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Nick Montfort

Nick Montfort is an American computer scientist and poet who is a professor of digital media at Massachusetts Institute of… more

Nick Montfort
H-index: 17
Computer science 33%
Political science 14%
I must go east or west, but I cannot decide
Orphée, Cocteau Throne of Blood, Kurosawa
A teaser trailer for START ME UP, a short film by Albert Figurt & Nick Montfort (that’s me), is now online

nickm.com/collab/figur...
Start Me Up
nickm.com
Awesome time at WordHack in #NYC last night, where we premiered our film START ME UP to a sold-out Wonderville!

Thanks (and CONGRATULATIONS!) to Todd Anderson, founder & host of WordHack, and thanks to director Albert Figurt and star Henry Jenkins for joining us via video for a Q&A
Room full of people in a video game arcade space; we’ve pulled up the screen where START ME UP was shown and are projecting Albert and Henry on the well behind during the Q&A session

Reposted by Nick Montfort

happy to be in this wonderful anthology of coded poetry edited by @docmofo.bsky.social
My & Albert Figurt’s short film START ME UP will have its world premiere on August 21, 2025 at 7pm at WordHack, Wonderville, in the Brooklyn part of #NYC

nickm.com/collab/figur...
Start Me Up
nickm.com
I placed this text in a file named “o” (lowercase letter o). Any guesses as to why?
w () { s=($1); echo -n ${s[$RANDOM%5]}; }
s () { echo -n "$1 "; }
w "old still dim calm wide"; s; w "pond tree log cave fen"; echo; \
s "frog"; w "jumps swims looks drops flicks"; s; w "in out past up off"; \
echo; w "splish drip glint hum sob"; echo;
John Cayley stages his The code is saying[.js] for the Web

programmatology.com/apps/saying/

Originally presented in print in RUN RUN RUN

badquar.to/publications...
Screenshot of Cayley’s poem:

" generating ceasing regular world reading last constantly
for reading constantly math of last what if being recognit-
-s life breathing recognitions thinking generating saying sa-
here to saying regular ceasing word here moving the retur-
-nent the ceasing memory images what being here constan-
generating recognitions being what expressing thoughts m-
-turn life being what thoughts random imagining return be "
At the #NYC Swiss Institute last Saturday, a great performance by @l-a-n-g-u-a-g-e.bsky.social & davidebalula.com documented a bit although not captured in this nice article in Jacket2 — with some product placement for the OUTPUT anthology!

jacket2.org/commentary/A...
Poetry Has No Future Unless It Comes to an End: Intelligent Artifice and the Poetics of Artificial Intelligence | Jacket2
jacket2.org
Just finished an @elo2025.bsky.social workshop using codeberg.org/nickmontfort... — a *very* short program to not only explain some about Markov chain generation, but also to allow people to use different documents for generation, try different parameters, and make modifications to the code.
frag
Generate a text by using a Markov process on a specified file
codeberg.org

Reposted by Nick Montfort

From an anthology of computer-generated text to a model for the equitably resilient city, MIT News's 2025 Summer Reading List includes 12 Press books from MIT authors: news.mit.edu/2025/summer-...
Summer 2025 reading from MIT
A summer reading list features books by MIT faculty and staff that were published from July 2024 to June 2025.
news.mit.edu

by Nick MontfortReposted by Nick Montfort

I’m reading on July 10, 7:30pm at TYPE Books 883 Queen St W #Toronto with a wonderful group! We’re celebrating the publication of Kyle Booten’s GYMS, I’ll read from my new ALL THE WAY FOR THE WIN w/ @lillianyvonne.bsky.social & Ivetta Sunyoung Kang
Launch of Gyms - Kyle Booten
with Lillian-Yvonne Bertram, lvetta Sunyoung Kang, Nick Montfort
TYPE Books 883 Queen St W, Toronto
Thursday July 10 7:30pm

Reposted by Nick Montfort

"Sonnets"-- Issue 14 of Taper is OUT.Read it, get inspired, submit to #15 here: taper.badquar.to/14 #DigitalPoetry #ElectronicLiterature #CreativeCoding #LitJournal #OnlineLitMag #CodeArt #InteractivePoetry
@wolfchirp.bsky.social @geryon.bsky.social @leoflores.bsky.social @docmofo.bsky.social
In France they say “un café allongé”
It’s an americano in Toronto

#poem
Taper #14 : Sonnets is now out! This issue has 28 diverse works of computational poetry (broadly imagined), and, as always, they are all free software for you to study, share, and modify. Many thanks to the authors & editors

taper.badquar.to/14/
Taper #14
taper.badquar.to
Yes, but my reply bounced and I didn’t manage to connect on Mastodon until just recently — glad to hear from you there & thanks for your interest!
In less than two days, Allison Parrish’s book TWO OF PENTACLES, published by Nothing to Say, will be launched! I’m delighted that I’ll be reading at the event #NYC

www.eventbrite.com/e/two-of-pen...
Two of Pentacles Release Party
We are excited to invite you to a special evening celebrating the release of Two of Pentacles by Allison Parish!
www.eventbrite.com

Reposted by Nick Montfort

OUTPUT at the Illinois State University AI & the Humanities Symposium! @docmofo.bsky.social
You can't be gangsta without angst
No foolin', @lillianyvonne.bsky.social & I are doing a *free* and *public* event about our anthology OUTPUT in #Baltimore this Saturday at 11:30am —

CityLit Festival
Lord Baltimore Hotel
Hanover Suite A, Mezzanine

www.citylitproject.org/event/the-li...
CityLit Festival presents The Literary Life of AI: Output Through the Years – CityLit Project
www.citylitproject.org
Friends in Montréal, please join me, Sofian Audry, Bill Kennedy, Erín Moure & Darren Wershler MONDAY MARCH 17 4pm at Concordia for readings from & discussions of OUTPUT: An Anthology of Computer-Generated Text 1953–2023

milieux.concordia.ca/event/an-eve...

References

Fields & subjects

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