Instructor: Nick Montfort, in@mkcinckm.com
Class meets in 5-233, Wednesdays 2pm–5pm
Office hours are in 14E-316 Wednesdays 9am–10am
And by appointment
Students study and use innovative compositional techniques, focusing on new writing methods. Using approaches ranging from poetics to computer science, students undertake critical and creative writing, with writing experiments culminating in print or digital projects. Students read, listen to, and create different types of work, including sound poetry, cut-ups, constrained and Oulipian writing, uncreative writing, false translations, artists' books, and digital projects ranging from video games to computer-generated books. Digital art and literature, analyzed and discussed in the contexts of history, culture, and computing platforms, are covered, as well as avant-garde writing methods, situated in their historical contexts. Topics vary by year; may be repeated for credit with permission of the instructor. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments.
This Spring 2025 offering has a computational emphasis and will allow students to write through the full history of computational writing. Methods will include short programs implementing linear algorithms, storytelling systems based on cognitive models, threee-stage pipelined NLG systems, Markov generation using a single document, and LLMs. We’ll consider how different computational writing techniques relate to traditional creative writing concerns and the “manual” writing processes used by those associated with 20th and 21st Century avant-garde movements.
Output: An
Anthology of
Computer-Generated Text, 1953–2023
Eds. Lillian-Yvonne Bertram and Nick Montfort
MIT Press & Counterpath, 2024
You need to have a copy of the printed (paperback) edition
A
Black Story May Contain Sensitive Content
Lillian-Yvonne Bertram
DIAGRAM, 2024
You need to have a copy of the printed (paperback) edition
If you purchase this new from DIAGRAM, you will also get a PDF
Books are only one way we support our learning and our writing in class. We also have downloadable resources such as The Seeker, a PDF linked later and to be read after our March 12 class meeting. There is plenty of code available for you online, from the very small-scale programs in Memory Slam 2.0 through a storytelling system, Curveship, and up into open/free software LLMs that you can (optionally) install. You will be shown short videos and provided with in-class readings and links to other projects.
20% - Preparation for and participation in class. This is a workshop class in which discussing your work and that of your fellow students is the core activity. The physical presence of your material being in the classroom is essential; you also have to have the items you need to participate, ranging from a laptop to required books. Participation requires reading aloud and otherwise presenting the experimental writing you have done; giving short presentations about the historical, cultural, social, and national contexts of different avant-garde movements; engaging in discussion that is informed by having completed the assigned reading; and doing writing (we undertake in-class writing exercises). Missing a class, with an unexcused absence, will reduce your overall grade by 10%, which will lower your final grade by one letter grade. Grade reduction for unexcused absences is not capped. If you miss four classes and your absences are unexcused, your grade will be reduced 40%. (Note: Absences for circumstances out of your control, such as health problems and family emergencies, are absolutely excused, as are absences for religious observance. You still will have to keep up in the course, so as soon as is practical, contact me and one or more other students to be able to keep up.) Presence and lack of participation (for instance, due to being unprepared) will result in a lesser grade reduction for each class. Last but not least, you are not allowed in enroll in 21W.764 / CMS.609 / CMS.846 if you are enrolled in another subject that meets at any overlapping time. Absences because you need to go to another class or an exam for another class are unexcused.
40% - Completion of the nanoprojects, short weekly assignments, in a way that shows an understanding of the computational principle, constraint, prompt, or concept and which works toward some innovation. Each assignment will be valued equally.
40% - The kiloproject. The framework for the project (form, concept, material) should be innovative and appropriate to the author’s goals. The scope should be suitable for a project that is the culmination of a semester of writing work. The writing (process and output) should be innovative. Some aspect of the completed project should be awesome.
Memory Slam 2.0: Batch Era Text Generation — A Noise Such as a Man Might Make
Due next class ... Writing: (1) Develop a letter (correspondence) generator by modifying either the JavaScript or Python re-implementation of Love Letters. (2) Select two printed, computer-generated books that you may write about and report on during class 3, February 19. Bring physical copies of these two books to the next class (February 12), whether you borrow them from the MIT Library, get them through Interlibary Loan (ILL), buy new copies of them, or buy used copies. Reading: Output’s Introduction, Letters section, Haiku (a subsection of Poetry), and Glossary. You are expected to study this book and know about the different outputs as well as the concepts covered in the glossary.
Due next class ... Writing: (1) Haiku generator. (2) Free verse poem generator. (3) Prepare nanopresentations and send your slides by Monday to NM. Reading: Your selected book, Output’s Sonnets (a subsection of Poetry), Sentences section.
Nanopresentations (3 slides, 4 minutes) by students about computer-generated books.
Due next class ... Writing: (1) Revise your haiku generator also also make it compact / size-constrained (we will discuss what this means). (2) Write a really excellent untitled couplet. (3) Write a really excellent monostich with a title. (4) Chat with a chatbot from before 2020 and record your entire transcript. Annotate it lightly to explain what you found compelling or surprising about the conversation. Reading: Output’s Conversations section, Poetry main section through p. 200 (Lovecraft Remixed).
Due next class ... Writing: (1) Write a one-sentence score. (2) Write a one-page play. (3) Develop a program that generates some type of score or script. Reading: Output’s Performances section, remainder of Poetry section (through p. 240, Banner Depot 2000 Poetry Maker).
