#generative literature

[fetalcircuit]

Robot lovin'.

[geratura]

“(...) Both reconstruction and intensification of Samuel Beckett’s highly artificial novel Watt, Montfort’s novel takes passages from the original that exhibit systematic mannerisms, and simulates them with a Python script. But instead of simply generating automatically what Beckett had written manually (which would already be – Pierre Menard style– quite extraordinary), he took Beckett beyond Beckett and extended these passages according to the immanently derived rules of the urtext. (...)”

[warnaars]

In 1845, John Clark built the Eureka Machine for Composing Hexameter Latin Verses, which he exhibited it at Egyptian Hall in Picadilly. Words were pre-encoded on turning cylinders, whose projecting pins would cause letters to drop, forming Latin verses. The cylinders were turned random amounts, so that a different verse was formed each time, but each verse had the same grammatical shape: adjective, substantive, adverb, verb, substantive, adjective. An example of a verse produced by the Eureka (in which we must forgive an improper short first "a" in mala!) runs: BARBARA FROENA DOMI PROMITTUNT FOEDERA MALA "Barbarian bridles at home promise evil covenants" The machine also played music and created an abstract visual display.

The Eureka Machine (1845)

[warnaars]

The way I was just spoken to. The way that I am holdin' on so tight. The way that I'm fucking angry right now. The way that they will grow, be responsible, independent and Godly, and when they are old they will have those values. The way that they follow the guidelines of cultural elitism to the letter. The way that people see things that make you believe things.

The Way That I'm Crying so Hard I Have to Gasp For Air - Eli Brody and 5,134 friends

It's National Novel Generation Month, and submission are rolling in. Some are better than others. All are about as fascinating.

[warnaars]

In that case — and this certainly is one of the reasons why generative texts disturb our reading habits — the reader loses all the usual markers relating to the diegetic axis and has to find or invent other kinds of references. The narrative is not totally built in advance but put together from a lot of virtualities which are — or are not — actualizing themselves in the course of reading. That reading course is then fundamental and tends to substitute itself to the diegetic axis.

Principles and Processes of Generative Literature by Jean-Pierre Balpe