Visualpoetry 2009
As in previous years, the poster for poetry on the road 2009 features a computer-generated motif. The programme, developed by designer and programmer Boris Müller, generates the abstract graphic design from the poems featured at the festival.
While the image itself may be visually complex, the principle behind this year's motif is remarkably simple. Müller's programme computes the frequency with which individual words are featured in this year's poems and represents each word as a rectangle scaled according to the word's frequency. The programme then translates each word into a barcode which is assigned to the respective square. In theory, it is possible to decode the rectangles using a barcode reader. Müller's VisualPoetry software follows clearly defined rules. The complex structure of lines comprising the image consists of densely packed barcodes that correspond to the words of the poems. The 2009 poetry on the road poster is, in that sense, a direct translation of the text into a visual language.
