View source for Infloresence.city

inflorescence.city is an exploration of a shifting virtual city from multiple vantage points. The publication is generated live using a variety of different approaches. Each time you refresh your browser, the publication rewrites itself. The different sections of the work each offer a unique window into the city. These sections take the form of paper ephemera, census documents, a virtual graveyard with generated tombstones, visits to city landmarks, and various other artifacts. It was important to us that we give each of these separate perspectives a unique sensibility and a voice of its own. To that end, each of these sections is written by a different set of algorithms. When writing this piece, we treated these software processes as honored collaborators rather than as tools. Each has its own texture and tendencies. Getting to know each of these algorithms is an intricate back and forth process of listening and refining. The bodies of text they use as source material are carefully picked and hand-refined to match the tone of the algorithm. As the document is written, sections of the document are passed to a program that is responsible for the illustrations. Here the words are translated into sets of drawing instructions. The illustrations are visual mirrors of the text. inflorescence.city is created by Katie Rose Pipkin and Loren Schmidt in collaboration with various algorithms and code snippets. Special thanks to @thricedotted and @zonodonoceros The work is viewable online at inflorescence.city (source: ELO 2015 catalog)