Description
For this assignment, you must select a digital poem or story generator to repurpose to fulfill your own artistic vision. The goals is to familiarize yourself with simple coding frameworks and reflect upon this kind of writing by producing a new work of generative literature or non-literary generative writing by modifying an existing code engine.Guidelines
You will accompany your final work with a short essay (about 250 words) in which you discuss the work you've created and reflect on what you have learned about generative writing, referencing at least one of the sources assigned in class.Process
Directions: The first step is to select any standalone work (that is, not using external libraries) using Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), or one of the recommended ones below:- Gram’s Fairy Tales by Nick Montfort
- The Two by Nick Montfort
- Taroko Gorge by Nick Montfort
- A House of Dust by Alison Knowles and James Tenney
- Leonardo Flores’ Generative Template by Leonardo Flores
- Any of the works published in Taper.
All of these works are published with open licenses that allow use and modification, with attribution.
- Open the work, linked to above in your browser, and save it as an HTML file in your computer (smartphones and tablets are not recommended for this).
- Open the saved file with a code or text editor (I recommend Visual Studio Code).
- Open the same saved file in a browser. Whenever you make changes to the original file, save it in the editor, and reload it in the browser to see the changes.
- Modify the code as you see fit, being careful not to break it by missing a comma, quotation mark, semicolon, etc. Take small steps in making changes.
- When you’re satisfied with the text the work is generating, give it a title, modify the aspects of the source code that display your title and name, modify the style sheet as you see fit, and rename the file as something that is yours. I recommend writing an artist’s statement in the source code documentation in which you credit the original work and any AI systems you used to assist in coding.
- See if the code editor identifies the problem by making the line number red.
- Open the developer tools in your browser and look for the error messages, which will tell you where the problems are by line and space number.
- Copy-paste your code into an AI system and ask it to fix it. Describe the problem in your prompt or simply explain that there’s a problem with the code and ask to fix it without modifying anything else.
- Use undo (Control/Command + z) until you get to an earlier version of your document that works.
Deadline
The final assignment is due before class on Thursday, September 25. Submit via Canvas
Assessment
As stated in the syllabus: This course will practice labor-based grading (aka ungrading), which means that the focus will be detracted from grades and refocused on doing high quality work in a timely manner and receiving substantive feedback. Each assignment will have clearly stated criteria for earning a grade at the A level and I will assess that this criteria has been met, offer feedback for improvement, and a grade within that range. The A-level criteria for this essay are the following:- Fulfilling all the assignment parameters as described above, including meeting the deadline.
- Producing a functioning work of generative writing, turned in as an HTML file.
- Writing a short essay that shows engagement with the material covered in this unit.
- The short essay is well organized, edited, and documented.