Recaos

animated videotex (minitel) poem "Recaos" (1986), Eduardo Kac

When viewers logged on, the first saw the letter C on the lower right corner of the screen. The letter A appeared above the C, followed by a series of letters O moving upwards. This motion was against the default mode of the videotex medium, which refreshed pages with slow top-to-bottom scans. Like a light beam, the letter was "reflected" by the top margin of the screen and redirected down and to the left. It changed into the letter S and moved swiftly across the screen horizontally. Up to this point all letters were red. Once the letter S reached the rightmost margin of the screen, the acrostic SOS was formed in blue at the center. The animation then came to halt, leaving the viewer with the image of the infinite symbol.