Newsknitter

What a tangled web we weave.

Today included the crossing of two trajectories: poetry and art. Both have been constants in my life, rising and falling in importance since I was a child. Through sheer coincidence, the Poetry In Motion collection I ordered a month ago from the MTA museum arrived today alongside the Graphic Design The New Basics volume from yesterday’s Amazon trolling.

My head is swimming with text and images.

I came across Processing in GDTNB. Processing is a data visualization framework (as far as I understand it upon cursory inspection). I had a sudden urge to see if I could program a visual representation of the complex systems of meaning inherent in poetic language. I’ve been fascinated with the idea of poetry generators ever since I wrote some (very rudimentary) code on a MOO nearly 15 years ago.

One fascinating application for Processing is Newsknitter which is like Missoni for data visualization. As an American, my first thought was MUST HAVE when I saw these amazing garments. Sadly, there is no convenient Amazon Prime for these sweaters. The idea of taking something as cold, arbitrary and ephemeral as a news headline and weaving into something personal, sensual and tactile is mindblowing.

Please enjoy.