NaNoGenMo
National Novel Generation Month – based on an idea Darius Kazemi tweeted on a whim.
Working group in taking part of the computer writing event NaNoGenMo: https://github.com/NaNoGenMo/2021
Be part of our one-month during working group to code computer-generated novels together according to the rules of the National Novel Generation Month. (If you wanna come by plz write an e-mail to christian: c [dot] heck [at] khm [dot] de
We will meet regularly in novembre @ ground zero in Filzengraben 8-10, 0.2
Schedule
Friday, Novembre 5
12—2 p.m. < Introduction & brainstorming together
Friday, Novembre 19
12—2 p.m. < coding together and submit first scetches
Monday, Novembre 29
4—6 p.m. < hand in our final computer-generated novels
Final results, see: »here«
NaNoGenMo is a yearly event where people from around the world pledge to spend the month of November writing code that writes a novel. It’s based on NaNoWriMo and we use one of their old definitions of a valid novel for the event: it’s simply 50,000 words of fiction. Of course, in the spirit of keeping things weird we do not have a firm definition of either “word” or “fiction”—NaNoGenMo works tend to defy genre and bend the very concept of language.
It’s a friendly event and there is no winning or losing. You simply pledge to participate, and if you manage to finish, then you can pat yourself on the back!
If you can program “Hello World”, you can write a novel generator (even if it is just “Hello World” repeated 25,000 times).
Plus, every single novel ever posted to NaNoGenMo has the source code available, so you could always start by copy/pasting someone else’s code and going from there.
…some examples from the past years:
The Seeker
by Thricedotted / @thricedotted
– BEING LEADER OF GROUP –
00… GET ( GROUP ) => small much other
01… FIND — DO ( SOMETHING ) => interesting find
02… ALWAYS TRY ( SOMETHING ) => new different
03… ACCEPT ( IDEA ) => green yellow
04… MERGE ( BASIC_FOUNDATION ) => top basic
05… ADD ( EXTRA ) => little inside
06… DO ( MAINSTREAM_THING ) => mainstream possible
— COMPLETE —
A computer tries to find out about humanity from WikiHow, and then dreams about what it learns.
I Waded in Clear Water
by Allison Parrish / @aparrish
I saw a healthy belly. I was cursing myself. I saw chickens going to roost. I roosted. I sent for a clergyman to preach a funeral sermon. I preached a funeral sermon. I saw them out of season. I was having trouble in dressing. I thought I was having trouble in dressing. I saw ears. I tried to enchant others. I enchanted others. I saw a jailer. I saw serpents crawling in the grass before me. I was in a life-boat.
A story told by a dream dictionary, from the worst thing that can happen in a dream to the best.
Moebius Octopus
by David Stark / @zarkonnen_com
Hail me Ishmael. Some lightyears ago–never mind how long precisely–having little or no credit in my cred-pod, and nothing particular to interest me on orbit, I thought I would sail about a little and see the empty part of the galaxy. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing lovely about the mouth; whenever it is a low-pressure, drizzly November in my cortical stack; whenever I find myself compulsively pausing before deathpod warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every recycling I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the tube, and methodically knocking people’s hats off–then, I account it high time to get to void as soon as I can.
Moby Dick is thoroughly hacked to transform into a novel about sexy space amazons fighting octopodes.
poem-gen
by Camden Segal / @camdensegal
Daintiness voluptuousness of hurling,
feature of the mirth as it seemed to plead,
while the smallest atom as the swirling,
contemplate the species of the quickest speed,
delineation of the prettiest foot d’or,
even you must make trial began to mirth,
i’ll blow on the other lair or the war,
in this effeminacy is out of his berth
Given a rhythm and rhyme scheme, the programme generates new poems by analysing word patterns in Project Gutenberg.
700 Modernist Cuisine Recipes
by Phil Lees / @phil_lees
crumbled rice diamond
Ingredients:
60 grams of rice
550 milligrams of duck
900 milligrams of creme pie
240 milligrams of peach
240 milligrams of grape soda
720 grams of cornmealMethod:
Set aside the rice and duck until soggy. Blend the creme pie and peach for 50 minutes. Shallow fry the grape soda and cornmeal until shiny. Force the ingredients into a mould shaped like a diamond. Serve.
A diary of every minute of the day
by Luna Maurer, Jonathan Puckey & Roel Wouters
It’s 6:00AM and I’m wide awake. Good friday morning peeps. Its 6:01am and im sleepy… It’s 6:02am and I’m still up. I have no life. It’s 6:03am and I can’t sleep I think I might have insomnia and if I don’t than I messed up my sleep track. It’s 6.04 am and it’s hot already. It’s 6:05am and I’m still drunk sheesh I swear this life is like the sweetest thing I’ve ever known! It’s 6:06am and I just doing feel like going to this practice. Its 6:07am and we still smoking!!! It’s 6:08am and I hate it. It’s 6:09am and the moon right now is so beautiful.
A desperate talking clock written by the people of Twitter.
Read (.txt) / Learn More / View as Internet Clock
You Can’t Write If You Can’t Relate
by Ranjit Bhatnagar / moonmilk.com
I need a breakthrough or something. I’m not a competitive person, but give me 30 days to write 50k, and a list of opponents… Can I do it? Somehow I’m already 607 words away from hitting 15k. Have i finally managed to get out of my sl ump and go towards the action? But I’m going to, because I’m a fucking professional.
Creates a harrowing story from tweets mentioning National Novel Writing Month.
Megawatt
by Nick Monfort / @nickmofo
Watt’s way of advancing due east was to turn his bust as far as possible towards the north and at the same time to fling his right leg as far as possible towards the south, and then to turn his bust as far as possible towards the south and at the same time to fling his left leg as far as possible towards the north, and then to turn his bust as far as possible towards the north…
Studies Samuel Beckett’s Watt and takes his human capacity for repetitive structures to algorithmic extremes.
Somewhere, Something
by Ben Kybartas
Miles from the sparse towering modern malls, several kilometers down a sidewalk, just outside the shining and moldy warehouse. The sound of shattering glass resonates.
A man gazes hesitantly into a greasy locket.
A stray dog runs away cooly.
‘Do you think she is out there?’ the woman wonders.
The sound of a lonely car alarm is cut off violently.
The bruised woman and the bloodied man cross gazes again.
Generates tiny stories from sentence structure analysis.
50,000 Meows
by Hugo / @hugovk
Me mew meeoooow m Meooow me meow meoow meooow me meow me meoooooow me, mew mew meoooow m meeeow me mew meoow (me mew) mew meow mew me me meeooow me meeeeeeooow meow meeoow meow meow me mew meooow mew meeoooow me meow. Me mew meeeeoow me me m meeeeeow meooow, mew meow meeoow me meow meow meow, mew meow meeoow mew meooow me meeeoooooooow meow mew m meoooooooow meow. Me mew meeeeoow me meeeeeeeeeeeow, meow meooow mew meeoow me meeeeeeeoooow meow mew m meeoow meeeeeeeoow me meoooow me meeeeeooooooow.
Translates books into cat. The above is, of course, the cat translation of Hume’s Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals.
Shadows
by Natalia
Natalia created Shadows, a generative concrete poetry zine, somehow managing to jam over 50,000 words into 13 pages. (Four pages are nothing but the word “meow.”) The results are stunning word art, pushing the PDF format to its limits.
I recommend viewing the PDF with Chrome’s built-in reader, which renders each page slowly enough that you can see each page animate.