Tag: story generation

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The OUTPUT Anthology is Out!

OUTPUT: An Anthology of Computer-Generated Text 1953–2023 in a hand model’s hands (or an AI facsimile thereof?)

I’m delighted that after more than four years of work by Lillian-Yvonne Bertram and myself — we’re co-editors of this book — the MIT Press and Counterpath have jointly published

Output: An Anthology of Computer-Generated Text, 1953–2023

This anthology spans seven decades of computer-generated text, beginning before the term “artificial intelligence” was even coined. While not restricted to poetry, fiction, and other creative projects, it reveals the rich work that has been done by artists, poets, and other sorts of writers who have taken computing and code into their own hands. The anthology includes examples of powerful and principled rhetorical generation along with story generation systems based on cognitive research. There are examples of “real news” generation that has already been informing us — along with hoaxes and humor.

Page spread from OUTPUT with Everest Pipkin’s i’ve never picked a protected flower

Page spread from OUTPUT with Talan Memmott’s Self Portrait(s) [as Other(s)]

Page spread from OUTPUT with thricedotted’s The Seeker

It’s all contextualized by brief introductions to each excerpt, longer introductions to each fine-grained genre of text generation, and an overall introduction that Lillian-Yvonne and I wrote. There are 200 selections in the 500-page book, which we hope will be a valuable sourcebook for academics and students — but also a way for general readers to learn about innovations in computing and writing.

You can buy Output now from several sources. I suggest your favorite independent bookseller! If you’re in the Boston area, stop by the MIT Press Bookstore which as of this writing, has 21 on hand as of actually publishing this post, has 14 copies!

Book Launches

November 11 (Monday): Both editors will speak at the University of Virginia, Bryan Hall, Faculty Lounge, Floor 2. Free & open to the public. 5pm.

November 20 (Wednesday): Online book launch for Output, hosted by the University of Maryland. Both editors in conversation with Matt Kirschenbaum. Free, register on Zoom. 12noon Eastern Time.

November 21 (Thursday) Book launch at WordHack with me, David Gissen, Sasha Stiles, Andrew Yoon, and open mic presenters. $15 (purchasing a ticket online is recommended; WordHack has sold out the past several months). Wonderville, 1186 Broadway, Brooklyn, 7pm.

December 9 (Monday) Book launch at Book Club Bar with the editors, Charles Bernstein, Robin Hill, Stephanie Strickland, and Leonard Richardson. 197 E 3rd St (at Ave B), New York City’s East Village. Free, RSVP required. 8pm.

December 13 (Friday) European book launch with the editors, Scott Rettberg, and others TBA. University of Bergen’s Center for Digital Narrative, Langesgaten 1-2, 3:30pm. Free & open to the public.

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Gram’s Fairy Tales: Manual & Grimoire

Taper, an online literary magazine published twice yearly, is now in its 12th issue. An independent editorial collective (Kyle Booten, Angela Chang, Kavi Duvvoori, Leonardo Flores, Helen Shewolfe Tseng, and Andy Wallace, for this issue) makes all the decisions about selections, themes for forthcoming issues, and so on, and also handles all communication with authors. They do all the work! Editors are allowed to submit works, in which case they recuse themselves from the collective’s discussion. I’m proud to be publisher of this magazine — although it’s really the editorial collective that makes it happen.

My “Gram’s Fairy Tales” was selected for this issue, with “Tools” as its theme!

A story grammar in a textarea (below) and a generated story about a heroic lily, a villainous droplet, and a chanterelle who helps the hero.

For those who haven’t visited Taper, when you do, you’ll find that the poems are computational and are no more than 2KB (2048 bytes) in size. (Issue #1 hosted 1KB poems and issue #3 had ones that were 3KB, but Goldilocks found the ideal constraint in 2KB.) Issue #12 features a lot of general-purpose programs that are true tools, textual or otherwise, as well as dynamic text generators that speak to the theme. In fact, the issue is our largest yet, with 32 selections.

To read what the author/programmers say about their work, in their statements, you generally have to “View Page Source” (or choose the similar option in your browser) and look at a comment at the top of each page, which is licensed as free (libre) software so you can make use of it in any way you like. However, given the theme of this issue, I wrote “Gram’s Fairy Tales” to not only give access to the underlying HTML5, but also to let people write grammars that can be placed in a text area and used to generate stories. Given this, I’m going to pull a bit from my “author statement,” found in complete form in the comments, and post it here. I’ll also provide three novel story grammars written by others: Jhave Jhonston (author of ReRites), Kyle Booten (author of Salon des Fantômes), and Kavi Duvvoori (author of Common Is That They).

Inspirations, Instructions – Jhave’s – Kyle’s – Kavi’s

Two Inspiring Systems, and Instructions

As I developed “Gram’s Fairy Tales,” I was thinking about two remarkable story generation systems, very different ones, both quite simple.

One is the mid-1980s Story Machine, which I’ve known about for a while in its Commodore 64 incarnation. It is a strangely animistic system in which any entity can perform any transitive or intransitive action. While there are multimedia elements and some notion of state, it essentially develops narratives one independent sentence at a time.

The other is a system by Joseph Grimes, operational in Mexico City in 1963. Only one text from this story generator is documented. It seems to have produced stories based on a story grammar, with formalist structures. So, a hero would be challenged in some way and overcome the challenge. The one-page magazine article about the system suggested that it could be called “Grimes’s Fairy Tales.”

“Gram’s Fairy Tales” uses a simple grammar to generate stories. There are special “hero” and “villain” tokens, which always refer to the same two entities, selected from the “entity” rule. You don’t have a pool of good guys and bad guys; any entities are equally likely to be heroes and villains.

Beyond those special tokens, the other nonterminal tokens (the lowercase ones) expand according to rules, with each represented as one line in the text field.

The “|” indicates alternatives; these are split apart first.

The “+” indicates a conjunction of elements; all of those will appear.

Tokens keep getting expanded until eventually there is a run of text which in my example grammars are in all caps. These are “terminals,” and ends up being presented as is, without any further transformation.

Your grammar needs to begin with a “story” rule, and it should have “adj” and “entity” rules so a hero and villain can be determined. Anything else is up to you. Indeed, you don’t actually have to refer to a hero or villain.

My terminals are in all caps (making for an all-caps story) simply because it’s tricky to get the capitalization of sentences right. It would make things harder for those who want to edit the grammar and create their own stories, and the grammar is already a bit tricky.

Spaces have to be included properly at the beginning and ending of terminals, for instance, except for the terminals that come at the very end of stories.

Also, if you have entities or adjectives that begin with a vowel sound, you’ll end up with grammatical mistakes. The solution in this simple tool (or toy) — simply use adjectives and entities that all begin with consonant sounds!

