Rich Text is a printed publication and the first edition produced using RTF Press, the open-source WordPress publishing theme. The publication exists as both a digital and print object, demonstrating the capacity of the theme to turn a website into a print-ready publication, while standing as an independent editorial project.
Funded by the Ontario Arts Council and available on Metalabel. It maps a lineage from printing presses and the typographers' unions that fought automation to today's slick WYSIWYG software and AI-generated prose. The publication traces how formatting tools, hypertext, desktop publishing and interface design have both liberated and constrained expression, revealing rich text formatting as a site of resistance where users wield boldface, italics, links and raw code to reclaim autonomy. By sliding between the gaps in code, it questions whether software that promises ease and access actually narrows our imaginative and political possibilities.
Rich Text invites work that subverts algorithmic rankings, including slutty superstitious fan-fictions, gay gossip and other creative and criminal clickbait that seduces platform users toward the more counter-cultural crevices of the world wide web.
Contributors to the first edition include Cody Caetano, Elida Silvey, Elizabeth Benke, Francis Whorrall-Campbell, Fiona Glen, Lucy Petersen, Mac Andre Arboleda, Olu Niyi-Awosusi, Willem Deisinger, Zakiyyah Deen and Emil Woudenberg, each tasked with making a literary contribution that presses against the constraints of our interfaces.
