There are many ways you can turn one text into another, in a different medium. hippo's Chess to Music Translator is (a) a good example of cross-media text conversion and (b) better than the present idea by some considerable distance.

This is an animation featuring a group of heroes attempting to escape from an underground bunker. The bunker is a dark, cramped space. It is unpleasant to spend any time in the bunker. The bunker has a sophisticated security system which is activated by certain triggers. If you can avoid the triggers you can escape the bunker simply by walking out. The output text is an animated film showing people trying to escape the bunker.

The input text for this project is any internet forum thread. The initial post seeds the size and shape and appearance of the bunker. Each subsequent post in reply transports the new poster, with an avatar inspired by their webhandle, into the bunker. Through their period of captivity, the avatar begins to look more dishevelled and deranged. Each avatar remains trapped in the bunker, though moving gradually towards the exit stairs, until a set period has elapsed since their last post in the thread and they leave. Each post the individual makes the thread triggers increasingly Heath Robinson security measures to befall the avatar and they are dragged back to their starting position.

Each thread that the visualiser is given will generate a new animation based on the status and rhythm of the thread. The animation is dynamic, and so will update as the thread is added to. This does mean that the person who drops the link to the animation into the thread is a character in the animation, but this is fair as they are already a character in the thread.
-- calum, Jan 03 2024

Chess to music translator Chess_20to_20music_20translator
by hippo. Deserves more votes. [calum, Jan 03 2024]

The visualisation needn't be a bunker, it could be any theoretically escapable but continuously unpleasant place (POW camp, festival toilet block, Edinburgh).
-- calum, Jan 03 2024


People would sign up for this type of crowdsourced confinement in droves.

"The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone." - Aldous Huxley
-- reensure, Jan 03 2024


<blushes> thanks Calum

I’d like to see, alongside the textual forum thread, clips of animation from the bunker which would show the current state of play of the thread, who is involved, who is in conflict, etc. Another potential addition to this would be to make the translation bidirectional. So, the animated sequences from the bunker world show what’s going on in the forum thread but also, if two participants who disagree with one another want to enter the bunker and have a sword fight between their avatars they could also do this. A sophisticated AI text generator would then translate their thrusts and parries into text and post these as an argument back in the forum thread.
-- hippo, Jan 04 2024


Oh no? How did I end up in this grotty place? Looks like it was your fault [calum] damn you. You would make Hitler blush.
-- pocmloc, Jan 04 2024



random, halfbakery