Rabbit Hole: an Infinite Text Exploration of the Sublime

November 21, 2022

Chances are, the title – as well as the listed categories – might sound confusing. “Rabbit Hole”? “Infinite Text”? “the Sublime”? Ironically enough in this context, this program – which I named, rather predictably, Rabbit Hole – precisely exploits two interrelated faces of language:

Language is both ambiguous and limiting; we have fewer words than we have possible concepts and ideas to express.
As a result, language is subjective; we create our own meaning.

With all this in mind, Rabbit Hole is many things at once. In a sense, it’s an infinite text generator – a bit like the one in Word Journey. In another, it’s an exploration of the sublime – our inability to go beyond certain thresholds, though we might still be able to taste what lies beyond them. After all, as I implied above, talking about the limits of language, how can we represent the unrepresentable?

In a way, we could say Rabbit Hole is an exploration of art – in the most subjective sense of the word. It is what its user wants it to be.

An Infinite Text Generator

Prosaically speaking, Rabbit Hole is an infinite text generator. The program works so that you guide a star through infinite space, choosing one of four words appearing at the four edges of “the world”. Each choice affects the text the program generates and presents to you in short excerpts.

All in all, it’s a continuous (“infinite text”, remember) cycle of this kind:

Pick word → random text excerpt → advancement through infinite space → pick word → …

The program also keeps track of all the text it generates, together with some metadata (such as words denoting actions, pertaining to essence, or describing quality), and once you’ve had enough, you can export this as a file.

What It Really Is About

But of course the above is, as I said, only the prosaic description. As we’ve established, language limits preclude us from fully describing the experience.

And that’s what Rabbit Hole ultimately is: an experience.

At this point it might also be fruitful to reveal that part of the inspiration behind making this program was Bill Viola’s The Night Journey – where “[t]here is no one path to take, no single goal to achieve, but the player’s actions will reflect on themselves and the world, transforming and changing them both.”

facade placeholder — Here’s a quick look at how the program looks and sounds like…

Credits and Where to Try

Rabbit Hole uses the RiTa library, the Datamuse API, and the Dictionary API as part of its text formation process. It also uses some public domain texts, as well as – if I may be allowed this indulgence – excerpts from Tell Me, Mariner. Music by Dream Protocol.

You can try Rabbit Hole following this link.

Please note that using Rabbit Hole on a mobile phone is not recommended, as the program is optimized for larger screens and a physical keyboard. If you’d still like to try Rabbit Hole on your phone, the program will function in auto mode, without user input (you can still toggle the music on/off and export the text).

For a full list of my available programs, see the relevant page on the main site.