rita

“Automatype” by Daniel C. Howe

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Automatype
“Automatype” by Daniel Howe

Daniel Howe offers various possibilities for describing Automatype, as “either ambient text art, a weird game of solitaire for the computer, or an absorbing ongoing puzzle for a human viewer.” The installation has nine screens with one word each. The piece uses the RiTa Toolkit , which was specifically developed for the creation of language experiments and generative literature.
Each of the words “evolves” by changing one letter at the time, much like the Word Morph game, but they all work independently of one another.

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“Mémoire Involontaire” by Braxton Soderman

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Screen capture of "Mémoire Involontaire" by Braxton Soderman. A stanza with some words faded and others in bold. Text: "A raw memory. Church. A thunderous room with children uprooting, thoughtlessly. Erring wildly. I stand little and young within a chaotic backyard of little ideas and unaware, tiny minds. Vivid toys veil the ground and pictures of silent saints loom. My mother rises tall and alert. She departs finely. I pull a blue, awkward crate to the impediments and climb it. Goggling through the aperture. Bells going. My mom walking down an abundant hall, bright with holy light. I was trembling, enduring while the militarists pray. I play, meagerly, with a little red ambulance, rubbernecking the empty corridor."
Open “Mémoire Involontaire” by Braxton Soderman

This mutable poem explores how memory can be affected by the passage of time by using a fascinating tool, the RiTa.WordNet library. This collection of words is associated through a variety of semantic and conceptual relations so when Soderman uses it as a data set for word substitution (as he did in “Cloud #1”) it creates a cognitive language trail. The challenge this text poses is that it creates a different substitution every second, effectively creating a textual moving target as it follows different cognitive trails. The ringing bells in the audio track reminds us of the passage of time and as some texts attempt to revert their signifying trail we sense the irony in attempting to reverse time.

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“Cloud #1” by Braxton Soderman

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Screen capture from “Cloud #1” by Braxton Soderman. White text on a light blue background. Text: "on this quiet and open morning I sit before the worn window. the sky is intoxicated but sorrowful. things progress on their eternal way. although it is all changing, it is silent and strange and overcome by monstrous permanence. I want to see colorful leaves, but the trees are dead and still. my clothed and guarded thoughts are slowly dismantled. time has become cloudy and opaque. this jealous and lonely partner, perfect sadness for all that is spiritless, smooth, little, and harsh. my soft ideas are lifted from early slumbers, at the brief moment when it remains dynamic and flawless, not tinted by learned old age. dark, ringing, absolutely. my eyes cannot help but be moving, watching what the vague sky lifts above the hard ground, the artless earth. the unfixed clouds harbor what is unthinkable, imaginary islands, clothed in irate and informed dreams, each imperfect shift causes a salvo of short recognition before it falls oblivious. it is all destroyed. it is all obvious. for one agonizing moment, I am absent and nothing will make me afraid."
Open “Cloud #1” by Braxton Soderman

This mutable poem explores a simple concept, word substitution, using sophisticated tools. The data set is WordNet, which clusters words conceptually so substitutions are governed by synonymy, metonymy, and semantics which should allow the prose poem to retain some coherence. But does it? Here’s the poem after running for minute or so: image

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“Automatype” by Daniel C. Howe

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"Automatype" by Daniel C. Howe
“Automatype” by Daniel C. Howe

This is a fascinating poetic use of RiTa, a “software toolkit for generative literature” developed by Daniel C. Howe. The randomly selected words arranged on a 3×3 grid are transformed into other words over time by adding, subtracting, or substituting one letter at a time. Sometimes the path to a new word is through nonsense words, and these are part of the pleasure of this work. The abstracted typewriter sounds punctuate every letter substitution, and reaching a new word is rewarded by a “ding” sound and flashing brown highlight of the square in the grid where the newly completed word is. The cumulative effect is hypnotic, as one sees where the flashing cursor moves to, what words are created, and the entire piece transforms itself from where it began.

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