To get an idea of how to write your own grammar, you may want to start with an extremely simple one, such as:

story>hero+ FOUGHT +villain+.|hero+ TOOK A NAP.
adj>CLEVER|STRONG
entity>FOX|CHICKEN

Jhave’s Grammar: A Harmonious Moment

Here’s a striking project by Jhave Johnston, who is my colleague at the University of Bergen Center for Digital Narrative and winner of the Robert Coover Award. You’ll notice that Jhave wrote his grammar to enable proper capitalization, despite the difficulty of that. Although the right side of the text is hidden, you can select it all and paste it into “Gram’s Fairy Tales” to see how it works.

story>intro+conclusion
intro>In the heart of +emotion+, +entities+ +verb+ in +concept+|Abiding as  +emotion+, +entities+ +verb+ in +concept+|Before +emotion+, +entities+ +verb+ in +concept+|Imperturbable in +emotion+, +entities+ +verb+ in +concept+|Serendipitous as +emotion+, +entities+ +verb+ in +concept+|Surrounded by  +emotion+, +entities+ +verb+ in +concept+|Amidst +emotion+, +entities+ +verb+ in +concept+|Beyond +emotion+, +entities+ +verb+ in +concept+
emotion>serenity|peace|tranquility|joyousness|tenderness|compassion|love|radiance|integrity
entities>entities_nature+ and +entities_tech
entities_nature>brooks|forest|cascade|swamp|torrent|ravines|refugees|stars|orchards|plateaus|tendrils|alleyways|groves|mountains|rivers|fields|meadows|ridges|oceans|orchards|moons|blossoms|nebulae|subduction trenches
entities_tech>LEDs|torrents|media|villains|dollar-stores|ditches|pop-ups|server-farms|antennae|antagonists|satellites|philosophies|trinkets|video-walls|entrails|exiles|synapses|heroes|plastics
verb>merged|thrived|replenished|enjoyed|trembled|reveried|prospered
concept>precon+conce
precon>harmony, |wisdom's light, |exuberance, |cohesion, |unity, |solidarity, |changelessness, |insight, 
conce>seeking mutual actualization|observing mutual transcendence|flourishing with supple realization|witnessing collective discovery|imploding within perfect revelation|imploding within effortless actualization|observing ripe achievement|listening to shared success
conclusion>.

A custom grammar generates “Surrounded by peace, blossoms and antennae merged in solidarity, listening to shared success.”

Kyle Booten’s Grammar: How to Compose an Ode

Kyle is a longtime member of the Taper editorial collective — since issue #5 in fall 2020! — and has long been working to have computer text generation provoke his own (and others’) writing. His grammar produces instructions for writing odes of different sorts, and is the most elaborate by far, clocking in at 70 lines, with several that are essentially comments or blank. Again, you can select all of these and paste them into “Gram’s” without trouble, although some of the text on the right side is obscured.

Pindar Horace Hordar 
(An Ode-Gym)
Kyle Booten


story>HOW TO WRITE AN ODE: +ode_type
ode_type>pindaric|pindaric|pindaric|pindaric|horatian|horatian|horatian|horatian|blended



PINDARIC

pindaric> (TURN) +strophe+ (COUNTERTURN) +antistrophe+ (STAND) +epode
strophe>IN A STANZA OF +p_lines+ +short_or_long+ +meter1+ LINES, ADOPTING A +style1+ TENOR, DESCRIBE +hero+, WITH PARTICULAR ATTENTION TO THE +p_feature+ OF +hero+.
meter1>DACTYLLIC|DACTYLLIC|DACTYLLIC|QUASI-AEOLIC|LOGAOEDIC
meter2>meter_adjust+ +meter1|TROCHAIC|IAMBIC
meter_adjust>NOT|ANYTHING BUT|ONLY IMPERFECTLY
p_lines>6|8|8|10|12
short_or_long>BRIEF|BRIEF|BRIEF|LENGTHY|LENGTHY|LENGTHY|ABSURDLY LONG
p_feature>LAUREL|ORDER|VIRTUE|LAW|DECREE|STRENGTH|CRIME|FATE
style1>SOLEMN|MYSTICAL|GNOMIC|JAGGED|SUBLIME|MORALISTIC|GOVERNMENTAL|MUSCULAR|LAUDATORY|REVERENT|JUBILANT
antistrophe>USING THE SAME STANZAIC STRUCTURE BUT NOW +style_or_mentioning+, CONTRAPOSE +hero+ WITH ITS INVERSE AND ENEMY, +villain+.
style_or_mentioning>style2|MENTIONING +p_trait
style2>ZANY|PIXELATED|EUPHORIC|REVERENT|BLOODTHIRSTY|STERN|RECURSIVE|VITUPERATIVE|BRUTALIST|PARANOID|ANGUISHED
p_trait>THE STATE|A GOD|A WAR|A SPORT|A MORAL|A VIRTUE|A CONQUEST|A VICTORY|A NATURAL DISASTER
epode>NOW, WITH +subtract+ FEWER LINES, AND THESE +ep_style+, IMAGINE HOW +hero+ SHALL +do_to_villain+ +villain+.
ep_style>meter2|style1|style2|short_or_long|short_or_long+ AND +meter2|style1+ AND +style2|style2+ AND +meter2
subtract>2|2|2|3|3|3|4|4|5
do_to_villain>OVERCOME|OVERCOME|OVERCOME|REFORM|BANISH|DEMOTE|CENSURE|STEAL FROM|WED|WOUND|BECOME


HORATIAN

horatian>IN +stanzas+ STANZAS, EACH OF 4 LINES, DESCRIBE +hero+, +gradient+.|IN +stanzas+ STANZAS, EACH OF 4 LINES, DESCRIBE +hero+, +gradient+. +extra+.
gradient>PROGRESSING GENTLY FROM+ +concept_statement|PROGRESSING GENTLY FROM+ +concept_statement+ AND SIMULTANEOUSLY FROM +concept_statement2
concept_statement>concept+ TO +concept2
concept>THE +cognizing+ OF THE +abstraction+ OF +object|THE +cognizing2+ OF THE +abstraction2+ OF +object
concept2>THE +cognizing2+ OF THE +abstraction+ OF +object|THE +cognizing+ OF THE +abstraction2+ OF +object2
concept_statement2>GREEN TO BLUE|BLUE TO GREEN|WEALTH TO POVERTY|MORNING TO NIGHT|RAIN TO SLEEP|YOUTH TO OLD AGE|FALL TO SPRING|WINTER TO SUMMER
abstraction>PAIN|SADNESS|LOSS|HUMOR|FRAILTY|YEARNING
abstraction2>LOSS|GROWTH|MERCY|HISTORY|TIMELESSNESS|MORTALITY
cognizing>AWARENESS|FORGIVENESS|HATRED|NON-AWARENESS|APPRECIATION|MISUNDERSTANDING|SYMPATHY
cognizing2>ACCEPTANCE|PERCEPTION|REGRETTING|UNDERSTANDING
object>hero|hero|hero|hero|LIFE IN GENERAL
object2>hero|hero|hero|hero|villain|LIFE IN GENERAL
stanzas>3|4|4|6|6|8|10
extra>REMARK IN THE +count_line+ LINE UPON +extra_object|prosody
extra_object>THE +h_feature+ OF +hero|WINE|WINE|WINE|A MORSEL|A MORSEL|A FRIEND
h_feature>FLAVOR|SIZE|TEXTURE|FAMILY|POSITION|TEMPERATURE|ECHO|INTERIOR|FORM|TEMPERAMENT|HONOR|HUE
count_line>1ST|rel_num|rel_num+ TO LAST
prosody>MIMIC +poet+'S METER
poet>SAPPHO|ALCAEUS
rel_num>2ND|3RD|4TH


