After Alvin Lucier, who recorded himself speaking in a room and played the recording back into the room until the room's resonance had eaten the words. Here the room is a thesaurus.

Each scroll plays the text back into the room one more time. Every word is answered by a neighbour, and the neighbour takes its place.

Small words are walls: the, of, I, is, and, in. They never drift. They are the shape the drifting happens inside.

A replacement keeps the ending of the word it replaces (-ing, -ed, -s, -ly) and close to its syllable count, so the rhythm holds while the sense drains.

A word that appears twice is answered the same way both times. Repetition is what reinforces.

Early passes keep to common words. Rarer ones are let in as the tape goes on.

From pass 6 the punctuation wears away, from pass 10 the capitals, and from pass 16 neighbouring words begin to trade places.

The rooms answer differently.
close answers with synonyms first.
large with words that mean something like it.
hall with words it calls up.
tiled by sound, not sense.

Scrolling back replays the tape. It never plays it again. Changing rooms keeps what has been played so far and erases the rest. Again records a new tape.

Tap any word to see every word that stood in its place, which relation brought each one, and on which pass. Tap a step to go back to it.

The answers come from Datamuse, a free word-relation service, so the room needs a connection.