GENERATION[S]

GENERATION[S]
J. R. Carpenter
TRAUMAWIEN
Vienna, Fall 2010.

PURCHASE		 GENERATION[S] expands upon a series of short fictions generated by Python scripts adapted (with permission) from two 1k story generators written by Nick Montfort, and incorporates GORGE, a never-ending tract spewing verse approximations, poetic paroxysms on food, consumption, decadence and desire, a hack of Montfort’s elegant poetry generator Taroko Gorge. There was only one rule in creating GENERATION[S]: No new texts. All the texts in this book were previously published in some way. The texts the generators produce are intertwined with the generators’ source code, and these two types of texts are in turn interrupted by excerpts from the meta narrative that went into their creation. Most of the sentences in the fiction generators started off as Tweets, which were then pulled into Facebook. Some led to comments that led to responses that led to new texts. All these stages of intermediation are represented in the print book iteration of GENERATION[S].

J. R. Carpenter, GENERATION[S], TRAUMAWIEN, Vienna, Fall 2010

ABOUT TRAUMAWIEN: "Computer systems produce an unprecedented wealth of text, only the smallest part of which is contributed by users. Protocols, listings, algorithms, programmes, source codes, universal binary codes – the background operations of the systems themselves write a massively larger share. These text units – produced, read and transmitted by computers – internalize transcodability and transliterality as the computer system’s basic underlying operating principle. The emerging forms of text take place between writing systems and text generators. They produce a new kind of analphabetism, as most of their consumers cannot read nor write them, yet they are involved in our thoughts and actions.

TRAUMAWIEN perceives these new structures of text as literature — a system of virtualization in imagination, always describing breaking points in our perception of world."

Luc Gross, Editor, TRAUMAWIEN


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