Tagrostics

Tagrostics seeks to re-contextualize tag clouds in a playful yet intriguing way that enables communication.

The project, which blends the concepts of tag clouds (the single words that are highlighted beside a web document based on their frequency of use) and acrostic poems (where one word, spelled vertically, begins each line of the poem with the designated character), was inspired by political theorist Jodi Dean’s essay “Tag clouds and the decline of symbolic efficiency.” In her post (which I highly recommend), Jodi cites the tag cloud as an “element of communicative capitalism” that “reinforce[s] the collapse of meaning and argument and thus hinder[s] argument and opposition.” She finishes by stating, “One can’t argue with a tag cloud.” To this end, Tagrostics hopes to enable arguments and healthy conversation while stimulating our innate curiosity.

Want to try it on your own text? Go here, paste your (plain text) file into the form, and await your tagrostic!

Some samples:

*National Science Foundation Director’s speech “Climate Change: Challenges and Priorities for Basic Research”, Tokyo, 05/10/08

C olleagues who share these common concerns

L ower the costs of carbon capture

I n the U.S., electricity production and

M itigation, by which I mean any

A lthough the salty oceans cover nearly

T o a large extent, 21st-century civilization

E arlier I pointed out the important

Tagrostics from the homepages of the five highest circ’ing newspapers in the country:

Wall Street Journal: Greece

Gucci family is offering a
Resort in the isolated communist,
Even jobs in a new
Exploded Shiite neighborhood
Created by a hedge fund
Emergency financial support package.

USA Today: Broncos

Breaking down new TV
Round picks NFL draft fit
Of horrific events usually
Net income. The most
Can OD mistaking nicotine pellets.
On these potentially dangerous transactions
Staffers watched porn as economy.

New York Times: Minutes

Minutes ago Greek Bailout Request
In the watershed that supplies
No election
Used his magazines to push
The Man. The White House
Executive of Los Angeles
Said 12 bombs killed dozens.

LA TIMES: California

California is looking at ways
and the slapstick falls flat
looking at ways to offer
in loans from European countries
for TCM Classic Film Festival
on defense and boards Kevin
reported Bombs targeting Shiite mosques
not care about your band
is helping traveling cat make
an American on a CIA

Chic and simple Earth Day,
At work looking at porn
Levels in supermarket sushi may,
In her legal fight to
Financial reform, hasten the next
On bee stings and the
Real Hollywood success with a
New front in Mexico drugs
Is helping traveling cat make
An American on a CIA.

WASHINGTON POST: Immigration

iPhone app for that time
May have tipped the balance
Management strategy
Is playing offense and
Government incentives help March sales
Right from wrong on Wall
And offers your analysis
To defeat improvised explosive devices and
Isolated world of Navy submarines.
Other concerns about our Network
Need support.

13 Ways of Looking at the King James Bible (link!)

The Cleanup Batter of Tagrostics Code:

for line in sys.stdin:
  line = line.strip()
  line_words = line.split(" ")
  line += " "
  whole_text += line
  for word in line_words:
    if len(word) > 5:
      if word in words:
        words[word] += 1
      else:
      	  words[word] = 1
maxword = max(words.iteritems(), key=operator.itemgetter(1))[0]
for character in maxword:
	matching_list = re.findall(r'\b[' + character + r']\w+ \w+ \w+ \w+', whole_text)
  	print random.choice(matching_list)