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The dead. Here and there<br/>
Will be found a utensil.|[[Racter]], "[[The Policeman's Beard is Half Constructed]]"|lingua=}}
In spite of its popularity, the Cybernetic Poet was not the only poetry generator from the mid-[[Anni 1980|1980s]]. [[William Chamberlain]] and [[Thomas Etter]]’s [[Racter]], whose namesake derives from ''raconteur'', is a [[software]] written in the [[Linguaggio di programmazione|programming language]] [[BASIC]] that generates prose on an [[IMS]] (Information Management System) computer without prompts from a human operator. A collection of Racter’s early [[fiction]] was published in a book entitled, ''[[The Policeman’s Beard is Half Constructed]]'' (1984), and aside from spelling mistakes corrected by Chamberlain himself, the text is completely computer-generated.<ref name=":4">{{Cita libro|autore=William Chamberlain|titolo=The policeman's beard is half constructed : computer prose and poetry by Racter ; [the first book ever written by a computer ; a bizarre and fantastic journey into the mind of a machine]|url=http://worldcat.org/oclc/311319022|accesso=2019-06-02|data=1984|editore=Warner Books|lingua=en|OCLC=311319022|ISBN=0446380512}}</ref> Racter generates text from a [[Base di dati|database]] containing 2,400 words, matching [[Sostantivo|nouns]] with contextually appropriate [[Aggettivo|adjectives]], and it ensures continuity by tracking used phrases,.<ref name=":2">{{Cita libro|autore=Roberto Simanowski|titolo=Digital Art and Meaning: Reading Kinetic Poetry, Text Machines, Mapping Art, and Interactive Installations|anno=2011|editore=University of Minnesota Press|città=Minneapolis|lingua=en|pp=96-97|volume=35}}</ref> allowingIn the bookpreface, toChamberlain have some form of cohesionwrites that weRacter’s mightgoal callis ato [[Narrativa“replicate dihuman genere|narrative]]thinking” (even— thoughor, therein areother human-drawnwords, sketchesrepresent thata serveutopian asactualization visualof aidsthe vision that potentiallycertain contributepeople tohad thisfor cohesion).computers Racter’sduring choicethe of words is completely randommid-1980s, producing senseless textprecisely that literarycomputers criticwere [[Jack“designed Barleyto McGraw]]accomplish callsin “emptyseconds text”(or resemblingmicroseconds) “[[Dadaismo|Dadaist]]what nonsense”humans thatwould cannotrequire beyears [[Closeor reading|closecenturies read]]. Anyof attemptconcerted atcalculation closeeffort readingto Racter’sachieve,” “disturbingly superficial” [[Prosa|prose]]and, accordingin tosome McGrawcases, wouldwere beabsolutely aneeded, “conceptualas justificationcertain (seeminglytasks outcould ofnot thinbe air)accomplished forwithout vaguelythe relateduse stringsor assistance of wordsa computer.”<ref name=":24" />
Racter’s choice of words is completely random, producing senseless text that literary critic [[Jack Barley McGraw]] calls “empty text” resembling “[[Dadaismo|Dadaist]] nonsense” that cannot be [[Close reading|close read]]. Any attempt at close reading Racter’s “disturbingly superficial” [[Prosa|prose]], according to McGraw, would be a “conceptual justification (seemingly out of thin air) for vaguely related strings of words.”<ref name=":2" />
In the preface, Chamberlain writes that Racter’s goal is to “replicate human thinking” — or, in other words, represent a utopian actualization of the vision that certain people had for computers during the mid-1980s, precisely that computers were “designed to accomplish in seconds (or microseconds) what humans would require years or centuries of concerted calculation effort to achieve,” and, in some cases, were absolutely needed, as certain tasks could not be accomplished without the use or assistance of a computer.<ref name=":4">{{Cita libro|autore=William Chamberlain|titolo=The policeman's beard is half constructed : computer prose and poetry by Racter ; [the first book ever written by a computer ; a bizarre and fantastic journey into the mind of a machine]|url=http://worldcat.org/oclc/311319022|accesso=2019-06-02|data=1984|editore=Warner Books|lingua=en|OCLC=311319022|ISBN=0446380512}}</ref>
=== Nick Montfort's ''#!''===
More recent examples of generative literature include [[Nick Montfort]]’s book entitled ''#!'' (2014) but pronounced ‘[[Shabang|sha-bang]]’ (which means “the set of all circumstances.”)<ref>{{Cita video|autore=Nick Montfort|titolo=Nick Montfort: "#!" {{!}} Talks At Google|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L19iQjE71Ws|accesso=2016-06-03|data=2014-12-11|editore=Talks at Google|lingua=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cita web|url=http://counterpathpress.org/nick-montfort|titolo=#!Nick Montfort – Counterpath|lingua=en-US|accesso=2019-06-03}}</ref><ref>{{Cita libro|autore=Nick Montfort|titolo=#!|anno=2014|editore=Counterpath Press|lingua=en|ISBN=978-1-933996-46-2}}</ref> Published thirty years after Racter and Kurzweil’s Cybernetic Poet, ''#!'' contains generated poems and their [[Algoritmo|algorithms]]. The book is divided into sections: eachthat section begins withintroduce the algorithm, followedthen bydisplay its output on the subsequentfollowing pages. Some of the outputs end with ellipses to signify that they could not be printed due to their infinite length. ''#!''<nowiki/>'s title is also a valid [[Python]] command: the placement of a [[hashtag]] before any given text commands the computer not to read any text following the hashtag. In a review of ''#!'', [[Critica letteraria|literary critic]] [[John Cayley]] writes that the programs are meant to read by the program producing the output, but the inclusion of both program and output in ''#!'' makes the code “a (constitutive) facet of the poem. It is (also) the text.”<ref>{{Cita web|url=https://electronicbookreview.com/essay/poetry-and-stuff-a-review-of/|titolo=Poetry and Stuff: A Review of #!|autore=John Cayley|lingua=en-US|accesso=2019-06-02|urlarchivio=https://web.archive.org/web/20190602210941/https://electronicbookreview.com/essay/poetry-and-stuff-a-review-of/|dataarchivio=2019-06-02}}</ref> The effect of sharing the source code, according to Galanter, not only further creates confusion as to whether the source code is the text but also allows other artists to create variations of the output, which “breaks with the paradigm of the heroic single artist creating a ‘fixed’ masterpiece.”<ref name=":3">{{Cita libro|autore=Philip Galanter|curatore=Christiane Paul|titolo=A Companion to Digital Art|edizione=1|anno=2016|editore=John Wiley & Sons, Inc.|lingua=en|pp=169-171|capitolo=Generative Art Theory}}</ref>
== Contention ==
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