Book Launch: OUTPUT - An Anthology of Computer-Generated Text, 1953-2023

The Centre for Culture and Technology (UofT)

Book launch event featuring co-editor Nick Montfort in conversation with multimedia artist Matt Nish-Lapidus, readings, and a Q&A.

The Centre for Culture and Technology - University of Toronto

Please join us at the Centre for Culture and Technology's Coach House for a book launch of <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262549813/output/" title="https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262549813/output/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Output: An Anthology of Computer-Generated Text, 1953-2023</a> (MIT Press, 2024), edited by Lillian-Yvonne Bertram and Nick Montfort.Featuring co-editor Nick Montfort in conversation with multimedia artist Matt Nish-Lapidus, and readings from the book by Nick, Matt, and contributor Kavi Duvvoori with a Q&amp;A to follow. Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event.

<blockquote>Everest Pipkin, i've never picked a protected flower (2018)</blockquote>

About the book:The discussion of computer-generated text has recently reached a fever pitch but largely omits the long history of work in this area—text generation, as it happens, was not invented yesterday in Silicon Valley. This anthology, Output, thoughtfully selected, introduced, and edited by Lillian-Yvonne Bertram and Nick Montfort, aims to correct that omission by gathering seven decades of English-language texts produced by generation systems and software. The outputs span many different types of creative writing and include text generated by research systems, along with reports and utilitarian texts, representing many general advances and experiments in text generation.Output is first and foremost a collection of outputs to be encountered by readers. In addition to an overall introduction, each of the excerpts is introduced individually and organized by fine-grain genre including conversations, humor, letters, poetry, prose, and sentences. Bibliographic references allow readers to learn more about outputs and systems that intrigue them. Although Output could serve as a reference book, it is designed to be readable and to be read. Purposefully excluded are human–computer collaborations that were conceptually defined but not implemented as a computer system.Copublished by Counterpath Press.

About the speakers:<a href="https://nickm.com" title="https://nickm.com" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Nick Montfort</a> is a poet and artist who uses computation as his medium. He is Professor of Digital Media at MIT and Principal Investigator in the <a href="https://www.uib.no/en/cdn" title="https://www.uib.no/en/cdn" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Center for Digital Narrative</a> at the University of Bergen, Norway. His lab/studio, <a href="https://tropetank.com/" title="https://tropetank.com/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">The Trope Tank,</a> has locations in New York City and at MIT. He studies creative computing and seeks to enable learning in many ways. He also devotes himself to computational art and media as an event organizer, curator, editor, and publisher. His scholarly publications include The New Media Reader (coedited, 2003), Twisty Little Passages : An Approach to Interactive Fiction (2003), andThe Future (2017).<a href="https://emenel.ca/" title="https://emenel.ca/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Matt Nish-Lapidus</a>'s varied practice probes the myth that computers should be useful rather than beautiful through examining contemporary technoculture and its histories, politics, and impacts. His work results in diverse outputs including publications, recordings, installations, performances, software, and objects. Matt has performed and exhibited with ACUD Macht Neu, Electric Eclectics, MOCA (Toronto), InterAccess, ZKM, and more, including many DIY community spaces. You can find Matt online and away-from-keyboard under various aliases and collaborations including emenel, New Tendencies, and . <a href="https://titleduntitled.name/" title="https://titleduntitled.name/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Kavi Duvvoori</a> is a PhD candidate at the University of Waterloo in English. Their research in computational rhetoric focuses on the impacts of algorithmic mediation on communication. It includes an empirical study of large textual models abilities to process the form and meaning of rhetorical figures and linguistic constructions in light of human neurocognitive affinities; a study of the assumptions of identity and embodiment in algorithmic voice synthesis in relation to the theories of the elocutionary movement; and a research / creation project drawing on queer media studies to develop tactics that defend plurality, participation, and fluidity in algorithmically mediated language.

About the Centre for Culture and Technology:The Centre for Culture &amp; Technology is dedicated to theoretical, aesthetic, and critical inquiry into the impacts of contemporary media on our interconnected world. This project is informed by the Centre’s location in the Coach House, a multi-use heritage building that was once Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan’s office and salon on the University of Toronto campus. The Centre draws inspiration from McLuhan’s humanistic intellectual and institutional legacy, continuing his stated goal of “investigation into the psychic and social consequences of technologies”.The Centre promotes the study of media aesthetics in an expanded sense, examining the ways technological media shape contemporary experience by elaborating its histories, its problems, its infrastructures, and its politics. Offering both a setting and a framework, the Centre provides space and programming for scholars working in humanistic media studies across the three campuses of the University of Toronto and in the GTA. The Centre also supports the production of and conversation about contemporary media art, fostering aesthetic experimentation as a mode of inquiry.

___________________________________Centre for Culture and Technology at the University of Toronto 39A Queens Park Crescent East Toronto, ON M5S 2C3 <a href="https://www.cultureandtech.utoronto.ca/" title="https://www.cultureandtech.utoronto.ca/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">www.cultureandtech.utoronto.ca</a> <a href="https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/monday-night-seminar-andy-lee-tickets-1084328298129?aff=oddtdtcreator" title="https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/monday-night-seminar-andy-lee-tickets-1084328298129?aff=oddtdtcreator" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">cultureandtech@utoronto.ca</a> Instagram <a href="https://www.instagram.com/uoftculturetech" title="https://www.instagram.com/uoftculturetech" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">@uoftculturetech</a>___________________________________

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Book Launch: OUTPUT - An Anthology of Computer-Generated Text, 1953-2023

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Book Launch: OUTPUT - An Anthology of Computer-Generated Text, 1953-2023

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