

I started the process of making this work by sourcing a 100 year old encyclopedia from a used bookstore for $15 AUD, cutting out all its pages with a scalpel, & mixing them up. I then used a mix of acrylic ink, paint & pen to create a series of abstract patterns on top of parts of the text. Ink blots, circles & block colors are motifs that I often return to as part of my stylistic approach.

Next, I made some creative choices about which parts of which pages go where. It is helpful that in this case, the pages have text in columns – which means I can split pages up to further randomize the text, creating chaotic juxtapositions. I then photographed all the pages at high resolution using my iPhone 12 Pro Max, & imported the useful ones into Procreate on my iPad Pro. So, the elements for collage were created using traditional methods, & the collage was assembled using digital ones.

Next, I staged a 3D human model for sketching the portrait that I collaged into the end result, using DAZ 3D. I made some 3D renders from this model to use as reference images. Before the pandemic, I had started attending live drawing sessions to improve my figurative artwork skills – but when that became impossible, I taught myself to use DAZ 3D to create my own reference models. I like that they are portraits of imaginary, non-existent people. I can control every element of their form, facial structure, weight, height, features, & poses which gives me a huge amount of flexibility over the emotive qualities of my figurative works – whether they be 2D digital illustrations, or traditional paintings, or 3D VR/AR/XR artworks. I then created a continuous line drawing digitally, using Procreate & my iPad Pro.

Once I had finished creating the erasure poem, cut up, portrait, &abstract layers (there were over 60 layers in this artwork), I imported those layers into Mental Canvas for iPad. Mental Canvas allows you to project layers or highlighted sections of an image into 3D space, and then fly a virtual camera through it. This was how I achieved the effect of moving through the text.

To create the soundtrack & the performance of the poem, I used my Meta Quest 2 VR headset, & a music composition app called Virtuoso VR. It allows you to play, loop, & record sound using your hands/controllers, unique 3D instruments, & 3D sound fields. It also allows you to record your voice using the headset’s microphone, all in VR. Having had a traditional background in music & poetry performance, this has proved to be one of the most efficient, effective, experimental, & fun ways I have found to make poetry/audio recordings! No studio! No lugging instruments across town! You can make the thing in your living room & it sounds studio quality! You don’t have to collaborate with anyone unless you want to! Nobody else is mixing you! The volume is up to you, & no one else can hear it because it’s in your VR headset, which means… no noise complaints. It’s utterly brilliant as a new method of recording music & spoken word.

Once the soundtrack was finished, I edited the video from Mental Canvas & the audio from Virtuoso VR together in Adobe Premiere Pro.

“Burning Batteries” was first published on Trickhouse Press’ new videopoem channel Trickhouse Films in Feb 2023, both of which are edited by the incredible Dan Power in Scotland. I’m proud to say that “Burning Batteries” is also being featured here now as part of Amanda Earl & AngelHousePress’ celebrations of National Poetry Month Canada 2023.

As a Canadian-born artist & writer, who currently lives in Melbourne, Australia, but who creates & thinks mostly in the metaverse – it’s deeply rewarding to see my little VISPO works fly free & far around the world. I hope you enjoy it, & thank you for including my work in this incredible month-long celebration of VISPO works.    

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