“The Endless Mile (Another Line of Becoming)” is an interactive computational artwork that blends live and prepared media through procedural graphics generation, real-time animation, and audio-visual synthesis. Each time its underlying program runs, the artwork generates new aesthetic assemblies from an index of prepared components, including animated elements, images and videos, virtual 3D models, and sounds, as well as live media inputs prompted through performative interaction or audience feedback. While each component initially comprises its own individual statement, the collective assembly yields variable and sometimes overlapping phrases.The aesthetic arrest of audiovisual content sometimes misrepresents computational artworks as cinematic endeavors. Strictly approaching such work from within cinematic discourse misses an important conceptual framework. “The Endless Mile” is built upon a poetic combine structure that’s more akin to Robert Rauschenberg’s “The 1/4 Mile or 2 Furlong Piece” (1981–98) than to fixed cinematic narrative. While presented as an animated video mural, the work’s real-time affordances confound strict linear flow and relinquish authorial control from within the momentary relationships of the scroll. Authorial influence instead resides in the design of the index and the system itself, which perpetually spawn new component combinations throughout its open-ended duration.This presentation considers expansive frontiers for making and experiencing animation at the intersections of art, technology, and live performance. Poetic frameworks in procedural real-time graphics, collective assemblies, and collaborative design situate the historical examples and contemporary works highlighted in this presentation.References include: theatrical storytelling paradigms in Indonesian Wayang Beber and Wayang Kulit traditions; early cinematic actualities, novelty films, and the cinema of attractions; eighteenth and nineteenth-century theatrical immersions, including phantasmagorias, architectural panoramas, and mechanical scrolls; post-media tendencies of Expanded Cinema, the Neo-Avant-Garde, Fluxus, and contemporary art practice; behavioral studies in psychology and UX design; as well as computational ambiance acts, counter-gaming console hacks, and AI-generated cinematic arts practices.Works Cited (abbreviated):
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