Poetic Caption

You may download a simple runnable jar, here:
Poetic Caption. [ Please Note: This jar is offered 'as is', without support or warranty. Java has security and other peculiarities on all systems. On Macs, for example, you may have to Ctrl- or right-click in order to agree to open=run the jar. ]

This is a relatively simple readers framework inscribed with a self-reflexive poetic exposition by John Cayley. Two readers, a Perigram Reader and a Simple Spawning Reader are moving through the three page-like surfaces of the text, presented as 'openings'.

For, when you, or they, start with a first word, having begun to read: 'having,' say, but not necessarily having begun with 'having' as your or anyone's or any reader's first word or letter or phrase or all of whatever in some instant you or they may read, instantly; for in any of these circumstances it is of course possible to start anywhere — anywhere here or anywhere at all — and continue in any way possible including to proceed along the line of the syntagm, of the diegesis, of the world and all the worlds I break and you break and they break with every, even the least distinguishable, instance of language. And although its distinctions are arbitrarily and infinitely fine and various, nonetheless, you will proceed. And they will proceed. And I am proceeding. But you and they and I, reading as I write, must also necessarily proceed otherwise and in all possible wise. That's what we do. And that's why we did this. Making a little world of readers moving through a formlessness formed by forms that are formed by the formlessness they have formed by having placed a first and then proceeded in any conceivable manner. ... to make all and any such movements of readers beautiful ... since what are they more than movements through a spacetime that is conformed by you and I and all our readers as we read and as we come to the vertiginous edge of having written?

This runnable jar was - as for the original development environment of The Readers Project - written and generated using Processing and RiTa, the extensive natural language processing and text handling libraries for Processing by Daniel C. Howe. These now support Javascript with the same api.

Poetic Caption was one of the first works to emerge from The Readers Project. It was originally offered as a Java Applet, but lack of support from Big Software has had the consequence that this mode of distribution is unreliable. This runnable jar is provided for archive purposes and as an interim measure only.

The first version of Poetic Caption was installed for the RISD Faculty Show, Providence, RI, 4 Mar-1 Apr 2011..