24.1.08

karsten schimdt fantastico four letter word frame...it slips and dances around- it umms and errs

This is really worth a look...

at Visual Complexity
Karsten Schmidt’s Institution:
http://toxi.co.uk/base26/

Project Description:
Four-letter words have a special status in the English language and culture. Counting in at over 1650 words, in most cases the term is only used to address the cruder, sexual subset and its use has been effectively eliminated from the language of "good" society, mainly due to its negative connotations with lack of education, etiquette and status. In a way, the use of those four-letter words reflects the schizoid prudence and class system in English speaking societies, still evident today.

base26 is a startling interactive visualization project that attempts to give a spatial overview of the entirety of this part of English language heritage, as well as to explore and visualize relations between all those words. Letters are interpreted as 4D coordinates, shown in a smoothly transforming 3D space, produced with Processing.

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