Time Based

21 April 2008

I was excited to read about this project – TBT [Time Based Text] made by the free software programmer, media artist and activist Jaromil and conceived by Jaromil and the artists group JoDi.

"The emphasis of the software is on the process of writing/typing. TBT is a tool for time-based recording and playback of the process of typing a message, with the accuracy of milliseconds. The basic interface for typing records all typing and plays it back exactly the way the text was typed the first time, including all hesitations and misspellings. It reveals additional information on digital poetry, because the speed of typing and reading it, are visualised… The software has been kept as basic as possible, is free to use and users are encouraged to add functionalities."

In the Nettime list archive there's a short interview with Jaromil about the software which for points the way to a dynamic exploration of writing processes, especially those of editing and rewriting which I've been pursuing to a certain extent, and by other (much less technical) means in projects like Long Relay and City Changes. TBT [Time Based Text] (open source and licensed GNU GPL) can be downloaded from the TBT project page. I'll be curious to give it a go.

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Meanwhile a week or two back Junot Diaz won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction with his novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which I was enthusing about greatly back here in January. There's a short interview with him at the Amazon blog plus an excerpt from the sci-fi novel he's now writing titled Dark America.