Of Shifting Shadows

Gita Hashemi

Please select your experience. On a high bandwidth connection we will use .wav audio, which provides very high quality sound, but uses significantly more data.

Of Shifting Shadows was created in 2000 as an interactive CD-R. The web version is made in 2021 and is still in beta phase.

For optimal viewing, we recommend Firefox or Google Chrome on desktop.

The version for tablets has minor glitches. We are working on it.

If you encounter any problems, please email shifting@gitaha.net. Tell what device and browser you used.

The purpose of this guide is to introduce you to the Programme's interface and navigation tools.

This is the Title Screen, which you have already seen.

Roll your cursor over these buttons to find out where they take you when you click on them.

Where they lead changes based on what screen you are at.

I want to delimit a space-time in which to wander this medium of duality, of actuality and virtuality, of physicality and spirituality, of presentation and representation,

This is the Prelude Screen. Here, the Author expresses the ideas that led to the making of this piece. When the Introduction is finished, the Programme will take you to the Story Screen. To find out more about the tools, roll over them. [We wish to clarify that the Author is a fictional character. To know more about the Author, listen to Goli.]

At the Stories screen, you must click on one of the names Goli, Mina or Bita to start. You may choose to start with any of the three.

The programme begins by playing the first story segment of the character you selected in her window. Each character's story has 12 parts. Each part is comprised of a video followed by an audio narration that is accompanied by a graphic animation.

When a story part is finished, the Author's commentary appears as an animation loop or an interactive story in the bottom third of the window. The Author’s commentary and the theme music loop until you choose another story part.

This button moves you forward in a character’s story

This button moves you back

This button moves you to the beginning of the character’s story.

Each set of buttons moves only inside the story of one character.

At any point during or at the end of a story playback, you may click in another character’s window to play back the part that is thematically aligned with the part just played.

Filmstrip This cursor indicates that the window is active and you can click to play back.

Story parts are aligned thematically, not numerically. For example, Mina’s first part is aligned with Bita’s fourth and Goli’s eleventh. When you use navigation buttons to move inside one character’s story, the parts in the windows of the other characters move too.

There are no right or wrong ways of viewing Of Shifting Shadows. Like memory and history, the order and meaning are shifting.

of time in space and space in time, of times and of spaces, of presences and absences, of present, the gate to our past, our future,

of transitions from permanence to impermanence, from stable to unstable, from my purpose to your reading and your meaning to my singing,

me, the mirror before your mirror, the stuff of infinity.

I want to plant in this medium of duality the heart of our naked bodies, bodies like other bodies, in motion, in rest, in desire, in satisfaction or frustration, in pain, in pleasure, in pain and pleasure bodies in touch acting interacting

on the sand in the water over the hill through the wind under the sheet beneath the sky deep in the matter shallow in the breadth

as we breath together in the play of our minds echoing each the other’s voice for I am here and so are You and the tale I want to tell concerns you and me and the space-time of our infinity...