While there is still a working instance of Word Perhect on The Web as of November, 2020, it is not immediately accessible without re-enabling Flash support on a modern web browser. I created this archive out of a desire to preserve this beautiful thing in case its presence elsewhere becomes challenged in the near future.
From the Chisenhale Gallery's exhibition page:
Word Perhect is a specially commissioned web project that parodies the word processor. Working with a specialist programmer, Tomoko Takahashi produces a new and fully functioning online version of the well-known software.
Word Perhect presents an idiosyncratic, hand drawn interface with functioning but personally ‘sketched’ tools. Takahashi’s rendering of the word processor takes not only a contemporary approach to drawing but crucially undermines the imposition of standardised, corporate language onto our own writing.
Word Perhect is Tomoko Takahashi’s first project for the web and is also a ground-breaking collaboration between Chisenhale Gallery and digital arts organisation e-2.
Tomoko Takahashi was born in Tokyo, and studied at the Tama Art University, Goldsmiths College and the Slade School of Fine Art between 1985 and 1998. Takahashi and Word Perhect are nominated for the Turner Prize 2000 at Tate Britain. Takahashi lives and works in London.
A photograph of a physically printed document outputted from Word Perhect.
From the post on my experimental WordPress site about archiving Word Perhect:
I'm currently reading Professor Matthew G. Kirschenbaum's Track Changes: A Literary History of Word Processing, which mentions a whole host of things I would love to share (some I will on this site, I'm sure, in the coming months.) One of them which I could not find any video of on the internet: a project from either 1999 or 2000[efn_note]Track Changes says 1999, Google says 2000.[/efn_note], by Japanese artist Tomoko Takahashi called Word Perhect. Before I go on, here's the whole passage (from Pg. 205-206:)
A similar impulse is at work in Tomoko Takahashi’s WordPerhect [sic] (1999) an online piece (rendered in Flash) that presents the user with a roughly drawn cartoon word processing interface, limned in what appears to be black ink on a white background.88 Typing generates crude, seemingly handwritten, less-than-perfect characters on the screen. Takahashi’s word processor is fully functional, but the interface yields an inversion of the typical user-friendly experience. Clicking on the Mail icon produces the following set of instructions, which appear as a scrap of notepaper “taped” to the screen: “print the document, put into an envelope or something similar [sic] which can contain the document. Go to post office and weigh it and buy stamps”—and so on, for another hundred words, including further typos and blemishes.
Track Changes: A Literary History of Word Processing, Pg. 205-206
When I went looking for the project, I actually found a re-upload of the Flash application(!) though, of course, I had to cycle through my personal collection of web browsers before I found one which would allow Flash again. (The same option that was supposed to allow it in Chrome did not work in any Chromium-based browsers except for Edge Chromium, which I used.) Other than a commisions page from e-2.org for the re-upload, I found very little about the project. Here's the description from that page, for the sake of thoroughness:
As word processing software becomes ever more advanced, correcting syntax and spelling errors, these familiar programmes begin to impose a standardised corporate language onto our writing. Takahashi has produced her own fully functioning online version which undermines this dehumanising process. Reclaiming the initiative back from the software, Word Perhect presents an idiosyncratic hand-drawn interface leading to a set of functioning but strangely altered tools. Word Perhect - e-2.org Commissions Page
When I discover this sort of thing, I always seem to feel this sense of anxiety regarding how much longer they'll be accessible. Before I tried Edge Chromium, I booted up my Windows Whistler Virtual Machine's Internet Explorer, which will still render Google.com, but returned an error on the Word Perhect re-upload. Again... anxious. I've got to document this right this moment! I know it's mostly irrational, but - in the middle of class - I whipped out OBS as soon as I got it working and recorded my first-time experiences and published the video to YouTube and Vimeo.
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