Thesis: Methodology
Here's a PDF of the presentation on methodology I gave on Wednesday. My new thesis idea is New Interfaces for Textual Expression: real-time interfaces for generating text. Some highlights from the deck (click on any of the links below for larger versions):
The first diagram represents what I see as the current state of digital poetry (and interactive text in general): the author designs a text, and an interface around that text, which the user must then discover and uncover and generally get annoyed with. The second diagram represents a new model: the interface comes between the author and the text, proposing new ways for texts to come into existence. The audience is a witness to this action. In this way, watching someone write becomes more like watching any other kind of performance (music, dance, theater, video games...).
Some of my prototype ideas:
The "Text Button" is the simplest of my ideas. It's a button. When you push it, text appears on the screen. When you release the button, the text stops. Simple, probably not effective, but nevertheless the first place to start.
This is one idea for an "augmented keyboard" - it's a keyboard with a foot pedal attached. The foot pedal can change aspects of the text the author is creating as he or she types, such as the size of the text, font weight, line spacing, etc.
The Text Drum allows you to "play" a source text. Playing a perfectly steady rhythm will output the source text (word by word) in its original order. As you syncopate the beat, however, the words will be scrambled, with an amount of entropy proportional to your distance from the beat.
More prototype ideas forthcoming.