This piece puts together a very basic interface with simple programmed behavior for its text with delightfully playful results. The letters are both letters and symbols (every pun intended) for people in an orderly urban environmen. Their movement when released from the building-like gray squares is chaotic yet rule-governed. Their flow responds to the elemental psychogeography of this symbolic urban space, resonating with Guy Debord’s Situationist “Theory of the Dérive.” Some things to try after reading the texts:
  • Place squares over other squares and click on them to overlay or combine texts.
  • Create mazes, corrals, funnels, limit the exits, play pinball (pinword?).
  • Click many times on the same square to stack huge amounts of text and release them in a lettristic explosion.
And don’t forget how letters are contained, constrained, disciplined into words, lines, sentences, stanzas, paragraphs, pages, windows, books, and screens. Isn’t it nice to set them free, once in a while?

Featured in Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 2.