Text
Generative text projects beginning with work done at the 2023 Penn Dream Lab Creative Coding course taught by Mark Sample. I modified several of the projects to run in a terminal, creating hard copies with impact and laser printers. More recently, I recreated Nick Montfort's Tech Wire on a hardcopy Teletype and began playing with homebrew language models.
LOVE LLMs
May 2025
A remix of Christopher Strachey's "Love Letters" to generative pre-trained transformers. The code was adapted to run using node.js with output printed on a Teletype Model 33 ASR teleprinter. Below is output generated using Strachey's original vocabulary and Love LLMs. LOVE LLMs is based on code written by Mark Sample -- see his 2013 paper An Account of Randomness in Literary Computing.
https://ef1j.org/glitched/love-llms
Borkenbot #1
August 2024
Borkenbot #1 is an experiment with a generative transformer-based language model using code published by Andrej Karpathy. (See his Github repository nanoGPT.) It uses the GPT2-large parameters fine-tuned on personal writing. With some (de)tuning, it turns out text as a glitchy narrator. It stutters and stammers and gets caught in repetition, often with dark motifs -- maybe it is part Marvin from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in his final days and part Hal from 2001: A Space Odyssey, with a few missing memory units -- fragments of thoughts coming through as the machine intelligence recalls its training data. Published as a hand-crafted zine with simple binding, the Borkenbot #1 pdf is available here:
Tech Wire
July 2023
A remix of Nick Montfort's Tech Section generates output as a news wire service on a teletype.
Ink on continuous roll teletype paper, printed on a Teletype Model 33 ASR using modified code.
Code
- script.js - modified Tech Section javascript code that sends output to
stdout. - script_mod3.js - modified Section javascript code to create an older news wire style.
All Singing
May 2022
Reproduction of Nick Montfort's All Singing link on an Olivetti Te-318 teleprinter.
...and on a Decwriter II
When Machines Think
June 2023
Someday, when the machines think,
will they feel like we feel?
https://ef1j.org/glitched/when-machines-think/
When Machines Think Zine
July 2023
A shell script generates a unique 20- or 24-page collection of generative meditations. The Human API is laser printed in Slanted Hall’s 1403 Vintage Mono Pro typeface and hand-assembled into pamphlet-stitched booklets. 20lb. 8.5x11 in. paper, binders thread
Department Chair Diary
June 2023
A semi-autobiographical work of generative microfiction.
https://ef1j.org/glitched/chair-diary/
philly summer
June 2023
An ode to gritty Philly summers through a mashup of Nick Montfort's generative poem, Taroko Gorge.
https://ef1j.org/glitched/philly-summer
