Fidget

A project by writer Kenneth Goldsmith and programmer Clem Paulsen, 'Fidget' is hosted by the website Stadium. It is a java applet written by Paulsen and based on Goldsmith's 'Fidget' text, a transcription of recordings Goldsmith made in which he spoke every body movement he made for 13 hours on June 16 1997 (Bloomsday).

'Fidget' attempts to reduce the body to a catalogue of mechanical movements by a strict act of observation. Goldsmith aims to be objective like the photographer Edward Muybridge. In 'Fidget', Goldsmith reduces language to its basic elements in order to record and understand movement in its basic form. Despite these aims, the dictates of the work. like the self-observation and the duration of the act, create a condition of shifting referent points and multiple levels of observation that undermine the objective approach.

One of the sponsors of the piece was the Whitney Museum of American Art in Manhattan.