Common Tongues         (ongoing) w' john cayley
Common Tongues is an interactive media/sound installation that remediates practices and processes of reading, and critically addresses copyright, the commodification of reading, and the proprietary enclosure of a growing portion of our linguistic cultural commons. Common Tongues debuted at the Inspace gallery in Edinburgh, Scotland in November, 2012.                                                             project site
Automatype (2012)
Automatype is an apt demonstration of some of the powers of RiTa, as it uses algorithms to find the bridges between English words, Six-Degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon-style — not bridges of garbled nonsense but composed of normative English. You will spend either 10 seconds or 5 minutes staring at this thing; you will also see either a bunch of random words, or occasionally, if not always, engaging samples of minimalist poetry...                                     project site
Engine of Engines (2011)   w' bill seaman
The Engine of Engines is a generative sound & video installation that responds in real-time to network traffic in the local environment. In the Hong Kong debut (see video), sixteen self-contained nodes, each comprised of a screen, processing-unit, audio output, and flash memory, are suspended in space by connective wire. Together these nodes react dynamically to the nearly one thousand computers in the School of Creative Media's labs, offices, and classrooms.         watch video
The Readers Project         (ongoing) w' john cayley
The Readers Project is a performative essay in language-driven digital art, in writing digital media. Although the project 'visualizes' reading in a number of ways, it does not do so in the order to mime the behavior of conventional human readers. Rather, it explores alternative vectors of reading via quasi-autonomous entities (or 'readers') with specific textual strategies motivated by the unique properties of linguistic practice.                               project site
The RiTa Toolkit   (ongoing)
Designed to support the creation of novel works of generative literature, the RiTa library (and new RiTaJS version) provides a unique set of tools for artists and writers working in programmable media. RiTa is designed to be easy-to-use while still enabling a range of tasks, from grammar and markov-based generation to text-mining, text-to-speech, & animation. RiTa, implemented in both Java and JavaScript, is free and open-source, and optionally runs in the popular 'Processing' environment for arts programming.               project site
Architecture of Association (2009)   w' bill seaman
The Architecture of Association is a software architecture and series of interactive installations exploring mechanisms of associative thought. Drawing on research from a range of disciplines (psychology, linguistics, cognitive & computer science, etc.) the software explores large multi-media databases to 'discover' unexpected linkages between disparate items. An initial version of the installation opened in Aug. 2008 at the MIS Museum in Sao Paulo, Brasil. In 2009, it premeried at full-scale in Paris' Grand Palais.                                        project site
No Time Machine   (2008)   w' aya karpinska
Quiet time, dead time, free time - there seems to be less and less of it. What do we give up in the race to continually maximize our efficiency? No Time Machine explores these questions by mining the web for variations on the phrase 'I don't have time for...' Results are analyzed algorithmically and reconstructed into a multi-voiced poetic conversation that expands the field of creative writing to include networked and programmable media.     No Time Machine is a commission for New Radio & Performing Arts, Inc.
TrackMeNot   (2006)   w' helen nissenbaum
TrackMeNot blends software tool and artware intervention in a browser extension designed to protect users from surreptitious data profiling and to interpose in the power dynamic between searchers and the corporations controlling our data. Unlike most privacy tools, TrackMeNot (TMN) works not by means of concealment or encryption, but instead via noise and obfuscation. Running as a background process, TMN periodically issues algorithmically-generated decoy queries to popular search engines like Google, Yahoo & Bing. Users' real searches, lost in a cloud of false data, are essentially hidden in plain view.         project site
Live.Text.Mix   (2006)
'live.text.mix' is a generative system for performed improvisational writing, simultaneously exploring the 'remix' on multiple levels (linguistic, visual, & aural). The system accepts real-time textual input from a 'live writer', in conjunction with audio inputs from live performers (e.g., readers of the generated text, spoken word artists, musicians, etc.) These inputs guide the text-generation component of the software while the performers manipulate captured samples into an evolving improvisational audio-visual work. Additionally the system provides control real-time control to the performers via joystick controllers.
[meme.garden]   (2006)   w' mary flanagan
[meme.garden] blends software artwork and search interface to explore the dynamic and social nature of information as language. Users begin by entering phrases of particular interest which are expanded, via a lexical database, into sets of related concepts. Each set is visualized as a 'seed' which can be "planted' in the user's virtual 'garden'. Each seed grows into a unique organism that evolves through its interactions. As these virtual gardens grow over time users and communities become linked in a contextual biosphere...       [meme.garden] is a commission for New Radio & Performing Arts, Inc.
Text.Curtain   (2005)
text.curtain explores relationships between poetic text and ludic play via an interactively evolving recombinant text. Projected on a wall-size screen, text.curtain presents a physics-based ‘spring-mass’ interface that organically responds to the interactions of multiple simultaneous users. As the piece is disrupted and letters wash back and forth, a granular synthesis engine provides realtime aural feedback. Tension is created through the simultaneous desire of users to both disrupt the existing text via 'play' and to ‘read’ the piece as it evolves and recombines in response.     more>
Cave.Cubes   (2005)
Cave.Cubes, developed for the Brown CAVE environment, employs virtual physics and three-dimensional geometries to define writerly constraints in embodied virtual space. Like the grammars found in natural language, 3-D geometries have specific ways in which they can connect and recombine. By leveraging these (virtual) physical grammar within a dynamic physics simulation, a set of organic constraints emerge to challenge the writer in embodied literary space...   more>
Open.Ended   (2005)   w' aya karpinska
Extending poetry beyond the printed page and into interactive spaces calls for novel ways of designing the poetic experience. As authors access a broadening range of technologies, new methods of augmenting the reader experience become available. A work’s entry and exit points may change across viewings, the ordering and spatialization of words may update dynamically, and the work may transform itself in ways independent of the reader. open.ended is an interactive, three-dimensional system of poems which explores these techniques.
Code.Re(a)d   (2004)
Code.Re(a)d explores the potential of computer code to perform as literary 'text'; examining the relationship between'process' and 'product' in code that is both writing and action. Designed to augment existing works, the 'code-reader' software provides access to source-code from within a running program. The software's own instructions may then be interpreted and presented visually, sonically, or physically (the example applet shown below uses its source text visually and aurally, via text-to-speech).
Phoneme.Machines   (2003)
The Phoneme.Machine series presents a set of generative (reversible) algorithms via fragments of spoken language. By adding & removing 'agents', each of which follow very simple rules, users trigger diphones (2 sequential phonemes), the basic building blocks of speech. Diphones are triggered on collisions between agents as they follow increasingly complex algorithmic trajectories. The project to create compelling linguistic environments that leverages the potential of generative computation.
the Weight.of.Words (64 Stones)   (2002)   w' tetsu kondo
The Weight of Words is a physical installation (constructed of 64 solenoid-powered stones, each capable of flipping itself up into the air) that invites users to consider alternate (physical) representations of language. The piece explores the transformation of language as it crosses from analog to the digital and back. As text is typed at the keyboard, it is converted into its most basic informational representation, a machine-language comprised exclusively of 0s and 1s. When these textual fragments are re-embodied as physical objects, they speak to us in the language of falling stones...