BLENDED

blended>bl1|bl2|bl3|bl4|bl5|bl6
bl1>[STANZA 1: +pindaric_bit+] [STANZA 2: +pindaric_bit+] [STANZA 3: +horatian_bit+]
bl2>[STANZA 1: +pindaric_bit+] [STANZA 2: +horatian_bit+] [STANZA 3: +pindaric_bit+]
bl3>[STANZA 1: +horatian_bit+] [STANZA 2: +pindaric_bit+] [STANZA 3: +pindaric_bit+]
bl4>[STANZA 1: +pindaric_bit+] [STANZA 2: +horatian_bit+] [STANZA 3: +horatian_bit+]
bl5>[STANZA 1: +horatian_bit+] [STANZA 2: +horatian_bit+] [STANZA 3: +pindaric_bit+]
bl6>[STANZA 1: +horatian_bit+] [STANZA 2: +pindaric_bit+] [STANZA 3: +horatian_bit+]
pindaric_bit>meter1|meter2|short_or_long|style1|style1|style_or_mentioning|strophe|ep_style
horatian_bit>gradient|gradient|extra|extra_object|cognizing|cognizing2|concept_statement|concept|concept2|concept_statement2|prosody


adj>VINTAGE|COMMON|CIVIC|BROKEN|HONEYED|PAINTED|SACRED|HUNGRY|VERNAL|FLEETING
entity>VASE|FRIEND|DOVE|DEER|FRUIT|LAKE|HOUSE|GAME|TUNE|STORM|GLEN|KNOT|VEIL|WRIT

Kavi Duvvoori’s Most Grammatical Grammar

Kavi joined the editorial collective of Taper for this issue (#12) and has really put their shoulder to the wheel! They (like Jhave & Kyle) have been producing serious computer-generated texts and adjacent projects, of course with particular twists. Their grammar uses story elements (hero, villain) and does tell a story — but one about grammars.

story>theory+.|theory+. +coda+.
theory>A +academic+ +critiqued+ +hero+, +noting+ +villain+ IS +really+ A +metaphor+|+villain+ WAS +endorsed+ BY A +academic+ WITH +hero+ USED AS A +vessel+ TO CATCH THE +metaphor|+villain+ IS ITSELF +really+ +surface+, ESPECIALLY +hero+|+hero+ BY A +academic+ IS +villain+ THAT DESCRIBES, FINALLY, THE +metaphor+
coda>+villain+ +ofthis+ IS THE +metaphor+ PUT IN A +vessel+ BY +hero+reversal+|+villain+ +ofthis+ IS +hero+reversal+
ofthis>OF THIS STORY|IN OUR TALE|FOR OUR PURPOSES HERE
reversal> (OR DO I HAVE IT BACKWARDS?)| (WAS IT REALLY THAT +coda+?)|
response>+critiqued+ THE +problem+ IN|+endorsed+
critiqued>FOUND A GAP IN|DISPUTED|ELABORATED TO APORIA
endorsed>REINFORCED|ELABORATED ON|SHOWN TO NOT POSSESS THE ALLEGED +problem+
academic>linguist|+specialty+ +linguist+|SOCIOLOGIST OF THE +academic+
specialty>COMPUTATIONAL|CRITICAL|CREATIVE|HISTORICAL
linguist>POET|LINGUIST|PHILOLOGIST|LITERARY THEORIST
problem>LACK OF RIGOUR|IDEALISM|CONTRADICTIONS|PROBLEMS
noting>NOTING THAT|SHOWING HOW|FOR
really>REALLY|IN FACT|IN TRUTH
metaphor>image+ ON +surface|churn+ +metaphor
image>SHADOW|REFLECTION|PICTURE
vessel>NET|SIEVE|DISPLAY CASE
churn>SHIFTING|FLOWING|CHURNING
surface>A BUILDING'S WALL|A PAGE|SKIN|+churn+ +flow
flow>CURRENTS|WATER|LEAVES|WIND|MUD
adj>CHOMSKYAN|PANINIAN|MOSTLY ADELE GOLDBERG-INSPIRED|PRIMARILY IRENE HEIM-DERIVED|MONTAGUE|LAKOFFIAN|CHARLES SANDERS PIERCE-ROOTED
entity>GRAMMAR|MODEL|LOGIC|FORMALISM

“A FORMALISM IS ITSELF IN TRUTH A PAGE, ESPECIALLY A LAKOFFIAN MODEL.” Plus a grammar.

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Amazing Quest Q&A

Amazing Quest should be completely open to the interpretation of players, to their appreciation of it, and, if they choose, to their rejection of it.

I refrained from discussing anything about the game during the IF Comp. Now that it’s over, I am glad to answer some questions that have arisen—with the earnest hope that my answers don’t preclude people from coming up with their own interpretations and responses.

These aren’t really frequently asked questions, but they are all actually questions that have been asked at least once. When I quote directly, the quotations are from anonymous feedback from IF Comp players. Whether quoted or in paraphrase, all of these are real questions or responses that I’ve gotten.

Q: Are you trolling? Making a joke? Playing a prank?

A: No.

Q: Why did you enter this thing, which isn’t very much like IF as we understand it, in the IF Comp?

A: Because I hoped some people would enjoy it and be provoked by it (in a positive way) when they encountered this game in the context of the Comp. That may have only happened twelve times, based on the ratings that were greater than 5, but perhaps I provided some interest and joy to these twelve players that outweighed the other players’ confusion and disappointment.

Q: As a computer program, what exactly is Amazing Quest?

A: A quasi-spoiler here, but: it is a 12-line Commodore 64 BASIC program, with each line being of the maximum length that can be typed in: 80 characters, using all keyword abbreviations and other shortcuts. That makes it the maximal Commodore 64 BASIC program that will fit on one screen. On the second half of the last logical line (line 11), which is the last physical line of the screen, I included a sort of informal all-permissive free software license.

Q: Is this an experiment?

A: I don’t find it interesting to produce any IF, other digital games, other digital literature, or other digital art, unless what I’m doing is an experiment. So, of course.

Q: Is this a parody?

A: I don’t consider it to be, since you’re asking me. If you have thoughtfully considered the game and that’s what you take away from it, I respect your view.

Q: What am I supposed to do when playing this?

A: Since you’ve asked me, I’ve tried to explain this quite explicitly in the introduction: “If you allow your imagination to help you elaborate each stop on your journey, and if you truly get into the mindset of the returning wanderer, Amazing Quest will offer you rewards as you play it again and again.” You can read that, and the game, however you want, but I’d say that Amazing Quest prompts you to imagine, from the standpoint of the main character. So, imagine.

Q: “Oh hey, it’s A Space Odyssey!”

A: For me at least, I did consider Amazing Quest to be a serious engagement with Homer’s Odyssey, and that was one of the things that motivated my work on the project. I’m glad that some people saw this aspect of the project. I hope that enriched some people’s experience of it.

Q: “I found the intro and strategy guide more compelling than the game itself.”

A: Personally I would have preferred that all elements of Amazing Quest (the introduction, the strategy guide, the BASIC game itself) had worked together to good effect for you, but I’m glad that you liked something about the project. My development of the short framing texts was meant to relate to the way that early games had similar supporting materials that were essential to the experience. In any case, I am glad someone liked these texts, because it took me a long time to type them up on my Smith Corona Classic 12 without making any mistakes.

