Country and place of production: Berlin, Germany & Austin, Texas
Language: English
Title: frog_poem_text.doc
Filmmaker and editor: Annelyse Gelman
Translator: Annelyse Gelman / Google Translate

“frog_poem_text.doc began as an attempt to translate the poem I received into abstract field recordings. When Berlin’s frogs proved uncooperative, I decided to make a kind of recording of the poem in a digital field, using Google Translate to create a chain of translations from English into each available language – 103 in total, from Afrikaans to Zulu – proceeding in alphabetical order. I was interested in maintaining some of the imagery and observational eye of the original text while transforming its sensuousness and sentimentality into something cold and mechanical, and in working with a software collaborator that can produce, but not understand, language.”

Annelyse Gelman

frog_poem_text.doc
year
Solomon Rome
Pakistan peritumearal
sports

by
but
support

people
by

This means that
hepi’o
all

glass technology
news

music
night
year

year
black
low
and
the
earth
brown
red
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