This mutable poem is generated every time you visit the page, reload it, or click on any of the lines. Each line is generated from its own 60-item JavaScript array and the image is chosen from an array of 35. In the rich tradition of generative poetry, this piece produces more combinations than anyone can possibly read in a lifetime, but that is not the goal. Dirk Hine has chosen each potential line and image and placed it in its corresponding array so they produce an output with thematic and poetic coherence. Furthermore, the super simple interface— clicking on any word— combined with haiku-esque brevity promotes sequential reading, so that one reads each “snap” as a quatrain in a larger poem. The work builds as one reads new iterations allowing one to map the work conceptually and gain insight on Hine’s intentions in creating this piece. If all you do is click on this piece and take in its minimalist design, language, and photography, you are in for a treat.
But there are pleasures to be found in its equally elegant source code. Written in HTML 3.2 code, this code is very clean and enacts practices that became standard in later versions of HTML, such as formatting the <body> text in the <head> of the document: a practice now implemented as CSS. Even the metadata is bare-bones, as can be seen below:
Not only does he not include a long list of keywords that a search engine would use to index the page and allow people to find it, he specifically uses an protocol designed to keep Internet bots away. Human readers of the code won’t get any conceptual shortcuts either, though reading the arrays provides a sense of the grammatical and thematic structures he is aiming for. For example, the array for the first line in the poem contains 60 items, but 10 of them are the same word, “visitors.” This means that every time you generate the poem there is a 16% chance of getting visitors, and a 1.6% chance of getting each of the other words.
How many of the people present in the snapshots inhabit those urban landscapes and how many are just visitors?
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