THE OLD POND

An old silent pond,

A frog jumps into the pond -

SPLASH! Silence again.

POEM BY MATSUO BASHO

WE RARELY KNOW HOW ANOTHER PERSON IMAGINES A POEM.

THIS PROJECT INVITES YOU TO CONSTRUCT YOUR OWN INTERPRETATION
OF BASHO'S HAIKU USING A SHARED VISUAL LANGUAGE.

We rarely know how another person imagines a poem.

A few lines of text can create completely different scenes in different minds. Some people imagine darkness, others sunlight. Some imagine movement, insects, wind, cold air, deep water, or silence. Even when reading the same words, no two people picture exactly the same thing. Most of these imagined images disappear the moment we finish reading. This project explores what happens when those private interpretations are collected, visualised, and shared.

THE OLD POND

An old silent pond,

A frog jumps into the pond -

SPLASH! Silence again.

POEM BY MATSUO BASHO

Although the haiku is short, it leaves large gaps for imagination. Bashō provides very little visual information, allowing readers to construct the atmosphere, movement, environment, and emotion of the scene themselves. this project explores the space between reading and imagining.

This platform invites users to build their own interpretation of the poem using a shared library of illustrated and animated elements, treating perception as something active, unstable, and continuously changing.

Participation

This project has been influenced by participatory web environments and collaborative digital spaces where users collectively shape the outcome of a work over time.

The platform is intended to be exploratory, playful, and reflective. There is no correct way to build a scene.

Some users may focus on realism, others atmosphere, abstraction, movement, rhythm, or emotion. Our archive is less about a single poem, and more about the collective process of imagining.

Project designed by Théa Dubois

An old silent pond,

A frog jumps into the pond --

SPLASH! Silence again.

Drag images to make a scene