Saving the Alphabet

This subtly haunting poem tells the story of how each letter from the alphabet disappeared, or was made to disappear, by corporations obeying a secret agenda. The conspiracy theory overtones are underscored by the use of sound, a short loop of metallic whispering wind or water and a handful of soft musical notes. Clicking on each letter on the left hand column will take you to the corresponding letter and narrative of its disappearance, with the large letter disappearing as you read the accompanying text, but it also starts a slower, almost imperceptible, fading process of those letters in the entire work. If you click through quickly and read the whole poem you may not even notice, but step away for a minute and you’ll find that the letters you have read have disappeared from all the language in the poem and the result may be challenging to read (see image below). This more than anything provides a visceral impact, as we try to read a barely functional language mutilated by loss of letters.

(Source: Leonardo Flores)