Q: “I don’t suspect that you’re in it for the ratings.”

Only one of more than 100 games was going to win the Comp. (Well, this year it happens to be two, because of a tie—but you get my point.) I made this game for the IF Comp so that players would encounter Amazing Quest and play it in that context, in case they found it compelling in that context.

Q: “I guess the point was go ‘behind the scenes’ and read the program in BASIC? That isn’t a particularly interesting goal…”

A: It wasn’t interesting to you, but there are many people in the world. One player ported the game to BBC Micro BASIC, so it seems like the nature of this game as a BASIC program was somehow interesting to that person. Even apparently simple projects like this may have many complex aspects to them which aren’t evident at first. And perhaps only a very few people will be interested in particular aspects. So in this case, perhaps this “behind the scenes” aspect is important to the person who ported it to the BBC Micro, and maybe it will be interesting to people who know Commodore 64 BASIC very well. I’m frankly surprised that someone engaged with the BASIC program so thoroughly during the Comp. It easily could have taken a few decades for anyone to really become interested in the game’s code, if that was ever going to happen.

Q: SPOILER, select the following text to read: The player’s input has no effect on the outcome, and that’s stupid.

A: Although this isn’t a question, I’ll mention: If you understand a little more about Commodore 64 BASIC, you’d find that the user’s input does have an effect on the outcome.

Q: SPOILER, select the following text to read: Okay, but whether you answer yes or no has no effect on the outcome.

A: This, while also not a question, is true. So, let’s begin with whether this is fair to players of the game. Does that contradict anything said on the main page (“I must decide as if it all depends on me, trust as if it all depends on the gods”), within the game itself (“The gods grant victory”), in the introduction, or in the strategy guide? And in terms of how this game relates to the Odyssey, in which a character is fated to return home, alone, from the beginning, and is then brought home by the will of the gods—is there any contradiction there? To continue along these lines, even understanding this aspect of the game, if you decided to go on raids at every opportunity, plundering away, would that be any different than if you always declined to raid? Is your intentional choice irrelevant, even if the outcome is “random”? With all of this in mind, consider something more concrete and immediate. Let’s consider people who live in the United States who voted in the 2020 election. Why would they do that? Realistically, an individual’s vote had no more effect than any one particular Y/N response in Amazing Quest. Let’s heap one more thing on here, purely related to what one might call gameplay. If you want to imagine what’s going on—a journey home—why would this particular property of the game in any way stifle your imagination?

Q: Was this project motivated by anything besides the Odyssey?

A: Yes. I’ll be discussing this and other matters related to Amazing Quest at the Seattle area IF meetup, which will take place online on December 13, 2020 at 2pm PST. If you want to join, you’ll need to email the organizers; see the intfiction.org forum for more information. I hope this group doesn’t regret their plan to host the author of the 98th place IF Comp 2020 game! I’m certainly still looking forward to discussing Amazing Quest.

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Nano-NaNoGenMo or #NNNGM

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak November;
And each separate bit and pixel wrought a novel on GitHub.

April may be the cruelest month, and now the month associated with poetry, but November is the month associated with novel-writing, via NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month. Now, thanks to an offhand comment by Darius Kazemi and the work of Hugo van Kemenade, November is also associated with the computer-generation of novels, broadly speaking. Any computer program and its 50,000 word+ output qualifies as an entry in NaNoGenMo, National Novel Generation Month.

NaNoGenMo does have a sort of barrier to entry: People often think they have to do something elaborate, despite anyone being explicitly allowed to produce a novel consisting entirely of meows. Those new to NaNoGenMo may look up to, for instance, the amazingly talented Ross Goodwin. In his own attempt to further climate change, he decided to code up an energy-intensive GPT-2 text generator while flying on a commercial jet. You’d think that for his next trick this guy might hop in a car, take a road trip, and generate a novel using a LSTM RNN! Those who look up so such efforts — and it’s hard not to, when they’re conducted at 30,000 feet and also quite clever — might end up thinking that computer-generated novels must use complex code and masses of data.

And yet, there is so much that can be done with simple programs that consume very little energy and can be fully understood by their programmers and others.

Because of this, I have recently announced Nano-NaNoGenMo. On Mastodon and Twitter (using #NNNGM) I have declared that November will also be the month in which people write computer programs that are at most 256 characters, and which generate 50,000 word or more novels. These can use Project Gutenberg files, as they are named on that site, as input. Or, they can run without using any input.

I have produced three Nano-NaNoGenMo (or #NNNGM) entries for 2019. In addition to being not very taxing computationally, one of these happens to have been written on an extremely energy-efficient electric train. Here they are. I won’t gloss each one, but I will provide a few comments on each, along with the full code for you to look at right in this blog post, and with links to both bash shell script files and the final output.

OB-DCK; or, THE (SELFLESS) WHALE


perl -0pe 's/.?K/**/s;s/MOBY(.)DI/OB$1D/g;s/D.r/Nick Montfort/;s/E W/E (SELFLESS) W/g;s/\b(I ?|me|my|myself|am|us|we|our|ourselves)\b//gi;s/\r\n\r\n//g;s/\r\n/ /g;s//\n\n/g;s/ +/ /g;s/(“?) ([,.;:]?)/$1$2/g;s/\nEnd .//s’ 2701-0.txt #NNNGM

WordPress has mangled this code despite it being in a code element; Use the following link to obtain a runnable version of it:

OB-DCK; or, THE (SELFLESS) WHALE code

OB DCK; or, THE (SELFLESS) WHALE, the novel

The program, performing a simple regular expression substitution, removes all first-person pronouns from Moby-Dick. Indeed, OB-DCK is “MOBY-DICK” with “MY” removed from MOBY and “I” from DICK. Chapter 1 begins:

Call Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in purse, and nothing particular to interest on shore, thought would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever find growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in soul; whenever find involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral meet; and especially whenever hypos get such an upper hand of , that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, account it high time to get to sea as soon as can. This is substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with .

Because Ishmael is removed as the “I” of the story, on a grammatical level there is (spoiler alert!) no human at all left at the end of book.

consequence


perl -e 'sub n{(unpack"(A4)*","backbodybookcasedoorfacefacthandheadhomelifenamepartplayroomsidetimeweekwordworkyear")[rand 21]}print"consequence\nNick Montfort\n\na beginning";for(;$i<12500;$i++){print" & so a ".n;if(rand()<.6){print n}}print".\n"' #NNNGM

consequence code

consequence, the novel

Using compounding of the sort found in my computer-generated long poem The Truelist and my “ppg 256-3,” this presents a sequence of things — sometimes formed from a single very common four-letter word, sometimes from two combined — that, it is stated, somehow follow from each other:

a beginning & so a name & so a fact & so a case & so a bookdoor & so a head & so a factwork & so a sidelife & so a door & so a door & so a factback & so a backplay & so a name & so a facebook & so a lifecase & so a partpart & so a hand & so a bookname & so a face & so a homeyear & so a bookfact & so a book & so a hand & so a head & so a headhead & so a book & so a face & so a namename & so a life & so a hand & so a side & so a time & so a yearname & so a backface & so a headface & so a headweek & so a headside & so a bookface & so a bookhome & so a lifedoor & so a bookyear & so a workback & so a room & so a face & so a body & so a faceweek & so a sidecase & so a time & so a body & so a fact […]

