This article was published on December 19, 2011

iheart poetics: an app that combines photos with poetry


iheart poetics: an app that combines photos with poetry

In college, my poetry professor told us to always carry around a small notebook because poetic inspiration can tap you on the shoulder at anytime, and you want to be ready for it. Fast forward 5 years and I’ve traded a moleskin for an iPhone; its native Note app now holds all my late night ramblings and small verses of rhyme.

For all the sentimental, iPhone users out there, the iheart poetics app combines what you love about photo sharing with what a love for the written word. While not in existence yet, iheart poetics is currently a Kickstarter project by New York City based artist Seth Indigo Carnes.

The app lets you take a picture, and then write anything you feel, whether a poem, one word or a caption. Then you can your poetics as an image via email, MMS, Twitter, and Facebook. The app will come stocked with a set of Carnes’ pre-made poetics so you can work off them, or generate poetics from scratch using your images and wordplay. Carnes describes iheart poetics “as a merger between an interactive poetry book and poetry generation tool.”

To learn more about the app, watch this:

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The project, which he’s raising $19,000 for, is pretty far along already. Carnes has a working interactive mockup, a full specification, and he’s developing poetics by hand. He needs the Kickstarter money for an iOS Developer License, Legal Fees, Web Hosting and Marketing, and supporting the time it takes to design and code it.

Carnes started the iheart poetics project in 2007, in the form of large and small-scale mutable text installations in Sweden, Miami, California and New York City. Check out this short video of a past installation that Carnes says greatly informs his app’s goal to retain a “physicality” and connection to life, tactility, group interaction and gestures expressing emotion and thought.

➤ iheart poetics

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