This responsive visual poem is a study of writing technologies and the word, whether it’s “ink sunk into fibrous paper” or “light through liquid crystals.” Inspired by Stephane Mallarmé’s poetic and theoretical writing as studied by Kittler, Trettien’s JavaScript (& JQuery) work explores the range of shades between the white page and the black sky as backgrounds against which writing can occur with light or ink.

Designed not only for unresponsive screens or pages, this poem is written in code to display and behave in environments that allow for readers to provide input that the words react to. As the reader interacts with the language on the screen through the two interfaces she provides, the text hovers between readability and an illegible typographical overload. And the source code offers no shortcuts, since each letter is separated by extensive code that positions it on the screen. You have to get inside the page and navigate it with the tools offered by your platform.

(Source: Leonardo Flores, I ♥ E-Poetry)

Alphabet of Stars

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Other Works

Trinity

Seven Stories About Drones