In Sequential
by Trent Watkins
I began working on my altered book with the notion of choosing words on a page based on a random image in my head. After a short time, it seemed that given any collection of three to four hundred words, words could be chosen for most random images. I began to wonder if the opposite was true. Could a cohesive image be selected from a random selection of words on the page of a novel? I began by using simple number sequences such as the number line, prime number sequence, and the Fibonacci sequence to select words on a randomly selected page. The meticulousness of the exercise—counting and crossing out specific words—banished any possibility of selecting an image on the fly. It was only later, after a few days away, that I came back and looked for an image. Sometimes words would group to allow for ready images: sky, distant, rain, starting, she, headlights, limo. These words can be taken and jumbled up to create different sets of images. How does the image change to see the words in this order: she, distant, limo, headlights, starting, rain, sky? It is interesting to see how easily the human mind can make such connections from seeming randomness, and that became my experiment.
