Cyberdelia is currently broken into the categories:
Fractals and Chaos
Cellular Automata and AI
Miscellaneous Cyberdelia
Algorithmic Music
Algorithmic Text[this page]
Some related books, video, music and software are at the Surreal
World Bookstore
The first algorithmic text I'm aware of was Tristan Tzara's Dada invention of the "accidental poem", made circa 1916-20, according to Rubin's "Dada, Surrealism, and Their Heritage", produced "by cutting out the individual words of any newspaper article, throwing them in a bag, shaking them, and recording them in the order that they were taken out".
A similar technique was used 50 years later by William
Burroughs in a number of his books. Bigtable's site has a good Burroughs
primer , Naked
Lunch online [page by page only],as well as an online Cutup
Machine to scramble text, and other stuff! Another Burroughsian online
cutup machine is at Netmonkey
Poetry Project's Bernadette Mayer page has a lot of text-generating ideas; more are compiled by Charles Bernstein, who also has a lot of concrete poetry and other online works up, here
First, here are some pages which semi-randomly regenerate sentences each time you reload. These are called "exquisite corpse" programs in honor of the surrealists of the 1920s who devised the basic algorithm.
[An example of the output can be seen in "See What
Robots Have Done To The Test's Text], a correspondent's rearrangement
of the Surrealism Test's text and some answers]
Click here for a very moving EXQUISITE CORPSE
or a CoolPoem by komninos
Or here for The Surrealist Compliment Generator. You can also tallk to ESME
Here is the HRC site with up to 3 more exquisite corpse-type generators. 6/28/00 1 of the 3 gives a server error but the other 2 are fine.
Here is Tom Melly's java exquisite corpse generator
The Random Surrealism Generator is another text generator, which you may cut and paste to your own pages; also text generatable are error messages and Shakespearian quotes.
The Instant Muse Poetry Generator is at the Art of Writing site here, and the Instant Muse Story Starter is here
Talk to CyberBarbie at Matthew Baker's interactive java adaptation of the old Eliza AI.
The website for Spielberg's AI has what appear to be a couple of Flash implementations of the Eliza AI at Turing Test
At the Nitric site all 3 "Diversions" are quite interesting; "therapy" seems to be another adaptation of the Eliza AI; the "tiles" are a unique java approach to the Burroughs cut-up technique; word reposition manually or through reloading.
An online page where you can enter and scramble text or whole web pages - is on
page which you will go to if you click on the logo. With info and tips on Perl and CGI for beginners. For your algorithmic pleasure I have randomized the Shannonizer's randomizer page, in the Shannonizer style of God, and you may view it here.
Click to visit the Dialectizer By Samuel Stoddard which dialectizes text or web pages for you. The Other Web Page Translating Sites ther has lots of good linlks.
Lee Worden has a William Burroughs influenced interactive online Cut-up Machine [a lot of degenerated web pages are hosted as examples of its work], an Evolution Machine for text, a longish cutup haiku, and other stuff.
andMarc Donis' remarkable Mad Poet generates stanzas of programmable meter and rhyme online, and BABLE will scramble a text file on your computer for you online.
The Diastic Reading Page algorithmically alters text you enter. Read the explanation first!
Curse Central has
Elizabethan Insult Generator by Cathi S. Always a favorite!
A Random Quote from Shakespeare get a random quote.
Captain Jack's Advice for the Lovelorn step right up, matey, let Cap'n Jack help you with yer troubles!
Conservative Insult Generator let the right-wingers have it!
The Creative Vulgarian's Lexicon: Links page has links to a number of CGI Insult Generators, as well as the best collection of links on insults and vulgarity I've come across! [The site itself is devoted to that topic].
Yahoo! Directory
Insults > Random Insults
has lots of good links to algorithmic insult generators.
Click to visit Master jP's links to random generators.
The Postmodernism Generator, based on the downloadable [Unix-"like" only] Dada Engine, a system for generating random text from recursive grammars, is by Andrew C. Bulhak who has also posted some computer-generated sp00ky poetry
Related to the Postmodernism Generator are the Dilbert Mission Statement Generator and Catbert's Performance Review Generators by David Youd.
Also related and available are the Manager Phrase Generator and the Wired Magazine Phrase Generator by Dawson Dean.
Click the robots making sandwiches to visit Culturematic.net's text generator [reload page to re-execute] which builds and then executes a stochastic process inferred from posts on a local message board. 4/2/02 Some of the users with large enough samples to make things interesting are Arcadio, Joey, Sanchez (who is fairly surreal to begin with), and the Editors.
DadaDodo will generate some scrambled text for you [the link to do that is near the bottom of the page] and is by Jamie Zawinski, who also has The WebCollagecomposed of random images from the web. Lots of interesting links on the DadaDodo page are worth checking out.
Karlheinz Essl's Playing Strategies is a text oracle generator
Here is the Random Word Haiku generator
Lavarand uses lava lamps [!] to generate random series for you, but also algorithmic text haiku and office memospeak.by Chris Pirazzi, who wrote this, has a press release version here.
It's not clear, but the Scrambed Haiku option at Haiku-o-Matic may be algorithmic. At the same site is the odd quasi-algorithmic Dada Server and the chat scrambler app UnChat.
The Internet Anagram server will make anagrams for you online.
Here's a page with an interesting twist on online anagrams - they're presented transforming in java. You can start and stop the animation by clicking. The associate links page has lots of online anagram generators, though, plus other info.
The Deconstructor page has letters flying around algrithmically following your cursor. [I think they originally spelled out "deconstructor"]
While not quite an algorithmic generator, also recommended are Allen Toney's related extraordinary pages at the threshhold of anxious dreams.
Again not quite an algorithmic text generator, in the online divination section of the comprehensive I Ching On the Net page you can get a new reading each time the relevant page is reloaded
Secondly, some downloadable software exists . These are essential for creating or algorithmically arranging longer pieces. An excellent site from which to download many programs is TextWorx Toolshed The rest of the Burning Press site also has much of interest.
A page with info about such programs is at
LINGUIST List 4.564 Mon 26 Jul 1993 Sum: Text Manipulation Software
Click the image to download free poetry-generating software. Site also has lots of text examples and other info. There is a pay upgrade available too.
RANDOM VERSE LAB , a freeware poetry generator, is downloadable from here. Also at the site is info and text examples of the output.
Foggy, a simple text generator, is downloadable from here. [ 0.html has a description]
A shareware anagram generator is downloadable at Kim Moser's Anagram page.
Info on many other anagram generating programs [as well as all things anagram] is available on Larry Brash's alt.anagrams FAQ page.
Creativity Package which I haven't tried but am told includes Thunderthought, a text generator or algorithmic rearranger, is shareware downloadable here
Spirittech Foundation's site has much of interest, including the downloadable conversing artificial intelligence Fred, KêW£ Tå£Kê® which'll turn yr text in2 ascii & numberz, Randomthoughts which randomly fishes a designated drive
for textz and randomizez 'em; cutup text, strange possibly cutup music, essays
Here's you can download Robopoet, a freeware text generator