Too Much Help at Once


python -c "help('topics')" | python -c "import sys;print('Too Much Help at Once\nNick Montfort');[i for i in sorted(''.join(sys.stdin.readlines()[3:]).split()) if print('\n'+i+'\n') or help(i)]" #NNNGM

Too Much Help at Once code

Too Much Help at Once, the novel

The program looks up all the help topics provided within the (usually interactive) help system inside Python itself. Then, it asks for help on everything, in alphabetical order, producing 70k+ words of text, according the GNU utility wc. The novel that results is, of course, an appropriation of text others have written; it arranges but doesn’t even transform that text. To me, however, it does have some meaning. Too Much Help at Once models one classic mistake that beginning programmers can make: Thinking that it’s somehow useful to read comprehensively about programming, or about a programming language, rather than actually using that programming language and writing some programs. Here’s the very beginning:

Too Much Help at Once
Nick Montfort

ASSERTION

The “assert” statement
**********************

Assert statements are a convenient way to insert debugging assertions
into a program:

assert_stmt ::= “assert” expression [“,” expression]

A plot

So far I have noted one other #NNNGM entry, A plot by Milton Läufer, which I am reproducing here in corrected form, according to the author’s note:


perl -e 'sub n{(split/ /,"wedding murder suspicion birth hunt jealousy death party tension banishment trial verdict treason fight crush friendship trip loss")[rand 17]}print"A plot\nMilton Läufer\n\n";for(;$i<12500;$i++){print" and then a ".n}print".\n"'

Related in structure to consequence, but with words of varying length that do not compound, Läufer’s novel winds through not four weddings and a funeral, but about, in expectation, 735 weddings and 735 murders in addition to 735 deaths, leaving us to ponder the meaning of “a crush” when it occurs in different contexts:

and then a wedding and then a murder and then a trip and then a hunt and then a crush and then a trip and then a death and then a murder and then a trip and then a fight and then a treason and then a fight and then a crush and then a fight and then a friendship and then a murder and then a wedding and then a friendship and then a suspicion and then a party and then a treason and then a birth and then a treason and then a tension and then a birth and then a hunt and then a friendship and then a trip and then a wedding and then a birth and then a death and then a death and then a wedding and then a treason and then a suspicion and then a birth and then a jealousy and then a trip and then a jealousy and then a party and then a tension and then a tension and then a trip and then a treason and then a crush and then a death and then a banishment […]

Share, enjoy, and please participate by adding your Nano-NaNoGenMo entries as NaNoGenMo entries (via the GitHub site) and by tooting & tweeting them!

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Author Function

The exhibit Author Function, featuring computer-generated literary art in print, is now up in MIT’s Rotch Library (77 Mass Ave, Building 7, 2nd Floor) and in my lab/studio, The Trope Tank (Room 14N-233, in building 14, the same building that houses the Hayden Library). Please contact me by email if you are interested in seeing the materials in the Trope Tank, as this part of the exhibit is accessible by appointment only.

There are three events associated with the exhibit happening in Cambridge, Mass:

February 7, 6pm-7pm, a reading and signing at the MIT Press bookstore. Nick Montfort, Rafael Pérez y Pérez, and Allison Parrish.

March 5, 4:30pm-6pm, a reception at the main part of the exhibit in the Rotch Library.

March 5, 7pm-8pm, a reading and signing at the Harvard Book Store. John Cayley, Liza Daly, Nick Montfort, and Allison Parrish.

In addition to a shelf of computer-generated books that is available for perusal, by appointment, in the Trope Tank, the following items of printed matter are displayed in the exhibit:

  • 2×6, Nick Montfort, Serge Bouchardon, Andrew Campana, Natalia Fedorova, Carlos León, Aleksandra Ma?ecka, and Piotr Marecki
  • A Slow Year: Game Poems, Ian Bogost
  • Action Score Generator, Nathan Walker
  • American Psycho, Mimi Cabell and Jason Huff
  • Anarchy, John Cage
  • Articulations, Allison Parrish
  • Autopia, Nick Montfort
  • Brute Force Manifesto: The Catalog of All Truth, Version 1.1, Series AAA-1, Vol 01, Brian James
  • Clear Skies All Week, Alison Knowles
  • Firmy, Piotr Puldzian P?ucienniczak
  • for the sleepers in that quiet earth., Sofian Audry
  • From the Library of Babel: Axaxaxas Mlo – The Combed Thunderclap LXUM,LKWC – MCV – The Plaster Cramp, Christian Bök
  • Generation[s], J.R. Carpenter
  • Google Volume 1, King Zog
  • How It Is In Common Tongues, Daniel C. Howe and John Cayley
  • Incandescent Beautifuls, Erica T. Carter [Jim Carpenter]
  • Irritant, Darby Larson
  • Love Letters, Letterpress Broadside, Output by a reimplementation of a program by Christopher Strachey
  • Mexica: 20 Years – 20 Stories / 20 años – 20 historias, Rafael Pérez y Pérez
  • My Buttons Are Blue: And Other Love Poems From the Digital Heart of an Electronic Computer, A Color Computer
  • My Molly [Departed], Talan Memmott
  • no people, Katie Rose Pipkin
  • Phaedrus Pron, Paul Chan
  • Puniverse, Volumes 32 and 38 of 57, Stephen Reid McLaughlin
  • Re-Writing Freud, Simon Morris
  • Seraphs, Liza Daly
  • The Appearances of the Letters of the Hollywood Sign in Increasing Amounts of Smog and at a Distance, Poster, David Gissen
  • The Poiceman’s Beard is Half Constructed: Computer prose and poetry by Racter
  • The Truelist, Nick Montfort
  • Tristano, Nanni Balestrini
  • Written Images, Eds. Matrin Fuchs and Peter Bichsel

Here are some photos documenting the exhibit:

Author Function Rotch main display case

Author Function book displays and gallery walls

Author Function book displays and gallery walls

Author Function book displays and gallery walls

Author Function book displays and gallery walls

Author Function book displays and gallery walls

Author Function book displays and gallery walls

Author Function book displays and gallery walls

Author Function book displays and gallery walls

Author Function book displays and gallery walls

Author Function book displays and gallery walls

Author Function book displays and gallery walls

Author Function book displays and gallery walls

Author Function book displays and gallery walls

Author Function book displays and gallery walls

Author Function book displays and gallery walls

Author Function book displays and gallery walls

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Sentaniz Nimerik, E-Lit in Haitian Creole

A week ago, on October 2, we put Sentaniz Nimerik online. This is an electronic literature work, an example of digital storytelling and digital poetry, that is by Sixto & BIC and was facilitated by Michel DeGraff & Nick Montfort. It is in Haitian Creole — Kreyòl, as the language is called in the language itself. This language has a community of about 12 million speakers worldwide and is the language shared by everyone in Haiti. It is not the same as Haitian French or mutually intelligible with Haitian French (or any other kind of French).

You can read more about Maurice Sixto, a famous Haitian storyteller who died in 1984, on Wikipedia, in English — of course there is an entry in Haitian Creole as well. His story “Sentaniz,” well-known in Haiti, is the storytelling basis for our digital work.

