TuUyen Triptych is a collection of three pieces intended to form a single experience. The triptych represents an attempt to draw forth meaning from disorder. The source material is body of texts so highly personalized and disorganized that it has become all but unintelligible. Nonstandard interfaces to these texts frustrate the desire to follow the author's train of thought and force a nonlinear perusal of an otherwise linear medium.

TuUyenCycle is the first of the three. A screenful of text feigns normalcy, but the movement of the mouse over words results in replacement and readjustment. Each word on screen is actually an entire passage of text that may be cycled through, but the progression is too fast to be read in context.

TuUyenRub is a nonlinear traversal of layers of text on a line-by-line basis. The rubbing of the mouse over text will gradually erode the line beneath and reveal progressive layers of subtexts. Many layers of texts exist, each complete but only visible via the actively stroked line. While the user concentrates on any particular line, the the other lines gradually fade back to the topmost text.

TuUyenShuffle is a final attempt to average out some sort of sense from the mass of texts. The entire body of text is analyzed at the time of execution. The frequencies with which words appear are calculated and used to scale the font size. The frequencies with which any particular word precedes or succeeds any other word are also calculated and stored. As the mouse moves over a word, the surrounding text is reorganized; Adjacent words are replaced by randomly choosing from among the most common predecessors and successors of the mouse-over word. In this way, the user's interaction with the text gradually causes an averaging of all the texts and generates some sort of summation of the whole.

Creator

Alex Weyers

TuUyenCycle (link to a Shockwave movie)

TuUyenRub (link to a Flash movie)

TuUyenShuffle (108k .zip file)

TuUyenCycle
Macromedia Director Shockwave Movie
requires web browser with Shockwave player plug-in (Netscape) or ActiveX control (IE)

TuUyenRub
Macromedia Flash Player Movie
requires web browser with Flash 4 plug-in (Netscape) or ActiveX control (IE), can also be played without browser using Flash Player 4.0

TuUyenShuffle
C++ application for Windows 95/98/NT

TuUyenCycle

1. Click on the above link (in the downloads section) for TuUyenCycle.
2. The TuUyenCycle web page will load up if you have Shockwave, otherwise you should be redirected to Macromedia's site to download the appropriate plug-in.
3. Interact with the text by moving the mouse over words and experiencing the effect it has.

TuUyenRub

1. Click on the above link (in the downloads section) for TuUyenRub.
2. The TuUyenRub web page will load up if you have Flash, otherwise you should be redirected to Macromedia's site to download the appropriate plug-in.
3. Rubbing the mouse in a back and forth or up and down motion over lines of text burrows through the many layers of subtexts.

TuUyenShuffle

1. Download and unzip the executable file (TuUyenShuffle.exe as well as TuUyen.txt (being certain to place them both in the same directory)).
2. Double-click on TuUyenShuffle.exe to run the application.
3. Interact with the piece by moving the mouse over words and experiencing the effect it has on the surrounding text.
4. To quit, click on the upper right close button on the window's title bar.

TuUyenRub
British Academy of Film & Television Artists, Arts Alliance Global Summit 2000, London, February 2000