LETTERS FROM THE ARCHIVERSE

As a programmable writing project, Letters from the Archiverse can be considered both a visual poem and an application. Its most current version was composed (and continues to be developed) with architectural modeling space software AutoCAD. Combining methods and techniques drawn from traditional lineages of concrete poetry and ―open-field‖ composition with 3D image modeling, the poem offers writers and viewers alike the opportunity to engage in the materiality of screen-based writing, while exploring new directions and theories in visual language art. In the current phase of the project, readers are able to explore and manipulate the poem on the iPad, using a commercial architectural drafting app.

Our demo of the app will emphasize the Archiverse project as a working model as well as a critical interrogation of the general future of digital composition tools – in a manner not dissimilar to Microsoft Word’s current technological augmentation and extension of the typewriter. Within the Archiverse, writing re-emerges as a boundary-less, multidimensional, networked field, inviting the reader to assume a position of constant ―field‖ exploration. Here, she becomes something more than a mere text producer or consumer; she takes on the roles and responsibilities of a collaborator and co-creator of a vast multimedia, intertextual cosmos.

(Source: Authors' abstract from HASTAC 2013)