links
This 254 page book is an un-edited reproduction of the search queries of AOL user 23187425 from May 2006. This strange server log autobiography was found in the released AOL search queries by Thomas Claburn.
Half of the profit from each book sold will go to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Published by Superbunker.
Now available for purchase at Lulu.
So it turns out this is the second to last class — we do have class next week. So next week, we’ll review everyone’s projects — your generators, and (if you make one) your chatterbots. If you want to have a “live” program, I need you to post your vocabularies by this week so I can put them into the software.
NPR: Paying Real Money to Win Online Games
David Byrne gets and RIAA warning (too much Missy Eliot in a 3 hour period)
Chatterbots (and the economics of invisibility)
The NY Times wrote a story about a video chatterbot called DiNA, but they’ve already hidden the story behind a paywall. (Here’s Grand Text Auto describing it).
Objects with Brains
What does basic generative programming have to do with your everyday life? Here’s Cory Doctorow in the NY Times today (read it quick) on programable logic:
The proliferation of cheap and cheerful programmable chips promises a new age of “whimsical logic,” chips that power devices whose functions are as delightfully impractical as their forms…
Media Suicide Watch: the Dead
The Grateful Dead has always had a policy of allowing fans to record and trade all their shows — it’s been one of the major factors in their popularity. Now that they’re rich, a couple of the remaining Grateful Dead rights holders have reversed that policy and are demanding that archive.org take down the high quaility recordings or makes them only available as un-savable streams. A lot of people find this incredibly sad and hypocritical….
More deranged anti-piracy action:
Don’t Copy That Floppy from 1992. The power of the scary rapper compels you!
And from the other team…
VCD Quality — a review site for pirated movies. Find the F1L3 n4M3z you want to download before you fire up your file trading app.
Visual Grammar of teh Web
Warning! This site contains images!
OMG ! Briliant Idea ! 1 !
Looking at this person’s idea for “Darwinian Poetics,” I had me an idea for a script similar to Hot-or-Not, Geek-or-Not, or Kitten War: Am I Poem or Not — rate a snippet of text for poetic value. Or maybe Poem War — two snippets of text appear, and the user the poetic winner. Make it so, Dan!
So. Nice weather we’re having.
Work Directories
Now with name generators and newly spiffified.
Some things to consider:
Young Hae Chang Heavy Industries
Second to last week…
How’s that class journal looking?
Student Work Portfolios
You all have nice web pages dedicated to your code work
Behold! Code as Poetry Student Work 2005!
Feel the peer pressure…
Information Overload
Just in time for your tryptophan induced stupor, I compiled information about all the stuff we talked about last week: the Sony rootkit, text adventures, and chatterbots. Note the corresponding posts below. Click on the (more…) Drink in the sweet sweet knowledge.
In the news today:
This toy called Let them sing it for you. It takes what you type and turns it into an audio file comprised of words from popular songs. The artist who made it, Erik Bünger, is in to pluderphonics in general.
What’s Pluderphonics?
Glad you asked….
John Oswald is considered the originator of the term “pluderphonics”
Here’s a nice plunderphonics track of his: [MP3]
Other artists who use these techniques:
Negativland
People Like Us
Almost every DJ you’ve ever heard of…
Here’s a giant meta-mashup by DJ Food - Raiding the 20th Century [ MP3 ]
Some stuff I blathered about in class:
Here’s where you can find your work directories:
http://machinepoetics.com/work/students-fall05/
This is where I’ll put your scripts so you can check the output. Maybe I’ll make the layout more pretty. Maybe I won’t….
The self-perpetuating prediction of Moore’s Law
The alluring musical recommendations of Last.fm
The Future Cost of a Good Synthetic World
If movies cost $100 million for maybe 10 hours of total entertainment, then an equivalent video game on an hourly entertainment basis could cost up to $13 billion. Given how much time and money people already spend inside of games, it’s kind of scary to think about what kind of virtual world could be created with a multibillion dollar budget….
The new USC faculty who are studying the biological basis of emotion.
They look like nice folks. (The stuff I heard about doing brain sensor focus groups was part of a radio interview…)
The Straight Dope on Mormons.
In his book An Address to All Believers in Christ, David Whitmer, one of the “three witnesses” to the Book of Mormon, writes:
I will now give you a description of the manner in which the Book of Mormon was translated. Joseph Smith would put the seer stone into a hat, and put his face in the hat, drawing it closely around his face to exclude the light; and in the darkness the spiritual light would shine. A piece of something resembling parchment would appear, and under it was the interpretation in English. Brother Joseph would read off the English to Oliver Cowdery, who was his principal scribe, and when it was written down and repeated to brother Joseph to see if it was correct, then it would disappear, and another character with the interpretation would appear.