BIC is a singer, songwriter, and poet who is also known as B.I.C. (Brain. Intelligence. Creativity.) He came to MIT to work on this project with us and to do a concert, which was very well-attended. His songs and poems are mostly in Haitian Creole; some in French; not in English — although BIC is fluent in English and has worked as an English teacher.

Professor Michel DeGraff is a linguist and is my colleague at MIT. Among other things, he heads the MIT-Haiti Initiative and works to advance STEM education in the Boston area in schools where education is in Haitian Creole.

We (BIC, Michel DeGraff, and I) sat down together and looked at and discussed several simple JavaScript poems, some historical, some of mine, some done by others recently. We settled on “Through the Park” (a work of mine from 2008) as a starting point for our collaboration. We changed several things about the workings of the page, and the text used in this piece is also a new text related to “Sentaniz,” not any sort of translation of anything I have written.

To make concrete a few of the formal and conceptual differences: The final result has two generated versions presented one after the other. The underlying “story” is not only an story that originated in Haitian Creole, but has been elaborated into its digital version with frame statements and questions that do not correspond to anything in “Through the Park.” The visual design is simple, but also a bit different from the simple earlier version.

To be more specific about our roles in the project, for the most part I dealt with the JavaScript code, Michel typed in what was to be written in Haitian Creole (using my different keyboard layout), and BIC said what lines we should use. But Michel and BIC consulted about particular phrasings, as you might expect, and all of us talked a bit about the types of sentences that could be used, the linguistic constraint (no reference between sentences), and the design and functioning of the page.

We spent a while in discussion beforehand, and did some work to polish the project after the three of us met, but BIC was only at MIT for one full day. It took us about an hour to actually do the core creative and development work on Sentaniz Nimerik. The project was thanks to many people and offices at MIT, with the main support for BIC’s trip coming from CAMIT, the Council for the Arts at MIT.

I recorded a video of Michel DeGraff explaining the piece (in Haitian Creole) and have posted that on YouTube with a CC license. He explains how to “view souce” and that the piece can be studied and modified. The piece itself, although very short, is released under an explicit all-permissive license to make it clear that it is available to everyone for any purpose. I hope people in Haiti and speakers of Haitian Creole elsewhere will enjoy it and develop many new ideas, stories, and poems.

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NaNoGenMo 2014: A Look Back & Back

There were so many excellent novel generators, and generated novels, last month for NaNaGenMo (National Novel Generation Month).

I thought a lot of them related to and carried on the work of wonderful existing literary projects — usually in the form of existing books. And this is in no way a backhanded complement. My own NaNoGenMo entry was the most rooted in an existing novel; I simply computationally re-implemented Samuel Beckett’s novel Watt (or at least the parts of it that were most illegible and computational), in my novel generator Megawatt (its PDF output is also available). For good measure, Megawatt is completely deterministic; although someone might choose to modify it and generate different things, as it stands it generates exactly one novel. So, for me to say that I was reminded of a great book when I saw a particular generator is pure praise.

Early in month, Liza Daly’s Seraphs set a high standard and must have discouraged many offhand generators! Liza’s generator seeks images and randomizes text to produce a lengthy book that is like the Voynich Manuscript, and certainly also like the Codex Seraphinianus.

Allison Parrish’s I Waded in Clear Water is a novel based on dream interpretations. Of course, it reminds me of 10,000 Dreams Interpreted (and I am pleased, thanks to my students from long ago, to have the leading site on the Web for that famous book) but it also reminds me of footnote-heavy novels such as Infinite Jest. Let me note that a Twine game has already been written based on this work: Fowl are Foul, by Jacqueline Lott.

I found Zarkonnen’s Moebius Tentacle; Or the Space-Octopus oddly compelling. It was created by simple substitution of strings from Moby-Dick (one novel it clearly reminded me of), freeing the story to be about the pursuit of an octopus by space amazons. It wasn’t as polished as I would have liked (just a text file for output), and didn’t render text flawlessly, but still, the result was amazing. Consider how the near-final text presents the (transformed) Tashtego in his final tumult:

A sky-hawk that
tauntingly had followed the main-truck downwards from its unnatural home
among the stars, pecking at the flag, and incommoding Lazerbot-9 there;
this spacebat now chanced to intercept its broad fluttering wing between the
hammer and the plasteel; and simultaneously feeling that etherial thrill,
the submerged robot beneath, in her death-gasp, kept her hammer frozen
there; and so the spacebat of heaven, with archangelic shrieks, and her
imperial beak thrust upwards, and her whole captive form folded in the
flag of Vixena, went away with her spaceship, which, like Satan, would not sink
to transwarp till she had dragged a living part of heaven along with her, and
helmeted herself with it.

Sean Barrett wrote two beautiful generators (at least) – the first of which was How Hannah Solved The Twelve-Disk Tower of Hanoi. Deliberate, progressing, intelligent, and keeping the reader on the edge of her seat – this one is great. But, that generator (drafted by November 9) wasn’t enough, and Barrett also contributed (only a day late) The Basketball Game, an opera generator that provides a score (with lyrics) and MIDI files. It’s as if “I got Philip Glass!” indicates that one is rebounding.

Eric Stayton’s I Sing Of takes the beginning of the Aeneid as grist, moving through alternate invocations using WordNet. I like the way different epics are invoked by the slight changes, and was reminded of Calvino’s If on a winter’s night a traveler.

Sam Coppini’s D’ksuban Dictionary, although also just a text file, is a simple but effective generator of a fictional language’s dictionary. Less like the Devil’s Dictionary, more like the (apparently unpublished) lexicon of Earth: Final Conflict. I’m sure literary works in D’ksuban will be forthcoming soon.

Ben Kybartas’s Something, Somewhere is wonderfully spare and evocative – more Madsen than Hemingway.

Finally, Thricedotted’s The Seeker is an extraordinary concrete novel in the tradition of Raymond Federman’s Double or Nothing. The text, based on wikiHow, is good and serves well to define a protagonist who always wishes to do right, but the typographical framework is really excellent.

These are just a few comments before NaNoGenMo goes as stale as a late-December pumpkin. I hope you enjoy tis work and other work that was done last month, and that you keep an eye peeled for further novel generators – next November and throughout the year.

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Megawatt

Megawatt coverThe fruits of my National Novel Generation Month (NaNoGenMo) labors are now online; the Megawatt generator is available as a single 350-line Python file, while the novel it deterministically generates can be obtained as a PDF, megawatt.pdf or in epub format, megawatt.epub. From the program’s docstring and from the preface to the book:

Megawatt is the title of both a computer program, the source code
to which you may be reading, and the output of this program, which in
many ways is like a standard novel and which you may instead be reading.
This note appears at the beginning of both.

The program Megawatt is based on passages from Samuel Beckett’s novel Watt, first published in 1953 but written much earlier, when Beckett was aiding the French Resistance during World War II.

The novel Megawatt leaves aside all of the more intelligible language of Beckett’s novel and is based, instead, on that which is most systematic and inscrutable. It does not just recreate these passages, although with minor changes the Megawatt code can be used to do so. In the new novel, rather, they are intensified by generating, using the same methods that Beckett used, significantly more text than is found in the already excessive Watt.

(Please note: The following information is handy if you want to, for instance, modify the program and generate a PDF or epub yourself. You don’t need to do this to read the novel. You can download it in PDF: megawatt.pdf or in epub format: megawatt.epub.)

