Studies in ReTelling, 2009 (Updated 2025)

"ReTelling" is a computer-generated animation that repeatedly reconfigures a composition consisting of images of varying size to result in a different visual composition each time. It is inspired in part by the OULIPO author Raymond Queneau’s multiple retellings of a simple story, which demonstrate how stylistic changes can shape meaning. This version of "ReTelling" features two collections of images – black and white cover illustrations of 1960s cheap detective stories and, the other, James Bond-style color images found on the internet.

The reconstruction of narratives through the rearrangement of a story’s basic elements has been a principal theme in 20th-century literature, cinema, and art. Examples include the montage techniques of Eisenstein, Resnais, and the author Alain Robbe-Grillet’s "Last Year in Marienbad", as well as Chris Marker’s "La Jetée". The artist Brion Gysin and writer William Burroughs developed a "cut-up" technique in the 1950s, in which a text was sliced into smaller fragments and rearranged randomly to generate new meaning.

Time-based reconstruction is one of the fundamental principles of interactive art. Software artist and engineer Angus Forbes collaborated with the artist to fine-tune a mathematical model, originally used in probability and statistics, as a way to optimally pack a shipping container with objects of varying sizes. The "ReTelling" project explores the expressive potential of this engineering study as a form of storytelling.

The variations of images continuously reorganize themselves in size and location over time, thereby reformulating the narrative outcome of their juxtapositions. In a two-screen presentation, the two image collections migrate over time to the opposite screens, disturbing each other’s coherence. [Click here to view the video]

A George Legrady project, with software engineering and design by Angus Forbes.