The most recent project undertaken by Global Telelanguage Resources is an independent set of writing tools for writers and language enthusiasts that allows for the literary enhancement and creative design of texts via digital technology. Tentatively named the “Global Telelanguage Resources Workbench,” this new work might best be understood as the first genuine digital studio for language. As the name might imply, the GTR “workbench” is essentially a digital writing tool able to perform transformative, generative and analysing functions on natural language texts. Conceptually, this project is meant to explore how creative writing (or even language use in general) might take advantage of digital processing applications to create new and innovative forms of literary art, electronic or otherwise. The core construction of the tool has been completed, producing some very basic test-versions of the software and possible media devices to come. It functions currently as a smart “word processor/workbench,” in other words, a “language toolbox” able to submit any text to a number of creative, transformative algorithms in the form of specially designed filters. At the moment, these filters allow for the spontaneous generation of new words from a wide range of selected databases, complete with their own customized etymologies and definition and translation extensions. The tool will eventually make possible an unlimited number of literary and aesthetic modifications to texts, much as current graphic design software like Photoshop and audio editors like Sound Forge permit artists to create and modify image and sound files.
Global Telelanguage Resources / LexIcons: The Art of Definition
Also check out NextNext - a very different kind of digital writing tool under development at Obx Labs in Montreal. NextText is a Java library for building applications to display dynamic and interactive text-based applications. The library uses TrueType fonts to render text which moves and changes shape according to a set of rules. The programmer has full control over the text and the rules defining its behaviour. http://nexttext.net/
other islands in this text-fed stream
