Article:

Word For Word: Encoding, Networking, and Intention

Is it possible to argue for an underlying "intention" of a networked assembly such as the online literary journal Word For/Word? The very nature of its digital medium invites non-linear, non-sequential readings, thus making it problematic to think of its assembled works only as discrete, autonomous texts. I propose that one way to answer this question is to rethink "intention" in terms of textual encoding. Intention, in this regard, is not a by-product, or end-result, of writing, nor the manifestation of an author's "original" idea, but an always on-going textual drift. My project explores the methods in which JavaScript can clarify this dynamic and seemingly infinite drift of textual intention by encoding and particularizing its recombinant processes.