Posted on by Nick Montfort

Just Posted, Computational, Conceptual

Now online: “The First M Numbers Classified in Alphabetical Order.”

This was my New Year’s poem for 2013. It is based on Claude Closky’s 1989 “Les 1000 premiers nombres classés par ordre alphabétique” [The First 1000 Numbers Classified in Alphabetical Order], which he laser printed and which begins this way:

From Closky's The First 1000 Numbers Classified in Alphabetical Order

A full image of the first page spread (which is the source for the image above), and more context for this work, is available on this page.

The printed copies of my “The First M…” were dot-matrix printed on two connected sheets of fanfold paper. In the printout, as online, I included the program as well as the output.

2 Replies to “Just Posted, Computational, Conceptual”

  1. This reminds me of Starship Titanic. When the computer game came out, there was a simultaneous release of a novelization by Terry Jones. The full (sort of) novel was available online, but the words were sorted alphabetically.

    http://www.fpx.de/fp/Fun/Titanic/

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

To create code blocks or other preformatted text, indent by four spaces:

    This will be displayed in a monospaced font. The first four 
    spaces will be stripped off, but all other whitespace
    will be preserved.
    
    Markdown is turned off in code blocks:
     [This is not a link](http://example.com)

To create not a block, but an inline code span, use backticks: 

Here is some inline `code`.

For more help see http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.