Figure of Speech

File to erase, Edit to generate, Poem to go quiet, Poem to go live!

Figure of Speech is a web-based, interactive poem inspired by early personal computing aesthetics. Styled after the 1984 Macintosh interface, it explores the poetics of number, voice, and interface. The generative system produces unexpected micro-poems from recombined linguistic fragments—where digits and primes are given expressive weight, and speech becomes a pattern of silence, glitch, and metaphor.

Each element of the GUI plays a poetic role: “File” clears memory, “Edit” generates anew, and “Poem” activates a muted state. The aesthetic is intentionally anachronistic, functioning both as visual language and conceptual form. The piece reflects on how we engage with figures—not only as numerical symbols but as figurative speech, as forms of address, as gestures suspended between code and meaning.

This work aligns with the open call’s interest in digital/visual poetry and expands on the idea that a number is not just data—it is also rhythm, anomaly, utterance.

Desktop version.

— Mohamed Louanjli, 2025