Recently I attended a digital poetry event at Dartmouth organized by Aden Evans and Mary Flanagan. I had a delightful time participating in the event with Nick Montfort, Marjorie Luesebrink, and Stephanie Strickland. I had not seen Marjorie and Stephanie discuss and read from their work, which was truly a pleasure. Nor had I heard Nick read from some of his poetry generators such as the ppg256 poems. It was amazing to hear the pieces performed, so instead of simply watching the generators kick out lines of intriguing text on the screen, the remarkable sonic properties of the words and phrases came alive in vibrant colors. I often think generated text pieces are more interesting conceptually, but hearing Nick read brought them into their true poetic form, full of humor and remarkable rhythm and sometimes caustic flamboyance. But I think it was Stephanie and Nick’s collaborative piece “Sea and Spar Between” that truly moved me, this time conceptually more than audibly. Truly a work of the digital, poetic sublime which has not been so pronounced since Queneau’s “One hundred thousand billion poems.” If not a “must read” because of the sheer impossibility of doing so, often stripping the mind of language more than lyrically touching it, it is a must see and a must understand. One of the best pieces of digital literature created in the last few years…
For my part I presented on a 2D textual platformer that I am working on with Daniel Howe. We’re still in the development stages, but we’ll hopefully have some sort of prototype soonish. I am sure I will post more about the game, tentatively titled “Walkthru,” in the future. Here are a few screen caps…
