Binary Poetry: ListEN (Kinetic sculpture–poem)
ListEN (Kinetic sculpture–poem) translates the act of listening into a mechanical performance of sight. The work consists of eight sculpted eyes arranged in two rows, each fitted with a fabric eyelid that opens and closes through a lever mechanism. The eyelids are driven by eight wooden cams aligned on a rotating metal rod, connected by gears and chains to a hand-cranked handle. Each cam can be manually coded by inserting wooden sticks into its holes, determining when the levers will lift or release the eyelids.
As the handle turns, the coded cams rotate counterclockwise, their embedded sticks pressing and releasing the levers in a programmed rhythm. The eyelids open and close in sequence, spelling the word ListEN in binary code, with open eyes representing 1 and closed eyes representing 0. When the sequence completes, a bell rings, marking both the end of the cycle and the completion of the poem.
The work reimagines listening as an act that transcends sound. Here, the sculpture itself “says” listen not through a voice but through vision. The eyes become the organs of both speech and attention, enacting a form of silent address that calls for awareness without words. To listen through sight is to attend to others, to the world, and to what lies beyond immediate comprehension by seeing rather than speaking.
Within this system, the act of opening and closing the eyes acquires layered implications. To open the eyes is to face truth, to look upon what is often concealed, and to speak through vision itself, to witness, reveal, and resist invisibility. To close the eyes is equally nuanced: it can mean withdrawal, refusal, or the turning away from what demands recognition. Yet closure is not always voluntary. The weighted mechanisms that pull the eyelids shut evoke external forces, social, cultural, political, and economic powers that determine what may be seen or ignored. In this dynamic, ListEN becomes both a poetic and political instrument, mapping the tension between agency and control, attention and repression.
The rhythmic motion of the eyelids evokes pulse, signal, and heartbeat, a temporal structure that binds perception to life. Through this rhythm, the sculpture embodies the fragility and persistence of awareness, suggesting that seeing and listening are not passive acts but ongoing negotiations between freedom and force, between what one chooses and what one endures.
ListEN (Kinetic sculpture–poem) extends Delta poetica’s exploration of the material and philosophical dimensions of code within the Binary Poetry series. By translating the word listen into a visual and mechanical language, the work redefines perception as a multisensory, ethical, and intersubjective condition. It proposes that to truly listen is to engage in a dialogue of vision, an embodied, coded form of attention that spans the thresholds between the human, the mechanical, and the social.
