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<Alt+Delete> (2002) is (when exhibited) a live stream from my studio in Montréal of a glass tray containing a photograph immersed in water. The right side of the interface holds two images of, respectively, the original manuscript for Baudelaire's "Spleen de Paris" and Proust's "A la Recherche de la Temps Perdue".
By clicking on the two gold rings (buttons below the video image) you are directly controlling a small robotic armature which shakes and collides two small glass vials that hover above the tray which contain bleach in one and blue dye in the other. Each screening, after someone has managed to finally jostle the vials into releasing one or the other fluid, the photo will be either partially eaten away (in the case of the bleach being spilled into the tray) or it will be tinted blue. Like memory itself we see the past either through a kind of (metaphorical) bluish nostalgia such as when early cinematographers would tint film to emulate night, or enhance an image in a melancholic manner, like early postcards.
As you navigate the book interfaces you may play them like an instrument and trigger video segments (a kind of database of history) which were shot in and around the environs in which these two seminal writers worked and lived.

I have included an archive of images which have been altered in this manner which you can see here.

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Please set your monitor to 1024 x 768 for screening. This piece is intended for a high speed connection such as cable modem.
*IMPORTANT: For streaming of the box you will need to go into your QuickTime Settings (control panels) and under the Streaming Transport option choose RTSP (instead of HTTP) and specify port ID 554. If you are behind a firewall you will need to open port 554.
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Vous aurez besoin de la version 6 de Macromedia Flash Player pour visiter ce site.
Veuillez ajuster la résolution de votre écran à 1024 x 768. Le visionnement de <Alt+Delete> est supérieur avec un Mac G3/4 utilisant Netscape 4.7+ ou un IE 5+ avec QuickTime 5+ et Flash 6 installés. La pièce est conçue pour une connexion haute vitesse, par câble par exemple, et ne fonctionnera pas correctement avec une ligne téléphonique.*
*IMPORTANT : Pour la lecture vidéo en transit de la boîte, vous devez aller dans la configuration de votre QuickTime (panneau de commande) et, sous l’option « Streaming Transport », choisir rtsp (plutôt que http), puis spécifier « port ID 554 ». Si vous êtes protégés par un coupe-feu, vous devez ouvrir le « port 554 ».