Miniscriber: The conceptual poetry synth

The Miniscriber is a literary device for our digital age.

With a turn of a knob or a click of a button, users create their own unique output of generative literary art; reader-viewers become conceptual writer-artists, or word jockeys sampling, remixing, toggling, redacting, colouring, accentuating, shifting text to create new digital-conceptual-visual poems.

Through its retrofuturistic form, its analogue synth reference, and its avant-garde literary features, the Miniscriber pays homage to the past and celebrates the experimental spirit of early pioneers in music and literature. It plays with conceptual writing techniques and the language of electronic music – words like cutoff, emphasis, or waveform – to offer distinct modes of word-sculpting.

But the synthesizer’s nostalgia and cult status in music circles also call to mind the two industries’ historically divergent reactions to technology. In acknowledgement of this divergence, the Miniscriber détournes this vintage, watershed instrument to proposes a forward-facing writing practice that responds to the current state of textual (over)production and consumption. The device also features input texts, between which users can toggle, that express in form and content two major technological drivers of change in the reading and writing practices of our time: social media and AI.

The Miniscriber invites readers, writers, users to reflect on and experience a new kind of literary practice that takes to heart digital technology, its impact on our relationship with text, and how all of this informs and is informed by wider socio-cultural practices.

Miniscriber, 2025. Wood, 3.2″ screen, knobs, cables, Raspberry Pi, Analog-to-digital converter. 178 x 120 x 42 cm.

There will be a limited number of the original edition. Please contact us for enquiries.