Prophecy (1 English word)

One word at a time, this piece cycles through hundreds of thousands of words in order of similarity

IBM monitor, metal, JavaScript

2022

Physical

An IBM monitor with a burned in background image displaying a webpage. The webpage displays a single word at a time. That word changes based on the next closest word that has the smallest Levenshtein distance. The Levenshtein distance is a measure of similarity between two text strings. If multiple words have the same lowest Levenshtein distance, a word will be chosen from the pool of similar words at random. The Levenshtein calculation was not done locally, but on another computer that was located across the street. Solved Levenshtein distances would be sent to the receiver in the gallery via a web socket connection. Unlike in "Happenstance" this piece does not give the viewer the freedom to create their own journey—the viewer may observe the algorithm as it produces newer outputs, as it slowly changes from word to word to word, eventually cycling through the entire library of words that is seen in "Happenstance."