Monday, May 03, 2004

Judd Morrissey is a writer and programmer whose work in electronic literature has been widely and internationally received and exhibited. With his hypertext, The Jew's Daughter, he introduced his unique form of digital narrative, an unstable, self-evolving, virtual page that continuously re-writes itself in response to the reader. My Name is Captain, Captain., a digital 'night-flight' poem created in collaboration with Lori Talley, was published by Eastgate Systems in 2002. Judd is now concentrating on a new work in progress, The Error Engine, an experiment in writing and artificial intelligence that reflects his ongoing concerns with the relationship of literature and accident and the nature and future of the book. He teaches in the Art and Technology Studies department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

from The Error Engine

A reading from The Error Engine, a system designed to create performances in language that are authored collaboratively by humans and machines. It is an attempt to write the book that writes itself, that becomes the continuous movement towards its own completion, a solution to the system of itself. A collaboration with Lori Talley and Lutz Hamel, the work takes the visual form of a digital page that undergoes fluid transformations, weaving and re-weaving itself together in response to the interactions of the reader.

Following the reading, visitors may communicate with the work by sending text messages from their cell phones. The messages will be interpreted by the engine as constraints for the evolution of the narrative.