ANTIREVOLUTIONARY finds "love" in haiku form
NEW YORK, February 23, 2011 -- New York-based experimental production studio MomenTech has released "ANTIREVOLUTIONARY," an 11-second "video haiku" featuring the letters of the word "anti-revolutionary" presented one at a time in reverse order.
The appearance of each letter is accompanied by the sound of a single gun shot.
A haiku has 17 mora, or "syllable-weight" in phonological terms. The word "anti-revolutionary" has 17 letters, making it a perfect for a haiku treatment.
The red background is a reference to both the color of revolution, and also the red circle of the Japanese flag, which represents the Sun. This connection recalls the Meiji Revolution (aka Meiji Restoration), which abolished the feudal regime of the Tokugawa shogunate and restored imperial rule to Japan in 1868.
The word "anti-revolutionary" spelled backwards is "YRANOITULOVERITNA," which among other words, reveals the words "love" and "lover."
This lexical "discovery" is a subtle reference to the story of Shogun Iemitsu: War and Romance in 17th Century Tokugawa Japan, a 2009 historical-based novel by Michael Zomber that "chronicles a day in the life of two young samurai, Hideo and Kobiyashi, as they attend a festival, fall in love, and put down a rebellion against the Tokugawa government that changes their lives forever."
