FilterChoice applet
Description
This is a hacked version of the FilterChoice applet (which is documented here) uses a
modified GridArea class, GridAreaTwo, combined with the MyFont class to render text using a custom
"Architectural" font designed by yours truly.
When blur is invoked, words in the text are stochastically replaced by
a homonym -- a word which sounds the same but has a different meaning.
In this way, the "hard" meaning is of the original text is softened
(the new text becomes a pun for the original), while original sound of
the text is much retained -- something like a low pass filter in the
"meaning" domain which preserves information in the sound domain.
This is accomplished by using a CGI interface to a program I wrote in
C called homonym.cgi which sits on top of a list
of some two thousand homonyms I stole from Alan Cooper's Homonym
list. Note: this operation can be very slow.
Enhance is a much simpler operation. When enhance is invoked, words
are stochastically deleted if they are considered trivial, otherwise
they are replicated at the expense of successive words. This operation
is a metaphor for edge detection in an image, where important
features (in this case non-trivial words) are strengthened at the
expense of other details.
The noise operation is an attempt to introduce noise at the level of
semantic meaning. To accomplish this, words are stochastically
blurred, enhanced, capitalized, cast to lower case, or randomly
replaced by a selection from a list of words and short phrases.
Successively applying this operation results progressive dissolution of
the original text into a soup of semantic noise or Dadaist poetry.
Instructions
Click in the textArea, Type or edit the text, then make a selection
and press the "Apply" button. Play with varying the stochastic
control. Using small values and successively applying operations
produces the most interesting results.