Write Mangler: an Experiment in Collaborative & Distributed Meaning Production

WRITE MANGLER was an experiment in collaborative and distributed picture production. The project sought to initiate discussion about the production of meaning by challenging expectations about image-word relations. WRITE MANGLER comprised three main components: firstly, a bespoke text-image search engine; secondly a visual composition ‘algorithm’; and, thirdly, a pared-down form of letterpress print production. To animate the system we asked over one hundred participants to make a one-word response to the trigger word ‘art’ and to enter their responses into our hacked search engine, the MANGLER. This engine modified – or ‘mangled’ – each query using a small set of transformation rules and used the resulting tangentially related (or unrelated) query term to prompt internet searches that returned a single image. The outcome of this process was a database of peculiar word-image pairs. These were then transformed into simple graphic compositions, printed using a vintage relief press and exhibited as part of the 2018 Bangkok Biennial. WRITE MANGLER was an invitation both to produce and reflect upon the production of meaning in a world ever more saturated with words and images. Keywords: Image-world, mont