Presented at conference or festival

Software for poetry and prose generation based on combinatory principles

Community of readers that use the text-generator software Poemário. This software allows for real-time publication of several user-generated poems by the readers of Rui Torres' works.

Mar de Sophia is a collection of virtual poems presented in hypermedia format, in which the animated text on the screen is automatically generated from the lexicon of the poet Sophia de Mello Breyner Andersen, previously studied in terms of frequency. This lexicon, which (re)constructs the work of Sophia, and classifies and maps it within the network, is indexed to code lists in XML, accessible to the reader, whom can alter or add new words or units of meaning. The animation of the text is also inscribed in the sound component of the combinatorial variations that result from this process. Whenever a word is changed, the poem performs a search in sound databases with readings of the poems. Thus, the reader can recreate, in the axis of combinatorial language, any poem by Sophia, adapting it to his/her liking, as well as send some of his accomplishments, both sonic and verbal, to a PHP server installed on an Internet server. The various versions of the readers are archived. The combinatorial code and engine was programmed with the  collaboration of Nuno F. Ferreira and Filipe Valpereiro. All poems are also placed within a three-dimensional environment based on the critically-reflexive process of the central argument of this hypermedia. The creation of interactive spaces was developed by Luis Carlos Petry.

Amor-mundo, ou a vida, esse sonho triste [World-love, or life, that sad dream] is an animated text which proposes generative schemes of both visual and audio animation. Building on metaphors and images from the works of the Portuguese poet Florbela Espanca, and using as its starting point the Actionscript code of Jared Tarbel, this work includes five poems: Part 1 - Deixa-me ser a tua mais triste mágoa; Part 2 - Eu queria ser o mar alto; Part 3 - Passo no mundo a ler o misterioso livro;  Part 4 - Sou o vento que geme e quer entrar; Part 5 - Horas mortas. The reader can add to these poems random spatial layers that allow the creation of multiple constellations of meaning.

Amor-mundo, ou a vida, esse sonho triste [World-love, or life, that sad dream] is an animated text which proposes generative schemes of both visual and audio animation. Building on metaphors and images from the works of the Portuguese poet Florbela Espanca, and using as its starting point the Actionscript code of Jared Tarbel, this work includes five poems: Part 1 - Deixa-me ser a tua mais triste mágoa; Part 2 - Eu queria ser o mar alto; Part 3 - Passo no mundo a ler o misterioso livro;  Part 4 - Sou o vento que geme e quer entrar; Part 5 - Horas mortas. The reader can add to these poems random spatial layers that allow the creation of multiple constellations of meaning.

Excerpts from the Chronicles of Pookie & JR is a short fiction by J. R. Carpenter about her adventures with Montreal-based artist Ingrid Bachmann's hermit crab Pookie during the month June of 2009. Pookie's website is: http://digitalhermit.ca/ Pookie is also known as Pookie 14.Excerpts from the Chronicles of Pookie & JR is generated by a Python script adapted (with permission) from a 1k story generator written by Nick Montfort. In July 2009, in a blog post, Nick Montfort wrote: "J. R. Carpenter, author of Words the Dog Knows, Entre Ville, The Cape, and other fine works of e-lit, print, and xerography, has delightfully re-purposed one of my 1k story generators to have it tell stories involving her and a hermit crab named Pookie. The program has grown to about 2k, but it uses the same simple (and surprisingly effective) method as my first generator does: It simply removes all but 5-9 sentences from a sequence, eliding some of what's been written. Sometimes the reader is left to wonder who the hermit is."In July 2009, NYC-based artist/programmer Ravi Rajakumar ported the Python script into Javascript to create a web browser friendly version of the Chronicles of Pookie & JR. http://luckysoap.com/pookieandjr/In December 2010, Excerpts from the Chronicles of Pookie & JR and three other generators adapted from scripts by Nick Montfort appeared in a print book called GENERATION[S] published by Vienna-based TRAUMAWIEN.In November 2011, Laura Borràs Castanyer translated Excerpts from the Chronicles of Pookie & JR into Spanish and Catalan.

Originally conceived as an interactive installation for the 2007 Literature and New Media project in the Waag, Amsterdam, this production by Jan Baeke and Alfred Marseille mixes poetry, moving images and sound in a movie directed by words, and talks about memory, longing, the misguided monologue and the importance of the kitchen in modern society.

Images and sounds are mainly drawn from the Prelinger archives.

This version is an entirely new English language edit made for the 2011 Beijing Book Fair and also featured at the 2011 Noorderzon festival in Groningen (Netherlands).

A modern building. Everyone is present. Waiting for an experiment to start. A woman in a hospital bed is enjoying the paradisiacal atmosphere outside. Until she is rolled inside. Two nurses start a treatment in which injections are combined with language. 

A dictation exercise. Girls in an educational black & white setting. Sentences (well-pronounced but sloppily) read by a male voice at dictation speed. The reaction of the girl in focus colors the content. 

Jean-Pierre Balpe ou les Lettres Dérangées was created as a homage to the poet and software developer Jean-Pierre Balpe. The title of the piece can be understood in a number of ways. In French, the word "letters" refers to the alphabet, mail correspondence, and also to the art of writing itself. The piece consists of a number of letters which are not all visible to the reader until the very end. The word "dérangé" has a number of meanings as well. One meaning is physical disturbance. The letters themselves are distorted, just as the meaning of letters and words became distorted when Balpe introduced the literary world to text generation. The word also means mental disturbance. Disturbed by the mouse passing over them, the letters unpredictably go in all directions without reason. The underlying algorithm brings the letters to madness. The actions of the reader turn the poem into a kind of game. The purpose of the game is to get to the end of the poem by playing with the letters without falling into any traps. Starting with a screen white as a fresh sheet of paper, the reader can, with some luck and a lot of tenacity, reach the end of the poem: "this is not the end," written in red on Balpe's bibliography. Only at the end does the text become meaningful.

(Source: author's description, ELC 1)