Seedlings_: Walk in Time
Qianxun Chen and Mariana Roa Oliva

What would happen if you could grow a word? In this book, a series of textual Seedlings_ sprout and set off on a journey for the discovery of kinships between words. Born digital, the Seedlings_ migrate from the browser to the pages in a process that explores different ways of writing in collaboration. Seedlings_: Walk in Time is a book written through the interaction between a human writer and a group of algorithms, both feeding off the vast world of language people have been tending to for many many years. Moving between the humorous, the poetic, the narrative, and the visual, this book portrays an ecosystem where the bonds that tie words together come alive and speak back to us.

Part of the series Using Electricity.

Qianxun Chen is a media artist, programmer, and researcher. She works at the intersection of language, art, and digital technology, with a focus on digital textuality, generative poetics, and the aesthetics of algorithms.

Mariana Roa Oliva is a fiction and performance writer from Mexico City. They graduated from Brown University’s Literary Arts MFA, and their works have been published in several Spanish and English language anthologies. 

Qianxun and Mariana’s collaboration on the Seedlings_ started with the project Seedlings_:From Humus, which was featured in the Generative Unfoldings exhibition, commissioned by the MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology, and shortlisted for the 2021 Robert Coover Award for a Work of Electronic Literature.

Seedlings_
April 2023
Qianxun Chen and Mariana Roa Oliva
$25.00; 6 x 9″
120 pgs.
ISBN 978-1-93-399682-0