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1. Taroko Gorge Remixed: Repetition and Difference in Machine Texts

   In 2009 Nick Montfort wrote a short program--first in Python and later in Javascript--that generated an infinite nature poem inspired by the stunning Taroko Gorge in Taiwan. While Montfort never explicitly released the code of “Taroko Gorge” under a free software license, it was readily available to anyone who viewed the HTML source of the poem’s web page. Lean and elegantly coded, with self-evident algorithms and a clearly demarcated word list, “Taroko Gorge” lends itself to reappropriation. Simply altering the word list (the paradigmatic axis) creates an entirely different randomly generated poem, while the underlying sentence structure (the syntagmatic axis) remains the same. Very quickly Scott Rettberg remixed the original poem, replacing its naturalistic vocabulary (“crags,” “basins,” “rocks,” “mist,” and so on) with words drawn from what Rettberg imagined to be a counterpoint to Montfort’s meditative nature scene--a garage in Toyko, cluttered with consumer objects. J.R.

   Eric Dean Rasmussen - 18.06.2012 - 13:36