The / picturesque / decay / remains / an idea / of the / beautiful

August 10, 2023 1:13 PM

blackout.tilde.town is "a tool for making blackout poetry using nine million chunks of text extracted from Project Gutenberg."

Built by ~vilmibm (Mastodon, blog), it gives you a new chunk of text each time you reload the page. "I wanted an experience like the library of babel ; one of wandering and digging up scraps to scrawl on." Blackout poetry, also called erasure or redacted poetry, has been used by many poets and visual artists to give new meanings to existing texts. See a collection of erasure poetry at Poets.org.

posted by ourobouros (21 comments total)

Oak-Mot has a

new mayor same

as in

town.
posted by MonsieurPEB at 1:34 PM on August 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

What I get is all redacted...
posted by chavenet at 1:36 PM on August 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

did you let it dry?
posted by clavdivs at 1:45 PM on August 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

My favorite example is the book(s) called The Humument by Tom Philips. There have been, I think, something like five editions of the book. Based on a 19th century novel, the physical book, he creates what are erasure poems or text on each page by painting over the page. These books are beautiful. The text generated has been used in an opera and other works by Philips.
posted by njohnson23 at 1:46 PM on August 10, 2023 [14 favorites]

I also thought immediately of A Humument, which is one of my favorite books.
posted by chavenet at 1:52 PM on August 10, 2023 [3 favorites]

I feel like this would work better if we got the paragraph and chose which words to black out, not the other way around
posted by SansPoint at 1:53 PM on August 10, 2023 [7 favorites]

What I get is all redacted...

If you click on any word, it will be revealed. If you're on a desktop, you can see the word on hover; on mobile, you just have to click and find out.
posted by ourobouros at 1:54 PM on August 10, 2023 [2 favorites]

i can select all to see the whole chunk on desktop as well
posted by Clowder of bats at 2:03 PM on August 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

I have no  ████   ███   █████ people  ███   █████  ████ wedged into  █████   scanners,  ██ why.
posted by miguelcervantes at 2:14 PM on August 10, 2023 [9 favorites]

On Friday
girls
wished to see
window-curtains bed-curtains,
making [a] kind of reverence,
afterwards astonished, mortified
Saturday
posted by jquinby at 2:31 PM on August 10, 2023 [2 favorites]

'Les pages abandonnées'

''TNT En Amerique'

"Money
in
a world.
that
moral principle.
is my substitute for a pistol.
posted by clavdivs at 2:43 PM on August 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

As I hovered, I realized the text that I got was about Gaddafi. I tried to make it work at first but then I thought too hard about it and got weirded out.
posted by tofu_crouton at 2:46 PM on August 10, 2023

Justified dismissal of the
King,
Chief,
Man.
posted by mcstayinskool at 2:56 PM on August 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

April the wind continued
blew the Sand in clouds on the bank,
on until night

(from an except from the journals of Lewis & Clark, it looks like, this is pretty neat)
posted by atoxyl at 3:37 PM on August 10, 2023 [2 favorites]

Caeser....ok, it's like a scratch off with foreshadowing.

melteth fools; I mean, sweet words, Low-crooked court'sies, and base spaniel-fawning. Thy brother by.

Julius Caesar as random does not auger well.
posted by clavdivs at 3:54 PM on August 10, 2023 [2 favorites]

the
sailing
men
untroubled by
ships
waiting for a favourable
day
to reach the open sea

[EXCERPTED FROM Constantinople painted by Warwick Goble BY Alexander Van Millingen ]
posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 4:18 PM on August 10, 2023 [3 favorites]

It was
and often watched
sitting questioningly
when the door closed

(original Frances Hodgson Burnett)
posted by atoxyl at 4:52 PM on August 10, 2023 [3 favorites]

There is another among these papers a real story.
a true story,
It is called, grimly,
beautiful
woman?
(original The Eulogy of Richard Jefferies BY Walter Besant )

Great find, this is fun!
posted by Pink Fuzzy Bunny at 8:57 PM on August 10, 2023 [2 favorites]

the first text it offered was intriguing and the next thing I knew I'd spent an hour reading Edith Wharton short stories. this mirrors my process for writing.
posted by ZaphodB at 10:48 PM on August 10, 2023 [3 favorites]

Snail-shell,
handed
intervals
inspired
where stranger
habit
fills the
concerned, system
of empty
numbers
posted by fluffy battle kitten at 11:01 PM on August 10, 2023 [2 favorites]

Asses.
posted by Nossidge at 3:38 AM on August 11, 2023 [3 favorites]