By : Daniel Hershel Silber-Baker

LANGUAGE AS AN INTERVENTION IN REALITY

PRISON ABOLITION

because someone I love is being held in a cage

THE ISSUE

Development Process

1. RESEARCH

2. IDEATION

3. DEVELOPMENT

4. PROTOTYPE

5. USER TESTING

6. ITERATION

Method

Typography

Animation

Behavior

TYPOGRAPHY

ANIMATION

BEHAVIOR

WORDS BIRTH WORLDS DIGITAL TEXT TOOLKIT

What you are seeing here is a brief demonstration of a web environment I built and would like to continue to develop, where users can explore different ways of coreographing and amplifying their own digital text. By using only the basic programming languages, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, my solution to working with digital text is an active and generative engagement with langauge. The animations you see here in the demo are examples taken from other work I have done as part of my thesis, including the poems I programmed, and this presentation, and these animations are then being programattically applied to the text I typed into the input box on the page. All of the animations and interactions that I have developed as part of Words Birth Worlds are discrete, adjustable, reusable pieces of code that can be used on any other set of words-or any type of digital element, resulting in the same movements and timing. Because it is non-propriatary, open, and written in a langauge that can be shared and built upon, other programmers could easily use the method I have developed programmatically in any of their javascript development projects.

For me, the opportunity to do this thesis process has been a gift. In many ways, but none more important then the way it gave me and a Hollis a project to work on together. It gave us a chance to talk and give voice, to enact some agency amidst the hopelessness and helplessness of the prison industrial and criminal Justice complex. We were exchanging letters about the project, both excited to be working on something together. And then I did it hear back from him for a couple weeks. And then I found out that he had been stabbed, in prison, and then hospitalized, and then put in solitary confinement. Not being able to protect someone you love, and not being able to be by their side when they are hurt, these are human things I hope. And in trying to bring forth the human even more, and in following Chris's instructions I have applied some of my digital text methods to each of Chris and I's most recent letters to each other. I designed and programmed each animation to be reflectice and representative of the way that each of us write and receive each other's letters.

Me writing to Hollis

See the Pen myLetterToHollis by Daniel Silber-Baker (@Daniel_Silber-Baker) on CodePen.

Hollis writing to Me

THANK YOU TO EVERYONE HERE AND ANYONE WATCHING

Particularly loud and or loving shout out to:

Thesis Advisor: Benedetta the Goddess

Peer Thesis Advisor: Francesca Rodriguez Sawaya

First Year Thesis Advisor: Sejo Vega-Cebrián

Ace/Roll Dogg: Annie the Goodfriend

And artistIntellectually all of this work has been shaped and co created in particular with

Edward McWilliams

Noelle De La Paz

Lauren Whitehead

Ruby-Beth Buitekant