Guest Lecturer: MIT Prof. Nick Montfort – This Fri. (1/17), 12-2p, in YRL

Posted on January 15th, 2014
by David O' Grady

Video game professor and interactive fiction writer Nick Montfort of MIT will discuss “Ten Cases of Computational Poetics” this Friday, January 17, from 12-2p, in the YRL “Digital Hub” (first floor past the lobby and back behind the pods at the north end of the library). The talk is presented by M/ELT.

With reference to ten quite different projects, Professor Montfort will discuss how programming models of literary art have been essential to many of his individual and collaborative projects. This type of literary computing can be done by motivated individuals or by small groups of collaborators, as he will show by demonstrating several small-scale and even offhand projects. He will also describe some larger-scale projects, including the story generator Slant. He will read from a few of these projects in his poetry voice.

Speaker bio: Nick Montfort develops literary generators and other computational art and poetry. He has participated in dozens of literary and academic collaborations. He is associate professor of digital media at MIT and faculty advisor for the Electronic Literature Organization, whose Electronic Literature Collection Volume 1he co-edited. Montfort wrote the book of poems Riddle & Bind and co-wrote 2002. The MIT Press has published four of Montfort’s collaborative and individually-authored books: The New Media Reader, Twisty Little Passages, Racing the Beam, and most recently 10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10, a collaboration with nine other authors that Montfort organized. Visit him at his website: http://nickm.com/.