{"id":3707,"date":"2017-10-31T11:26:29","date_gmt":"2017-10-31T15:26:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/itg.emerson.edu\/word\/?p=3707"},"modified":"2017-10-31T11:26:29","modified_gmt":"2017-10-31T15:26:29","slug":"reading-and-remixing-teaching-the-self-generating-poem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/websites.emerson.edu\/itg\/reading-and-remixing-teaching-the-self-generating-poem\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading and Remixing: Teaching the Self-Generating Poem"},"content":{"rendered":"

One memorable afternoon in my Digital Literature class from a couple of years ago, I introduced my students to Nick Montfort\u2019s digital poem \u201cTaroko Gorge.\u201d<\/a> The students watched, enchanted, as the poem\u2019s text cascaded down the forest green page. The gentle pacing created by the gradually revealed text, together with the poem\u2019s description of hauntingly human-like natural forces, was hypnotic. Here\u2019s a sample of what we saw:<\/p>\n

Shape ranges the rippling.
\ndirect the encompassing fine cool clear \u2014
\nForests command the stones.
\nRipplings hum.
\nCoves hold.
\nStone commands the rippling.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The text continued to scroll\u2026and scroll\u2026and the students sensed something unusual, but couldn\u2019t put their fingers on it. Finally, one asked if the poem has an ending at all. It does not: \u201cTaroko Gorge\u201d is a self-generating poem. It\u2019s created by a single page of HTML that can run in most browsers.<\/p>\n

This revelation\u2014that Montfort\u2019s text is infinite, generated by the computer from words and formulas chosen by Montfort\u2014prompted all sorts of the questions we humanities people love. Is the poem really by<\/em> Montfort? Can a computer be creative? Is the poem itself the generated words, the HTML, the interaction between the browser and the code, or the entire package? Is one instance of the generated text the same poem as another instance? Can a poem be a poem without an ending?<\/p>\n

Rich philosophical ground aside, I want to share a particularly practical benefit of exposing students to simple computer-generated texts like \u201cTaroko Gorge.\u201d By clicking \u201cFile,\u201d choosing \u201cSave page as,\u201d and selecting HTML (or webpage) as the format, the reader of \u201cTaroko Gorge\u201d can download the poem\u2019s source code. (This should be the same in just about any browser.) Open this HTML document in any text editor, and voila<\/em>: you\u2019re looking at the poem\u2019s guts. Here\u2019s a taste:<\/p>\n

function cave() {
\nvar adjs=(‘encompassing,’+choose(texture)+’,sinuous,straight,objective,arched,cool,clear,dim,driven’).split(‘,’);
\nvar target=1+rand_range(3);
\nwhile (adjs.length>target) {
\nadjs.splice(rand_range(adjs.length),1);
\n}<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If you\u2019re unfamiliar with code, your first thought is probably \u201cthis looks terrifying. Why would I ever show my students this?\u201d. You may wonder how you can teach this poem when you can\u2019t even explain how its magic is made to work. The secret? It doesn\u2019t matter<\/em>. If you bring yourself to look at the code, you\u2019ll notice that the words meant to be inserted into the poem are fairly apparent: \u201csinuous, straight, objective,\u201d etc. All that\u2019s necessary to alter the poem is to replace these content-words with others. By doing so, you can transform the text from an ethereal nature poem to an urban wasteland, a candy kingdom, or whatever you can imagine. Yes, knowing how HTML works would allow you to understand how the poem\u2019s syntax is generated, and even allow you to change details like font and the page\u2019s background color. But by simply substituting some words for others, and then opening the HTML document in a browser, students can watch the new version of the poem they\u2019ve created. On the right side of \u201cTaroko Gorge\u201d is a list of such remixes, which are definitely worth checking out and demonstrating in the classroom.<\/p>\n

By showing your students that they can remix this self-generating poem, you\u2019re not teaching them computer science. However, you are planting the seed that maybe this technology isn\u2019t so scary after all. Maybe, just maybe, some of your students will be inspired to google HTML and learn their first few words of coding vocabulary, the better to play with the poem. This encounter with a digital text\u2014not just looking at it, but helping create and recreate it\u2014opens the door to a relationship with technology that is not based on fear of what seems inscrutable, but excitement at what might be possible.<\/p>\n

\"One
“Taroko Gorge” by Nick Montfort, 2009<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Thanks to Dan Anderson at UNC-Chapel Hill for showing me and my fellow grad students \u201cTaroko Gorge,\u201d which inspired me to show my own students 30 minutes later.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One memorable afternoon in my Digital Literature class from a couple of years ago, I introduced my students to Nick Montfort\u2019s digital poem \u201cTaroko Gorge.\u201d The students watched, enchanted, as…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1772,"featured_media":3708,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[34,67,69],"class_list":["post-3707","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-explore","tag-e-poetry","tag-pedagogy","tag-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/websites.emerson.edu\/itg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3707","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/websites.emerson.edu\/itg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/websites.emerson.edu\/itg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/websites.emerson.edu\/itg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1772"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/websites.emerson.edu\/itg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3707"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/websites.emerson.edu\/itg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3707\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/websites.emerson.edu\/itg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/websites.emerson.edu\/itg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/websites.emerson.edu\/itg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/websites.emerson.edu\/itg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}