Our words have a sensual presence. Even our letters are material things. Poets have long worked with the evocative materiality of language, which is an essential part of the content of any work.
By visualizing the sound patterns in texts, BardCode Engine presents a tool to access that lush physicality.
This is an instrument for writers and for researchers. What is revealed when an iconic poem that has been meticulously studied is rendered through this sonic visualization?
What can you learn about your own writing and habits? New connections and patterns emerge that get overlooked when our attention is focused on the content and meaning of the words.
BardCode Engine doesn’t entirely strip meaning out of the works, though. Using AI text processing, each work is read for its mood and theme.
These elements are used to select a variety of colour palettes that loosely correspond to the content of the work.
This project presumes that all texts are inherently synaesthetic. For every writing combines the visual impact of ink (or pixel) on page (or screen) with sound and thought.
Attending to that synaesthesia opens up and reveals the physical impacts of a text and its swirling combination of sounds and ideas.
This calls forth a new kind of potential literature. A vibrant data poem that reverses the habitual hierarchy of meaning.
