1. DIKULT 103: DIGITAL GENRES
Lecture 7
Combinatory Poetics
February 16, 2016
Scott Rettberg, Professor of Digital Culture

2. Writing under Constraint

3. Jan Baetens defines constrained writing as "the use of any type of formal technique or program whose application is able to produce a sense of its making text by itself, if need be without any previous 'idea' from the writer." This definition distinguishes intentional writing under constraint from simply following the traditional rules governing communications or working within a medium. Poetry inherently embraces styles that could be called writing under constraint: a sonnet or haiku, for instance, certainly has inherent structural limitations that must be obeyed.
Salter, Anastasia. “Writing under Constraint”
Johns Hopkins Guide to Digital Media
Image: Academic Commons

4. In digital media writing under constraint can begin by playing with the possibilities within an inherently limited form. Some forms of writing under constraint are clearly tied to the technical limitations of the device or network. For instance, both Twitter and cell phone communications are limited to 140- or 160-character bursts, with pauses forced by the medium.
Salter, Anastasia. “Writing under Constraint”
Johns Hopkins Guide to Digital Media
Image: Academic Commons

5. The concept of writing under constraint was first popularized by the Oulipans, members of the Oulipo group founded by Raymond Queneau in While the work of the Oulipans preceded digital media, it did introduce often structurally demanding ways of generating texts and working with limited frameworks. Some of the constraints Oulipo experimented with lend themselves even more appropriately to digital forms.
Salter, Anastasia. “Writing under Constraint”
Johns Hopkins Guide to Digital Media
Image: Academic Commons

6. Queneau, Raymond (1961): Cent mille milliards de poèmes
Queneau, Raymond (1961): Cent mille milliards de poèmes. Paris: Gallimard. Image:

7. Gillespie, William and Nick Montfort (2002): 2002, a Palindrome Story
Gillespie, William and Nick Montfort (2002): 2002, a Palindrome Story. Image:

8. The Oulipo supplies writers with hard games to play
The Oulipo supplies writers with hard games to play. They are adult games insofar as children cannot play most of them; otherwise they bring us back to a familiar home ground of our childhood. Like Capture the Flag, the games have demanding rules that we must never forget (well, hardly ever), and these rules are moreover active ones: satisfying them keeps us too busy to worry about being reasonable. Of course our object of desire, like the flag to be captured, remains present to us. Thanks to the impossible rules, we find ourselves doing and saying things we would never have imagined otherwise, things that often turn out to be exactly what we need to reach our goal.
Mathews, Harry. “Translation and the Oulipo: The Case of the Persevering Maltese”
electronic book review
Image: Scott Rettberg

9. The intention echoes the outcomes of constrained writing: take elements and alter them to enhance meaning beyond the predicted or expected. Constrained writing uses seemingly procedural and algorithmic methods to reveal the unexpected and, in doing so, to interrogate the relationship between the work and the means of digital production.
Salter, Anastasia. “Writing under Constraint”
Johns Hopkins Guide to Digital Media
Image: Academic Commons

10. Database

11. There is no digitally born object in the broadest sense which does not consist of a back-end of algorithms and datasets that are structured according to some underlying principle of organization. This back-end mostly remains hidden and produces a visible front-end—taking the form of anything ranging from complex visuals to abstract communication processes—that is experienced by the viewer/user.
Paul, Christiana. “Database”
Johns Hopkins Guide to Digital Media
Image: softwareandart.com

12. The characteristics of the database, as a collection of information that can be structured according to various criteria and result in a metanarrative, in many ways departs from the concept of the traditional narrative as it unfolds in a book, film, or even single visual image. While narratives can be driven by may different strategies and factors—among them character development, cause-and-effect relationships between events, spatial and temporal movement—they generally establish a sequence of events or defined relationships.
Paul, Christiana. “Database”
Johns Hopkins Guide to Digital Media
Image: softwareandart.com

13. ….the paradigmatic dimension consists of sets of elements related to any given word... According to Manovich, the database reverses these relationships on various levels: in the database, the paradigm is privileged and given material existence, while narrative (arising from the algorithmic filtering of the elements in the database) is downplayed, dematerialized, and virtual. The logic and structure of the database therefore constitute a significant shift in the production of meaning.
Paul, Christiana. “Database”
Johns Hopkins Guide to Digital Media
Image: softwareandart.com

14. Combinatory and Automatic Text Generation

15. "Text generation" in digital literature refers to processes of producing text by manipulating natural language with algorithms. This type of work emerged during a period when writers, critics, and others were newly exploring language as a system with variable properties.
Bootz, Philippe and Chris Funkhouser. “Combinatory and Automatic Text Generation”
Johns Hopkins Guide to Digital Media
Image: Scott Rettberg

16. Strachey, Christopher (195e): Love Letters. Image: Rhizome

17. Lutz, Theo (1959): Stochastiche Texte Image: ELMCIP Knowledge Base

18. Knowles, Alison and James Tenney (1967): House of Dust
Knowles, Alison and James Tenney (1967): House of Dust. Image: James Fuentes

19. Digital combinatory text generation also explores variants of a given text. The process invokes important questions, such as who is the author: the human programmer, the person who selects the input, or the machine applying the program?
Bootz, Philippe and Chris Funkhouser. “Combinatory and Automatic Text Generation”
Johns Hopkins Guide to Digital Media
Image: Scott Rettberg

20. Automatic text generation involves building expressive units of output from separate, basal foundations of speech and was a major advancement in digital poetry. It is a rigorous practice that requires its authors and audiences to redefine the notion of text and the roles of author and reader. Author-programmers must programmatically fuse disparate parts of language into sensible speech, requiring significant technological aptitude because this approach to composition is a literary proposal based on simulation, not exploration.
Bootz, Philippe and Chris Funkhouser. “Combinatory and Automatic Text Generation”
Johns Hopkins Guide to Digital Media
Image: Scott Rettberg

21. Weizenbaum, Joseph (1966): ELIZA
Weizenbaum, Joseph (1966): ELIZA. Sample javascript implemenation at

22. Montfort, Nick (2012): PPG256 series.

23. Montfort, Nick (2009): Taroko Gorge http://nickm

24. Montfort, Nick (2009): Taroko Gorge http://nickm

25. Rettberg, Scott and Nick Montfort (2009): Tokyo Garage http://retts

26. Rettberg, Scott and Nick Montfort (2009): Tokyo Garage http://retts