Due next class ... Writing: (1) Revise either your monostich, couplet, score or play. (2) Develop a word generator. (3) Develop a “novel” or book generator that produces a text of at least 50,000 words when run. Reading: Output’s Tweets and Microblogging section, Words section.
Due next class ... Writing: (1) Write a visual poem that makes no use of the computer; it could employ a typewriter, calligraphy, Letraset, etc. (2) Develop a computational visual poem. (3) Revise your word generator. Reading: Output’s Visual Poety section, Text and Image section; The Seeker.
Due next class ... Writing: Kiloproject assigned. A working version is to be ready for workshop discussion next class (April 2). Reading: Output’s Reporting section, Storytelling section.
Due next class ... Writing: Kiloproject revision, reworking, expansion. A working version is to be ready for workshop discussion next class (April 16). Reading: Output’s Rhetoric, Oratory, and Lectures section, Novels section.
Due next class ... Writing: Kiloproject final revisions and documentation. The finished version is to be ready for presentation next class (April 16) along with documentation appropriate to the project (a video or several photos, a textual description). Reading: Output’s Humor section, Prose section.
Due next class ... Writing: (1) A “hard” and serious manifesto that you could genuinely subscribe to. (2) A computational artwork that responds to someone else’s kiloproject. Reading: A Black Story, Manifestos to be determined.
Due next class Writing: (1) Open/free LLM texts. Use an open/free software model, not GPT-3, GPT-4, ChatGPT, Gemini, etc. Use a model that is a “pure” LLM without so-called alignment, guardrails, etc., e.g. GPT-J or GPT-NeoX. Depending on your level of interest, you can use a publicly available “playground” or install an LLM on the Engaging Cluster. In the latter case, you could even fine-tune it. A higher grade is not awarded simply for more complexity, though. (2) Your (hand-written) statement of poetics: Why do you do creative writing, computational or otherwise?
You don’t have to submit your work to contests or publications to learn about writing or to be a writer. For those who are interested, I am listing a few opportunities related to MIT where you can submit work that could be relevant to computational and experimental writing. I only include opportunities where there is no cost to submit work. A list will appear below and may be filled in during the semester.
Plagiarism—use of another's intellectual work without acknowledgement—is a serious offense. It is the policy of the CMS/W Faculty that students who plagiarize will receive an F in the subject, and that the instructor will forward the case to the Committee on Discipline. Full acknowledgement for all information obtained from sources outside the classroom must be clearly stated in all written work submitted. All ideas, arguments, and direct phrasings taken from someone else's work must be identified and properly footnoted. Quotations from other sources must be clearly marked as distinct from the student's own work. For further guidance on the proper forms of attribution, consult the style guides available in the Writing and Communication Center (E39-115) and the MIT Website on Plagiarism.
I used an experimental writing technique called appropriation when I directly ripped off the previous paragraph from another source and included it in this page, without quotation marks around it and without telling you where it came from, as if it were my own writing. For some reason it is considered perfectly ethical to do this on a syllabus at MIT. Be mindful that syllabus-writing and certain experimental writing practices, appropriate in a contemporary poetry context, may not be appropriate for scholarly writing and may not embody academic integrity in a traditional sense. As we will discuss this semester, this does not mean that experimental writers should operate without ethics or integrity. We won’t ignore the academic concept of plagiarism in this class; we will understand how appropriating text and, in certain cases, not explicitly stating one’s sources, is a method of conceptualist experimental writing that has a point to it.
The Writing and Communication Center offers free one-on-one professional advice from communication experts with advanced degrees and publishing experience. The WCC can help you further develop your oral communication skills and learn about all types of academic and professional writing. You can learn more about the WCC consultations at http://cmsw.mit.edu/writing-and-communication-center and register with the online scheduler to make appointments through https://mit.mywconline.com. Please note that appointments at the WCC tend to fill up quickly.
Information Systems & Technology (IS&T). As an enrolled MIT student you can access a variety of proprietary software at no cost, and, given my advocacy, use, and production of free software, I’ll discourage you from using such — use free/libre/open source software instead! IS&T also loans laptops to students: https://ist.mit.edu/loaner-equipment. If you have any technical questions about hardware, software, or anything IT-related, you can contact IS&T 24 hours a day, 7 days a week at: https://ist.mit.edu/help.
The Engaging Cluster. MIT’s ORCD (Office of Research Computing and Data) adminsiters the Engaging Cluster, which provides high-performance computing for all members of the MIT community. While students do not have to install a model such as GPT-J or GPT-NeoX, much less fine-tune such a model, it can be done using Engaging.
Laptop/Device Best Practices. You should have your computers/tablets/phones at the ready for when we (as a class) come up with a question that can be answered using cybernetic enhancement. We augment our intellect in various ways during our class sessions, using networked computation, using books, looking at a screen, listening to recordings, and so on. For the most part, we will be augmenting our intellect by discussing topics with each other, doing, sharing writing exercises (usually undertaken on paper), and otherwise attending to the people in the classroom community. This requires close attention to me and your fellow students, so keep your digital devices closed/face down until we determine that one or more of us will consult a resource. I may ask that we write together using a shared text editor; I'll provide some advance warning if this is planned.