To write a haiku
by not writing — you call this
homework? It seems weird…
Those of you who didn’t compose a list of formatted variables (aka: “words”) for the haiku generator, this is your last chance. (Those of you who already did are welcome to create another list for us to try out.) I’ll be checking your blogs later tonight. Which is Tuesday.
YOUR OTHER ASSIGNMENTS
Book Report
Write a book report of your assigned reading from Words Made Flesh. (That’s pages 75 - 101. I’d like you to pay special attention to, Tristan Tzara and the Dadist poem, Italio Calvino and Machine Generated Literature, and the Oulipo. )
You can use these readings as a jumping off point to discuss any related text or topic, so long as you intelligently reference the readings. You book reports should be 2-3 paragraphs with a link or two, posted to your blogs. I’d like you to have this done by next Monday, November 14.
Idea for a Generative Text
I’d like you to describe an idea for a text generator similar to what we’ve been using in class. This week, I’d like you to describe an idea of what you might do. By next week, I’d like you to describe a program that could do what you thought of. Not write a program — just kind of outline how you think it might work. I’ll help you out with that part based on the ideas you post this week.
UPCOMING STUFF
Once we have your description and outline for your text generator, we’ll put together your program so you can see how it works. And then you will feel the joy of creating a piece of live code. Have a mountain dew and a snickers on me, you hacker nerd!
The next code project we’ll tackle will be a basic chatterbot. As prep work, you should do some google / wikipedia work with the term “eliza.” Find some toys. Play with ‘em. See what happens. Write about it in your blog. Which reminds me…
Point of No Return
Some of y’all are a little “behind” on your journal posting. Which, I must remind you, is the only written requirement in this class. So if you plan on catching up with your blog posts, do it now.
Becasue if you fall any futher behind, we will replace you with a clever little bot which will spew out random yet entertaining text in your place. This bot will also receive your credit for this class.
Sad for you, but the bot will be well on its way to a high powered job.
The future is weird, no?
NOTE DUMP AHOY!
IDEA:
take a text — a speech, a long poem, part of a book
list the parts of speech
IDEA:
http://islamicmusingsfromthefringe.blogspot.com/
graham aldis: political speech generator based on bush’s speeches, emphasizing the generic re-combinatory nature of the source texts
play a madlib
print some out: go outside
Japanese Haiku:
http://www.writing-world.com/poetry/haiku.shtml
Originally haiku was the hokku, or starting verse of a renga (a collaborative poem containing several stanzas, each stanza written by different or alternating poets). The hokku was about nature and gave a season word so that the collaborators knew what time of year the renga encompassed. Eventually the hokku became independent of the renga and became known as haiku.
The traditional form of Japanese haiku has seventeen onji. Onji, most of them considered as one syllable in English, led modern haiku to having three lines containing seventeen syllables (5-7-5). But onji has shorter sounds than our English language. Sometimes two or three onji characters can be translated to one syllable in English. Many haiku translators believe ten to twelve English syllables would best be used to mimic the original Japanese sound- length form.
Three translations of Basho:
http://www.haikupoetshut.com/basho1.html
Bio of Basho:
http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Island/5022/
Haiku Gen
sequence:
“The” adjective noun
verb adverb
“It is” adjective
\n = unix line break
mt_rand:
http://www.phpdig.net/ref/rn35re672.html
http://us3.php.net/mt_rand
Mersenne Twister algorithm
http://www.math.sci.hiroshima-u.ac.jp/~m-mat/MT/emt.html
Far longer period and far higher order of equidistribution than any other implemented generators. (It is proved that the period is 2^19937-1, and 623-dimensional equidistribution property is assured.)
FAQ:
* Want to use for cryptography.
Mersenne Twister is not cryptographically secure. (MT is based on a linear recursion. Any pseudorandom number sequence generated by a linear recursion is insecure, since from sufficiently long subsequence of the outputs, one can predict the rest of the outputs.)
Mersenne primes:
Many early writers felt that the numbers of the form 2n-1 were prime for all primes n, but in 1536 Hudalricus Regius showed that 211-1 = 2047 was not prime (it is 23.89). By 1603 Pietro Cataldi had correctly verified that 217-1 and 219-1 were both prime, but then incorrectly stated 2n-1 was also prime for 23, 29, 31 and 37. In 1640 Fermat showed Cataldi was wrong about 23 and 37; then Euler in 1738 showed Cataldi was also wrong about 29. Sometime later Euler showed Cataldi’s assertion about 31 was correct.
