Nanowatt

Creative Work
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2013
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Description (in English): 

A single-loading VIC-20 demo (3583 bytes) presented on November 30, 2013 at Récursion in Montréal. Nanowatt is a 3.5 KB assembly-language program for a 1981 computer that can display only 22 characters on a line. This demo was completed and first shown publicly at Récursion, a demoparty in Montréal, on November 30, 2013. Montfort developed the concept and programmed the demo working with French and Beckett expert Patsy Baudoin and with Michael Martin, who wrote the music and programmed the music system, Soundnaif. Nanowatt is not simply inspired by Samuel Beckett’s second novel, Watt; it, like Jorge Luis Borges’s famous author Pierre Menard, produces a long passage from Watt (and from the French translation of Watt) verbatim. (Source: Author's description)

Technical notes: 

It runs on the Commodore VIC-20, a 1981 computer that displays only 22 characters per line. The 3.5KB program exactly quotes 8KB of English text, then exactly quotes 8KB in French translation, all while music (composed by Michael C. Martin) plays.

Multimedia: 

Nanowatt (for the VIC-20)

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Alvaro Seica