Back to Gallery

The Lair of the Marrow Monkey

An experiment in combining motion, interactivity, music and poetry.

Year 1998
Format
Website
Recognition
Winner, 1998 New Media Invision Silver Award, Best Personal Web Site
Permanent Collection of Architecture and Design, SFMOMA
Honorable Mention, 1999 Prix Ars Electronica

The Lair of the Marrow Monkey, one of the first websites to be added to the permanent collection of a major art museum, is an experiment in using a dynamic, abstract interface to communicate memory, emotion and narrative. 

Video Documentation

Three of the project's chapters are presented below.




"Mnemonic membrane” allows users to play with a dynamic surface which is sensitive to words and contains memories.
In this chapter, the user enacts the story by touching typographic elements which have dynamic behaviours that express the meaning of the text.
Here, each word of the monologue explodes across the screen with realistic physics, while the individual letters constantly maintain their left-to right ordering.
In this interactive table of contents, each disc represents a chapter of the work; with the mouse the user can rotate a disc to the front and then grab it with the triangular pincers.