A Novel in Six Parts, Parse 1

A collaboration with computer programmer Benjamin Miller, to create our first version of a reading and writing machine. Our experiment entitled A Novel in Six Parts, Parse 1, made use of both old and new technologies to generate and display how a novel might have been channelled through a reader.

We experimented with known linguistic structures through Natural Language Processing and our aim was to harness the pervading paranoid atmosphere of Fyodor Dostoevsky's 19th century novel Crime and Punishment. By employing a dot matrix printer and continuous paper, emotionally charged excerpts from the novel were printed in continuous runs across the days of the London Creative Network (LCN) Showcase, at SPACE London.