Rich Text will present ten poems, experimental writing, photographs, comics, photo essays, interviews and other fictions that expand the already open interface of the rich text editor. The rich text editor (RTE) is an everyday software tool and protocol that allows its “users”, to press publish on media-rich text with style and links in HTML (hyperlinks) - interfacing more man-made submissions into machine-readable texts. While today’s platform users “expect smooth and seamless online experiences,” Rich Text will dream in nonlinear hypertext outside of moderated mainstream and otherwise more linear timelines - “by their preserving analogue features that make them immune from algorithms and corporate data sharks” (Stuck on the Platform). Far from the hopeful past promises of free-press desktop publishing for the people Rich Text goes against the current dull doom scroll streams surging with ever desperate user-generated discontents. This slippery text seeps into the niches and nooks of the network, examining analogue off-platform protocols for queer independent publishing that transcends algorithmic censorship. In the book “The Two Revolutions” early queer webmasters wrote futures for themselves where “creators could write, erase, and rewrite.” These inherent qualities of the autonomous web are limited by platforms, where templates and moderation might make platforms more legible or “user-friendly,” what affordances are lost to proprietary and black box software (made invisible, eligible to make something more “usable” and for which users? “Through obfuscations and illusion, manipulating existing infrastructure” (The Two Revolutions) how can this Rich Text be clearly "read" by machines or “read” by more human readers and between the lines of compiled code how can we better use this dream machine?

Calling for Clickbait

Looking for experimental writing that engages with code language(s), search engine optimizations or obfuscations, main-character matters, unseemly stimulations and simulations, kinky desires, guilty pleasures, and aggressive ascii ambitions! Mining the gap between handmade high and low-tech criticism, developing a design discourse that inspects the critical code behind our contemporary silicon context. Rich Text will invite work that subverts algorithmic rankings, including slutty superstitious fan-fictions, gay gossip and other creative and criminal clickbait that will seduce platform 'users' to the more counter-cultural crevices of the world wide web.

About SDS Server

SDS Server is a website hosting community. Inspired by community webrings, directories and cybercafes of the early web, it seeks to expose the web we use every day - by making internet with our own two hands. On this server, participants will build and upload, making open calls for submissions, inviting artists, designers, writers, workers, and hackers to publish work on the server. This is an extension of the work and research of Strike Design Studio.

Compensation

Rich Text doesn’t publish unpaid user-generated “content” within the commodified attention economy. Ten contributors will be selected for the online publication that will be open-source and available at richtxt.de.pub. Each participant will be paid $ 500 CAD for their contribution, which comes to around 275GDP or 350USD at this time. Thanks to the very generous support from the Ontario Arts Council.

Timeline

Call Closes: February 28th 2025
Selections: March 10th 2025
Draft Due: April 4th 2025
Final: April 28th 2025
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Soft Launch in May at Paris Ass Book Fair
Printed Pre-Order mailed out in June
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Even Harder Launches TBD

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Instagram: @em1webmaster
‍Email: richtxt@strikedesignstudio.com