every year since 2002 a guy named boris müller has been commissioned to design a visual theme for Poetry on the Road – an international festival held every year in Bremen, Germany. in the end, the theme can look however it wants, but should be generated by a computer program that bases the graphics on the submitted words.
it’s nast-a. it looks dope. it’s a fairly abstract idea, so i’ll let them explain it:
This year, our concept is based on a very old concept of encoding text. We assigned a numerical value to every letter of the alphabet. Adding the values of all letters, one gets a number that represents the overall word. (For example, the number 99 would represent the word »poetry«.)
Using this system, an entire poem could be arranged on a circular path. The diameter of the circle is based on the length of the poem. So you can see the short poems in the centre of the poster, while the longer ones form the outer circles.
Red rings on the circular path
represent a number. As many different words can share the same number (»poetry« shares the 99 with words like »thought« and »letters«), most rings represents different words. The thickness of the ring depends on the amount of words that share the same number.
Finally, gray lines connect the words of the poem in their original sequence. So solid lines represent repetitive patterns in the poem.
it creates these amazingly intricate pieces of art that you can look at it forever. and then you start thinking… “i wonder what those poems were about.” then you think “i wonder what my poem would look like…”
well, don’t think about it too hard, just go to their page where you can scope your own sonnets using their interactive (make sure you catch the link at the very bottom). it’s really pretty amazing. super impressed. it’s built using a programming language called processing, which i’ve limited exposure to, but seen some amazing graphical things done with.
too cool for school.
rad!
Happy Halloween, G!
m