I’m now more inclined to attribute Looseleaf’s power to its visual texture than to some cognitive media-style abstraction. And the visual texture owes more to the beauty (yes, beauty!) of the original pdfs from the Vasulka Archive. Perhaps the demo is best understood not as a prototype generic tool, but as a specific curated experience in its own right, with form and content claiming equal importance in its overall success.
Even so, I think there are some general lessons that can be drawn from this demo:
Content is not inert
Visual texture lets content breathe
Visual texture lets the eye wander without losing itself
“Can I ask you one more question?”
“Sure.”
“Have you already decided on the next barn to burn?”
This caused him to furrow up wrinkles between his eyes; then he inhaled audibly through his nose. “Well, yes. As a matter of fact, I have.”
I sipped the last of my beer and said nothing.
“A great barn. The first barn really worth burning in ages. Fact is, I went and checked it out only today.”
“Which means, it must be nearby.”
“Very near,” he confirmed.
I walked around with a map, penciling in X’s wherever there was a barn or shed. For the next three days, I covered four kilometers in all four directions. Living toward the outskirts of town, there are still a good many farmers in the vicinity. So it came to a considerable number of barns—sixteen altogether.
I carefully checked the condition of each of these, and from the sixteen I eliminated all those where there were houses in the immediate proximity or greenhouses alongside. I also eliminated those in which there were farm implements or chemicals or signs that they were still in active use. I didn’t imagine he’d want to burn tools or fertilizer. That left five barns.
Every morning, I still run past those five barns. Not one of them has yet burned down. Nor do I hear of any barn fires. Come December, the birds strafe overhead. And I keep getting older. Although just now and then, in the depths of the night, I’ll think about barns burning to the ground.