We explore the potential of language and poetry for our design process – and the ways they influence each other. As Patrizia Marti (Professor of Human-Computer Interaction, University of Siena) states, “Poetry is an alternative to functional design – it invites us to reflect on what we do and how we do it.”
We experiment and write poems across five stations – full of play, curiosity, and rules that lead to unexpected result.
→ Conversations: We remix messages from our chat histories.
→ Found Poetry: Inspired by artist Natalie Czech, we black out or reconnect selected words in complex texts.
→ Potential Poetry: Using grammar and numbers, we generate newa texts.
→ Typestracts: We create visual poems on typewriters – a definite highlight.
→ Combinatorial Systems: Our poems emerge from observations – inspired by the Oulipo writers’ collective.
While we worked completely analog on Sunday, we continued the workshop the following day and began working digitally and graphically with the texts.