To produce the novel in markdown format, run megawatt.py (a Python 2
program) with TextBlob (a text processing library) installed.

% python megawatt.py > megawatt.text

To produce PDF and epub documents, use pandoc:

% pandoc -V geometry:paperwidth=5.5in \
-V geometry:paperheight=8.25in \
-V geometry:margin=.7in -o megawatt.pdf \
megawatt.text
% echo ‘% Megawatt’ > info.txt
% echo ‘% Nick Montfort’ >> info.txt
% pandoc -o megawatt.epub info.txt megawatt.text

Megawatt was written/generated for the second NaNoGenMo (National
Novel Generation Month) in November 2014, and is free software.

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NaNoGenMo 3000!!!!

Er, sorry. I exaggerated a bit. It’s actually just
NaNoGenMo 2014. But that’s still really cool.

“Spend the month of November writing code that generates a novel of 50k+ words.” As is traditional, the event occurs on GitHub.

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Polish Reviews of World Clock

I mentioned a few of these earlier, but there are more. I’ll try to keep an updated list of reviews here for any curious Polish-reading visitors:

Update Jan 31, 2015: Review of Zegar światowy in PROwincja.

Update Jan 31, 2015: Review of Zegar światowy in Lubimyczytać.pl.

Update Jan 19, 2015: Review of Zegar światowy in Kulturnatywnie.pl.

Update Jan 8, 2015: Review of Zegar światowy in kanapa.it.

Update Dec 15, 2014: Review of Zegar światowy in sztukater.pl.

Update Dec 15, 2014: Review of Zegar światowy in sZAFa – kwartalnik literacko-artystyczny.

Update Dec 10, 2014: Review of Zegar światowy in Szuflada.net

Update Dec 10, 2014: Review of Zegar światowy in Popmoderna.

Update Nov 13, 2014: Review of Zegar światowy in Stacja Książka.

Update Nov 4, 2014: Review of Zegar światowy in Altmundi.

Update Oct 31, 2014: Review of Zegar światowy in Gazeta Wyborcza.

Update Oct 30, 2014: Review of Zegar światowy in kulturalnie.waw.pl.

Review of Zegar światowy in Portal (nie całkiem) Kulturalny.

Review of Zegar światowy in SZORTAL.

Review of Zegar światowy by Katarzyna Krzan.

Review of Zegar światowy in Pad Portal.

Review of Zegar światowy by Julia Poczynok.

There was also a review of Zegar światowy in the major Polish weekly magazine Przegląd (the review is not online).

The book was also discussed in an interview I did on Radio Kraków.

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World Clock in Polish Reviewed (in Polish)

I announced the Polish translation of World Clock recently; here is, as far as I know, the first review of it – which is also the first review of World Clock in any language. It will appear in the magazine Fragile.

„TRAVELOGUE” WIERSZA WOLNEGO NICKA MONTFORTA

Nick Montfort, Zegar światowy, tłum. Z jęz. ang. przełożył Piotr Marecki, Kraków, Korporacja Ha!art, 2014.

Ciekawie przedstawiono w książce autentyczne przemówienie, w którym narrator mówi głosami innych osób. Autor nie tylko opowiada zdarzenie, ale pisząc, że tak było zwraca też uwagę na to, jak do tego doszło: „Ashgabat. Jest prawie 05:04. W pewnym przytulnym schronieniu sporej postury mężczyzna, o imieniu Jakub, czyta kanarkową umowę. Siada prosto”. Kategorii narratora szybko zmienia „punkt widzenia”.

Forma książki to proza ​​poetycka z elementami pamiętnika, po prostu chronologia uczucia. Za to motyw napisania tekstu przypomina „travelogue”, ponieważ zawiera krótkie notatki z podróży. W składni poetyckiej odgrywa ważną rolę elipsa (opuszczanie słów, a nawet całych zdań) : „Samara. Jest około 12:39. W pewnym miłym miejscu zamieszkania średniej postury mężczyzna, nazywany Liang, czyta nieskazitelnie czystą kartkę. Całkowicie się wyłącza”. Ograniczenia krótkimi wyrażeniami wymuszają na czytelniku wymyślanie sytuacji, to jest oryginalną interakcję między autorem a czytelnikiem. W ten sposób autor zaprasza do dialogu.

Struktura tekstu to mozaika, czytanie jest „rozdrobnione”. Możesz czytać książkę zarówno klasycznie, od początku do końca, jak też chaotycznie, otwierając ją na dowolnej stronie, co jednak nie powoduje uszkodzenia jej koncepcji. Styl pisania jest podobny do „nowego dziennikarstwa” (Tom Wulf, USA). Zmiana perspektywy (tzw. „kameleon”) to jedna z najbardziej interesujących i sprytnych technik. W ten sposób za pośrednictwem narratora autor gra z czytelnikiem. W związku z tym ważne jest również, aby pamiętać o zmienianiu „punktu widzenia”, o patrzeniu z cudzej perspektywy i opisywaniu wydarzeń postrzeganych przez różne osoby. Postaci to w Asmari, to w Tunisi. Postaciami są raz kobiety, raz mężczyźni. Zmiana płci i zmiana miejsca to ciekawe elementy gry autora. Ważne jest, aby zrozumieć, że podstawową zasadą dziennikarstwa jest prawdą, a Nick Montfort ignoruje wszelkie zasady i dlatego jest inny.

Jego tekst – ciągły wiersz wolny, który ma różne ciągi długości, bez rymów, ale z rytmem:

Port-au-Prince. Jest dokładnie 00:15. W pewnej schludnej, choć
niczym się niewyróżniającej, sadybie wyższa niż większość
staruszka, mająca na imię Fatma, czyta nieskazitelnie czystą
umowę. Drapie się w ucho.

JULIA POCZYNOK

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Zegar ?wiatowy, the Polish World Clock

World Clock in Polish, displayed World Clock (book, code) has now been published in Polish. The translation is by Piotr Marecki, who translated the underlying novel-generating program and generated a new novel in Polish. ha!art is the publisher, and the book appears in the Liberatura series, which also includes some very distinguished titles: The Polish translations of Finnegans Wake and of Perec’s Life A User’s Manual, for instance. The Polish World Clock on the shelf

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A Koan

The disciple went to Minsky.

The disciple told him of his project, to develop a story generator with different components, a collaborative system that collaborated.

Minsky asked if a specific author was to be imitated.

No, the disciple said, the project seeks to do what only computers can do, to use computational power in new ways. And yet, the disciple admitted, the system models human creativity, techniques and processes that people use. Hesitantly, the disciple said, “it does seem contradictory…”

“You can do both,” said Minsky.

At that moment, the disciple was enlightened.

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Trope Tank Annual Report 2013-2014

I direct a lab at MIT called The Trope Tank. This is a lab for research, teaching, and creative production, located in building 14 (where the Hayden Library is also housed), in room 14N-233. Its mission is to develop new poetic practices and new understandings of digital media by focusing on the material, formal, and historical aspects of computation and language.

Trope Tank computers at work

The lab’s website has just been updated with some new information about our two major creative/research projects, Slant and Renderings. Earlier this academic year, a hardware and software catalog of Trope Tank resources was developed by Erik Stayton with contributions from Sylvia Tomayko-Peters.