Enter French monk Marin Mersenne (1588-1648). Mersenne stated in the preface to his Cogitata Physica-Mathematica (1644) that the numbers 2n-1 were prime for
n = 2, 3, 5, 7, 13, 17, 19, 31, 67, 127 and 257
and were composite for all other positive integers n < 257. Mersenne’s (incorrect) conjecture fared only slightly better than Regius’, but still got his name attached to these numbers.
Definition: When 2n-1 is prime it is said to be a Mersenne prime.
What’s Up with Primes?
large random prime numbers are used in most cryptographic systems
more:
http://math.youngzones.org/Math_2213_webpages/prime_numbers.html
Hope you did your reading.
Cause you are about to get schooled….
I’m working on a handout for the haiku generator. With actual paper!
Exquite Corpse Roll Sheet
No names — just words.
Base!
How low can you go? That is, if you’re using a base 2 system to reference powers of 10?
And what is up with octal? You hear me octal? I’m callin’ you out! And your buddy hex!
And as for you, ASCII numerical conversion table….
Fun!
Round 2 of the name generator workshop.
Two lists of words enter, one name leaves….
More Fun!!
The next program we’ll be modifying will be a Haiku generator. This is a little more complicated in that you’ll have to list words by part of speach and number of sylables. Formatting Counts! Your grade is on the line!!!! OMG ! ! OMG ! 1 ! 1 !
In light of the seriousness of this issue, a separate post will be dedicated entirely to Text Variable Formatting for the Haiku Generator. Will I finish these instructions for you later today? This, I do not know. You will be notified…
Is haiku kind of cheezy? I’ll let you be the judge. Just keep in mind that you’re working up to Chatterbot Modification. Victory will be sweet.
Readings!
I’d like you to read pages 75 - 101 in Words Made Flesh.
If you’d like to “focus” your reading, please look especially hard at:
pp 75-77 : Tristan Tzara and the Dadist poem
pp 80-83 : Italio Calvino and Machine Generated Lit.
pp 88-92 : Oulipo and Pataphysics
Oulipo!
Our own Mathew Timmons will be giving a presentation on the Oulipo next week. This comes just in time for the Noulipo events at REDCAT.
Oh. You will be ready.
Increasingly terse reminder!
It’s now week 6. If you aren’t posting in your blog on a weekly basis, you will get no credit for this class. If you don’t plan to write, please stay home.
Hey, here’s something you could write about!
Discordian Games. Mostly traditional game formats with open or constantly fluxuating rules. Think about what makes a game interesting or fun — is it the pure act of play? Or is it the particular set of restrictions? Games, poems, programs — all tightly restricted, rule-bound activities. Think about it.
I said think about it!!!
also:
internet is shit
Today, we check out your first try at composing a generative text with nothing but vocabulary arrays and random seed texts.
Whossa whassa?
Don’t worry. We’ll go through it in class. Baby steps.
Wu
Thhose of you who posted your lists of words get to see the results of your labor effortlessly reprocessed by Machines. Oh yeah.
And if you didn’t do it… damn. You are so busted. You couldn’t post a minimum of 50 semi-random words to your blog? Daaaammmn.
Just to recap: we’re at week 5 here. We can call the first two weeks “prep time,” but prep is over! It is now time to Generate!
If you didn’t do the assignment this week, you must still do it for next week. However now you must come up with a minimum of 75 words in each of two lists. And if you did the assignment with the absolute bare minimum of 25 words, I’d like you to try it again after seeing the results up on the big screen. In front of everybody. Something to consider from an authorial perspective: what is the smallest vocabulary size that gives you an interesting result? How many times is it interseting? Weh or why not?
oulipo
Cent Mille Milliards de Poèmes (100 million billion poems) by Raymond Queneau
Ten interchangable sonnets, each with fourteen lines:
10^14 = a very large number…
Here’s a nice graphical implimentation:
http://www.bevrowe.info/Poems/QueneauRandom.htm
Haiku
The next generator we’re going to work on is a haiku generator. To begin, start coming up with lists of nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs, listed with their number of syllables. Further specific instructions will be delivered on a need to know basis….
Eliza
For those who like to read ahead, the next-after-next generator you’ll be modifying will be Eliza. If you want to see what that’s all about, look up some implimentations of Joseph Weizenbaum’s (in)famous chatterbot on the web.
Tom Hater
Once again, Dan has been commanding the machines to do his bidding. Have they obeyed him? You be the judge….
http://phxom.matterwave.net/index.php?s=code_as_poetry
Reading
You should read the Florian Crammer sections on Oulipo. I’ll get you those page numbers in class.
Homework
If you didn’t do the name generator this week:
You must post two lists of words, with a minimum 75 words in each list (150 words total, minimum) for next week’s class.
If you haven’t done the I Ching:
You still have to do that, don’t you?
If you haven’t posted in your blog this month:
Please. Get some sleep, will ya?