Textual Nonlinearity is an amalgamation of textual theories, observations on our behaviours with texts, and efforts to instil nonlinearity into the reading and writing experience. Departing from the linear structure of language, this project takes on a pragmatic approach and explores nonlinear modes of reading in existing textual objects.
A Visual Compendium for Nonlinearity
This visual compendium serves as supporting material for my final year dissertation and graduation project — counteracting the long-established linear practices and usage of text. The works featured in the catalogue are selected because of their shapes, conventions, or mechanisms, which facilitate a nonlinear portrayal of events and thoughts and thus making them nonlinear texts.
View the full compendium here.
Message Clustering Prototype
In currently available messaging platforms, messages are organised chronologically which may undermine reply relationships and lead to phenomenona like double texting.
The coded outcome acknowledges that a text's shape can grow and change over time, just as how messages are continually added into a chat. It also becomes a system of organising the content of the text thematically/topically.
(In progress: hosting the prototype along with the Large-Language Model)
The Rhizomatic Gazette
With this artefact's focus on non-serial texts and taking inspiration from the concept of the rhizome, "The Rhizomatic Gazette" is an assemblage of 35 projects by my cohort mates.
The artefact makes a departure from categorising articles which lead to verticality — the segmenting and stratification of thought and knowledge. It encourages a horizontal mode of reading, where readers explore pre-structured intersections and even coincidental ones across the texts through the juxtaposition of frames.
Interact with the gazette here.
Catalogue of Making
The publication documents ideas and concepts from my first semester's research as well as the process in creating the final artefacts. It serves as my humble contribution to the discourse of nonlinear texts from a designer's point of view.