As usual, the Trope Tanks hosts the monthly meetings of the local interactive fiction club, the People’s Republic of Interactive Fiction. Also, the Trope Tank’s series of digital writing presentations, Purple Blurb, continued this year; I was on leave in Fall 2013, but the series was back and hosted four excellent presentations in Spring 2014. See those sites for more information about PR-IF and Purple Blurb.

Here’s what we’ve been up to since our last annual report in May 2013:

New Works: Creative projects released.

  • Nanowatt, single-loading (3.5 KB) demoscene production for the VIC-20. By Nick Montfort, Michael C. Martin, and Patsy Baudoin as Nom de Nom, McMartin, and Baud 1. Shown and awarded 2nd place on 30 November 2013 at Récursion, Montréal.
  • World Clock, computer generated novel with source code by Nick Montfort. Published on the Web 30 November 2013, in print at the Harvard Book Store.
  • Round, digital poem by Nick Montfort. Published on the Web 14 August 2013 by New Binary Press.

  • Duels — Duets, digital poem. By Stephanie Strickland and Nick Montfort. Published on the Web 14 August 2013 by New Binary Press.
  • The Deletionist, digital poetry system. By Nick Montfort, Amaranth Borsuk, and Jesper Juul. 2011–2013. Premiered at E-Poetry 2013 in London and published on the Web.
  • Three Rails Live, an interactive video installation. By Rod Coover, Nick Montfort and Scott Rettberg. 2011–2013. Documentation published on the web in bleuOrange 7, 2013.

Trope Reports: We have issued two technical reports.

Exhibit & Museum Event:

  • Second Fridays: How People Connect, Presentation of Commodore 64 BASIC programming, Piotr Marecki and Erik Stayton, and event at the MIT Museum, February 14, 2014
  • Programs at an Exhibition, Nick Montfort & Páll Thayer, an exhibit at the Boston Cyberats Gallery, March 6-16, 2014

Presentations:

  • Marecki, Piotr, “Sticker literature or augmented reality literature,” David Foster Wallace Conference, Department of English, Illinois State University, May 23, 2014 
  • Marecki, Piotr, “The Road to Assland and early Polish Text Adventure Games,” People’s Republic of Interactive Fiction, The Trope Tank, MIT, May 13, 2014
  • Montfort, Nick, “Combinatory Media and Possibilities for Documentary,” OpenDoc Lab, MIT, May 8, 2014
  • Marecki, Piotr, “Polish Literature in the Digital Age,” MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing, May 7, 2014
  • Marecki, Piotr, “Textual Caves: Expanding the Literary Writing Space,” Shapeshifters: Recycling and Literature, Department of Comparative Literature, Yale University, April 25-26 2014
  • Montfort, Nick “Exploratory Programming,” first of four major topics for the online Critical Code Studies Working Group 2014, 23 February-23 March, 2014.
  • Montfort, Nick, “Aesthetic Obfuscated Code,” Symposium on Obfusctation, New York University, 15 February 2014.
  • Montfort, Nick, “Ten Cases of Computational Poetics,” UCLA, M/ELT, 17 January 2014.
  • Montfort, Nick, “Computational Poetic Models,” University of Southern California, SCA Complex, 16 January 2014
  • Marecki, Piotr, “Polish Literature in the Digital Age,” IAP talk, MIT, January 21, 2014.
  • Montfort, Nick, “Computational Literary Models for Fun and Poetics,” Concordia University, Montréal, 10 January 2014.
  • Montfort, Nick, “Scaling Up Literary Models with Curveship and Slant,” 8th Mexican International Colloquium on Computational Creativity, UNAM, Mexico City, 15 November 2013.
  • Montfort, Nick, “Literary Models,” 8th Mexican International Colloquium on Computational Creativity, UAM Cuajimalpa, Mexico City, 14 November 2013.
  • Montfort, Nick, “Electronic Literature and Other Forms of Popular Creative Computing.” Keynote address at Writing Literature, Reading Society, Municipal Public Library, Kraków, 29 October 2013.
  • Montfort, Nick, “10 PRINT,” MIT CSAIL Programming Language & Software Engineering retreat, MIT Endicott House, 21 May 2013
  • Montfort, Nick, “Hardware and Emulation to Access Creative Computing,” Preserving.exe Summit, Library of Congress, 20 May 2013
  • Baudoin, Patsy and Nick Montfort, “10 PRINT,” Writing Across the Curriculum, MIT, 17 May 2013

Translations: Andrew Campana translated “The Two” by Nick Montfort into Japanese. Piotr Marecki translated Montfort’s “Lede,” “The Two,” and World Clock (via translation of the novel-generating program) into Polish, and, with Aleksandra Małecka, translated “Between Page and Screen” by Amaranth Borsuk and Brad Bouse into Polish. These will be placed online when revisions are complete.

Teaching:

  • The Trope Tank hosted a visit by The Word Made Digital, 21W.764, during Spring 2014.
  • “Exploratory Programming Workshop” by Nick Montfort, New York University, 14 February 2014.
  • Commodore 64 BASIC Workshop by Nick Montfort, offered for MIT’s Independent Activities Period, 29 January 2014.
  • “Workshop in Exploratory Programming” by Nick Montfort, UAM Cuajimalpa, Mexico City, two meetings on 11-12 November 2013.

Upcoming: In Milwaukee this month Trope Tank researchers will present at (int)7 (Intelligent Narrative Technologies 7) and the Electronic Literature Organization Conference. The presentation will be “Expressing the Narrator’s Expectations” by Montfort and Stayton at (int)7, and at ELO in the conference paper sessions “The Formation of the Field of Electronic Literature in Poland” by Marecki, “Computational Editions, Ports, and Remakes of ‘First Screening’ and ‘Karateka'” by Stayton and Montfort, and “New Novel Machines: Nanowatt and World Clock” by Montfort. The ELO Media Arts show will include “The Postulate to Hyperdescribe the World” by Marecki and Aleksandra Małecka and “Round” by Montfort. Andrew Campana’s work will be part of the Gallery of E-Lit 1st Encounters.

Many papers and even some books developed with Trope Tank support are forthcoming, but instead of trying to enumerate those, I’ll list them next year, when they have appeared.

Posted on

World Clock in Print & for Sale

World Clock, Nick Montfort

My novel World Clock, generated by 165 lines of Python code that I wrote in a few hours on November 27, 2013, is now available in print.

>_World Clock_ tells of 1440 incidents that take place around the world at each minute of a day. The novel was inspired by Stanislaw Lem’s “One Human Minute” and Harry Mathews’s “The Chronogram for 1998.” It celebrates the industrial concept of time and certain types of vigorous banality which are shared by all people throughout the world.

The code has been online, along with a PDF of the book’s text, since late November. The Python program that generated this novel is available under a free software license. Anyone may make whatever use of it; generate your own novel with the unchanged code, if you like, or modify it to produce something different, for instance.

The book _World Clock_ is for sale to local and remote customers from my local independent bookstore, the Harvard Book Store. (No direct relationship to the university of the same name; they both happen to be located in Harvard Square.) The book is printed on the Espresso Book Machine in the store – to the amazement of onlookers. The apparatus has been dubbed “Paige M. Gutenborg.”

The 239-page paperback can be purchased for only $14.40, which is the low, low price of only one cent per minute.

World Clock's title page