The born-digital creative works The Data Souls and Most Powerful Words treat language as data and data as language. Set in a distant future, The Data Souls imagines the discovery of seven ru- sted data storage devices that define our contemporary age. Their contents use various data sets to generate multiple text performances. This data is then used to 3D-model and print correlating artefacts. Each flash fiction or ‘soul’ contains images and recordings of the 3D-printed artefact. This work is discomforting to the reader in that, while the data is knowable, its causes and reverbera- tions are not. Most Powerful Words is a digital literary work comprised of 54 computer-generated
poems. Using Montfort’s algorithmically minimal JavaScript, this collection allows contemporary readers to lightly, quickly, precisely, visibly, and consistently traverse the infinite use and misuse of past and present language. The work uses controversial and at times discomforting texts from contemporary and early Australian and Queensland history to generate poetry. This paper explores the creative processes used in the development of these two projects. In so doing, it explores the discomforting and at times dystopian nature of data-driven culture and its impact on language and literature.