Binary Poetry: ListEN (Performance)

ListEN is a binary poem by Delta poetica that redefines listening as an act that extends beyond sound. In this work, the simple gesture of opening and closing the eyes becomes a system of code, with the open eye signifying 1 and the closed eye 0. The binary framework is thus embodied not in the ear but in the eye, where presence and absence operate as signals of attention, perception, and relation.

The work emphasizes the ambiguity of what it means to listen. By shifting the act of listening into the visual field, ListEN suggests that the body engages in multiple forms of reception, where sight, gesture, and silence constitute parallel modes of understanding. The eyes are framed as organs that both absorb and communicate: they register unspoken cues, express emotion, and reveal intentions that words cannot contain.

In reframing listening as a multisensory and relational state, ListEN draws attention to how perception is never purely auditory or visual but always embodied and distributed across the senses. The binary system of open and closed eyes becomes a metaphor for how communication itself oscillates between clarity and opacity, presence and withdrawal.

Situated within Delta poetica’s Binary Poetry series, ListEN articulates the entanglement of code, perception, and meaning. It bridges the technical abstraction of binary with the intimacy of embodied interaction, suggesting that true listening involves not only sound but also multisensory and more-than-human forms of awareness, where perception extends across different modalities and inter-being conditions.