Bells celebrate or warn. A new use, originally for sport, arose among ordinary folk in 17th-century England. They began to ring church tower bells in highly structured mathematical sequences, specifically the 7! patterns one can create with seven bells, each one called a “row” or “change.” Ringing the Changes (Counterpath Press, 2020) and its interactive companion Liberty Ring! are created from shareable code (https://github.com/juliannechat/ringing-the-changes) based on this ancient art. Bells ring out, but words echo on—in texts sampled from writers who probe the changes, needed or existing, in our entangled virtual/real worlds. Online texts explore challenges to liberty, including climate change.

Each print bell features 23 texts, randomly, none reappearing till all 23 are sounded. A different set of 11 texts—sourced from Mbembe, Douglass, Truth, and Framers of the U.S. Constitution among others—populate Liberty Ring!, each peal reader-rung or set to advance on its own. The mathematics is explained here (https://www.simonsfoundation.org/2014/02/03/mathematical-impressions-change-ringing/) or here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5GmUxl2NaU). Print sequences and tower bell peals both create a line of sound. Liberty Ring! texts materialize in a bell-ringers’ circle. Either way, seven threads of thought weave new contexts for each other, in a ring or in a line, in provocative conversation.