Poetics in Motion

ANNA DONLAN offers ahas that use design as a processor to reimagine the potential of the works we make. Take READING MACHINES, a database of narrative snippets that scatters and twists texts into nonlinear readings. “My heart was an artichoke and I had given it to the sun,” reads one named and I still welcome you home. “I went home after a week of absence and found my cup on the table, still,” says an addition titled GUSHGUSHGUSH. “Rehydrodropic. Somelike. Margethering,” another called Neograph prints in a string.

But it’s not just the words that matter in this machine. In the database, sentences orbit in new directions, rearranging themselves into constellations entirely their own. Reading the works, you can track the centrifugal forces that pull these pieces into different orientations of displaying texts.

The project is a publishing platform for non-teleological reading, the website reads, an experiment reimagining established relationships between reader, text, and author. Exploring its stories, the reader begins to feel like an astronomer scoping the cosmos. In this universe, we’re reminded that our words can be stars.