Nick Montfort

Computational Writing 2026 Explore the intersection of computing and literary art, not only by using pre-developed tools but also by directly undertaking programming.

Apply before March 11 for this AMAZING* residency at Canada’s Banff Centre, where @derekbeaulieu.bsky.social is director of literary arts!

* I’m biased, but — @lillianyvonne.bsky.social and I were at the first one; Kalen Iwamoto’s work is awesome

www.banffcentre.ca/programs/lit...

Pipe-like, tube-like Unicode characters in different colors & in a grid

Pipe-like, tube-like Unicode characters in different colors & in a grid

Pipe-like, tube-like Unicode characters in different colors & in a grid

Enjoy my screensaver-like artwork “A Series of Tubes” nickm.com/poems/tubes....

More info on this is at the PIKSEL25 site. It will be in this festival that starts tomorrow 25.piksel.no/projects/a-s...

Call for Books 2026 — Dead Alive Press Dead Alive Press seeks experimental books, electronic literature, art objects, and cross-genre works for 2026 publication. Open until November 2026.

Dead Alive seeks innovative manuscripts (including, no doubt, computer-generated ones) to publish in 2026

www.deadalivemagazine.com/calls/call-f...

This year I won’t make it! Hope it is great for all, though

Orphée, Cocteau

Throne of Blood, Kurosawa

I must go east or west, but I cannot decide

Can You Code With Pictures? Esoteric Languages Challenge How We Code Esoteric languages spark creativity by challenging conventional coding. Daniel Temkin is writing codes to confront the lack of creativity in AI code.

Daniel Temkin’s book Forty-Four Esolangs, coming from the MIT Press on Sep 23 in the Hardcopy series, is reviewed & @dtemkin.bsky.social himself is interviewed in IEEE Spectrum

spectrum.ieee.org/esoteric-pro...

www.jstor.org/stable/42945...

Start Me Up

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...

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

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

happy to be in this wonderful anthology of coded poetry edited by @docmofo.bsky.social

Start Me Up

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...

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;

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 "

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...

Run Run Run A zine with short text-generating computer programs and their outputs.

Bad Quarto is pleased to present a new artistic & poetic booklet with short programs and their output

badquar.to/publications...

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...

A new OA article, this one in Global Hip Hop Studies. I discuss hip hop visions of the future, with a strong focus on two albums from 2000 & their lyrical content

www.doi.org/10.1386/ghhs...

frag Generate a text by using a Markov process on a specified file

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.

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

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

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.

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-...

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

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

"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/

The Art of Computer Programming MIT professor Nick Montfort SM ’98 brings poetry and computer programming together with artistic results

An MIT publication with some coverage of my general concerns & recent work

betterworld.mit.edu/spectrum/iss...

PhD Research Fellowship in Digital Culture with the Center for Digital Narrative (280653) | University of Bergen Job title: PhD Research Fellowship in Digital Culture with the Center for Digital Narrative (280653), Employer: University of Bergen, Deadline: Friday, August 15, 2025

PhD fellowship advertised here at the Center for Digital Narrative to research Computational Narrative Systems with @docmofo.bsky.social - applications due August 15! www.jobbnorge.no/en/available...

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...

The Complete Stein Poems The Stein poems of Jackson Mac Low (1922–2004) were written between 1998 and 2003. Comprising more than 500 pages of text, this edited series of 161 po...

A collection of computer-generated poems from the turn of the century — coming in August in the MIT Press series Hardcopy, which I edit with @maryflanagan.bsky.social

mitpress.mit.edu/978026255286...