Text Editors that Move
The last thing I want is topsdbns
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‘ / . . . exactly.we want our word processor to be predictable and ready-to-hand. This is not something we expect from an artwork
— Simon Penny (Penny, 404)
Text editors have been widely theorized. Early views of the text editor as a tool to hunt for “the perfect draft” (Kirschenbaum), as a material worksurface for the arrangement of text and thought (Hayles; Hermansson and Saar), as a vessel for producing language that helps to construct one’s sense of self (Hermansson and Saar). I will examine how text editors, as spatiotemporal language interfaces, bear close relationship to other media objects—namely, kinetic poetry and writing games—and show how we can use this close relationship to explore critical theories of poetic constraint and the nature of automated writing technology as it impacts writing experience. To get there, I’ll discuss how The Writer’s Project explores a design space between word processors and games, providing experiences of text editing that challenge contemporary paradigms of language production. Toying with the mechanisms of modern text editing technology is a project of critical design (Malpass), whose “non-rational” design objects satirize societal concerns