Nick Montfort

Ian Bogost

The Atari Video Computer System dominated the home video game market so completelythat "Atari" became the generic term for a video game console. The Atari VCS wasaffordable and offered the flexibility of changeable cartridges. Nearly a thousand of these werecreated, the most significant of which established new techniques, mechanics, and even entiregenres. This book offers a detailed and accessible study of this influential video game console fromboth computational and cultural perspectives. Studies of digital media have rarely investigatedplatforms--the systems underlying computing. This book (the first in a series of Platform Studies)does so, developing a critical approach that examines the relationship between platforms andcreative expression. Nick Montfort and Ian Bogost discuss the Atari VCS itself and examine in detailsix game cartridges: Combat, Adventure, Pac-Man, Yars' Revenge, Pitfall!, and Star Wars: The EmpireStrikes Back. They describe the technical constraints and affordances of the system and trackdevelopments in programming, gameplay, interface, and aesthetics. Adventure, for example, was thefirst game to represent a virtual space larger than the screen (anticipating the boundless virtualspaces of such later games as World of Warcraft and Grand Theft Auto), by allowing the player towalk off one side into another space; and Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back was an early instanceof interaction between media properties and video games. Montfort and Bogost show that the AtariVCS--often considered merely a retro fetish object--is an essential part of the history of videogames.

The Atari Video Computer System

Racing the Beam

10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1));:GOTO 10

Interactive fiction -- the best-known form of which is the text game or textadventure -- has not received as much critical attention as have such other forms of electronicliterature as hypertext fiction and the conversational programs known as chatterbots. Twisty LittlePassages (the title refers to a maze in Adventure, the first interactive fiction) is the firstbook-length consideration of this form, examining it from gaming and literary perspectives. NickMontfort, an interactive fiction author himself, offers both aficionados and first-time users a wayto approach interactive fiction that will lead to a more pleasurable and meaningful experience ofit.Twisty Little Passages looks at interactive fiction beginning with its most important literaryancestor, the riddle. Montfort then discusses Adventure and its precursors (including the I Chingand Dungeons and Dragons), and follows this with an examination of mainframe text games developed inresponse, focusing on the most influential work of that era, Zork. He then considers theintroduction of commercial interactive fiction for home computers, particularly that produced byInfocom. Commercial works inspired an independent reaction, and Montfort describes the emergence ofindependent creators and the development of an online interactive fiction community in the 1990s.Finally, he considers the influence of interactive fiction on other literary and gaming forms. WithTwisty Little Passages, Nick Montfort places interactive fiction in its computational and literarycontexts, opening up this still-developing form to new consideration.

An Approach to Interactive Fiction

Twisty Little Passages

How the future has been imagined and made, through the work of writers, artists, inventors, and designers. The future is like an unwritten book. It is not something we see in a crystal ball, or can only hope to predict, like the weather. In this volume of the MIT Press's Essential Knowledge series, Nick Montfort argues that the future is something to be made, not predicted. Montfort offers what he considers essential knowledge about the future, as seen in the work of writers, artists, inventors, and designers (mainly in Western culture) who developed and described the core components of the futures they envisioned. Montfort's approach is not that of futurology or scenario planning; instead, he reports on the work of making the future—the thinkers who devoted themselves to writing pages in the unwritten book. Douglas Engelbart, Alan Kay, and Ted Nelson didn't predict the future of computing, for instance. They were three of the people who made it. Montfort focuses on how the development of technologies—with an emphasis on digital technologies—has been bound up with ideas about the future. Readers learn about kitchens of the future and the vision behind them; literary utopias, from Plato's Republic to Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland; the Futurama exhibit at the 1939 New York World's Fair; and what led up to Tim Berners-Lee's invention of the World Wide Web. Montfort describes the notebook computer as a human-centered alterative to the idea of the computer as a room-sized “giant brain”; speculative practice in design and science fiction; and, throughout, the best ways to imagine and build the future.

The Future

10 PRINT CHR$); 

A book for anyone who wants to learn programming to explore and create, with exercises and projects to help the reader learn by doing. This book introduces programming to readers with a background in the arts and humanities; there are no prerequisites, and no knowledge of computation is assumed. In it, Nick Montfort reveals programming to be not merely a technical exercise within given constraints but a tool for sketching, brainstorming, and inquiring about important topics. He emphasizes programming's exploratory potential—its facility to create new kinds of artworks and to probe data for new ideas. The book is designed to be read alongside the computer, allowing readers to program while making their way through the chapters. It offers practical exercises in writing and modifying code, beginning on a small scale and increasing in substance. In some cases, a specification is given for a program, but the core activities are a series of “free projects,” intentionally underspecified exercises that leave room for readers to determine their own direction and write different sorts of programs. Throughout the book, Montfort also considers how computation and programming are culturally situated—how programming relates to the methods and questions of the arts and humanities. The book uses Python and Processing, both of which are free software, as the primary programming languages.

Exploratory Programming for the Arts and Humanities

Nathan Altice

The Nintendo Family Computer / Entertainment System Platform

I Am Error

Riddle & Bind is a book of poems to solve. The first section, "Riddle," consists of poems written as riddles the reader is invited to solve by guessing the subject of the poem. The third section, "Bind," is a selection of constrained poetry written using traditional and nontraditional poetic forms. The second section, "&," combines both approaches in a sequence of poems inviting the reader to guess how they were constructed.

Riddle and Bind

A new edition of a book for anyone who wants to learn programming to explore and create, with exercises and projects to help readers learn by doing. This book introduces programming to readers involved with the arts and humanities; there are no prerequisites, and no previous knowledge of programming is assumed. Nick Montfort reveals programming to be not merely a technical exercise within given constraints but a tool for sketching, brainstorming, and inquiry. He emphasizes programming's exploratory potential--its facility to create new kinds of artworks and to probe data for new ideas. The book is designed to be read alongside the computer, allowing readers to program while making their way through the chapters. It offers practical exercises in writing and modifying code and outlines "free projects" that allow learners to pursue their own interests.

Exploratory Programming for the Arts and Humanities, second edition

Bhanu Kapil

Maxi Kim

Ian M. Mccarty

[out of nothing] is an electronic publication featuring new works in image, sound, text and the digital arts, as well as works located at the intersections between these media. [out of nothing]is published in online installments as well as occasional print editions, on an irregular but roughly semiannual seasonal basis that nevertheless remains chronically TBD. Each issue is theme-based, and is introduced by a special M.C.; or, emcee. [out of nothing] is edited by Lee, Janice, 1956–1984; Lindley, Eric, 1952 –1982; and Milazzo, Joe, 1932 –1972. email: shelling.peanuts@gmail.com. For more information, please visit: http://www.outofnothing.org/. [Anthology.] [out of nothing] #0: "theoretical perspectives on the substance preceding [nothing]." / [Various authors.] p. cm. 1. Literature, Experimental. 2. Literature, Modern —21st century. 3. Multimedia (Art). I. Baudrillard, Jean, 1929-2007. II. Benjamin, Walter, 1892-1940. III. Derrida, Jacques, (1930-2004). IV. Kierkegaard, Søren, 1813-1855. V. Title. PN6014 .O98 2012 808.8/0047 Copyright © 2012 [out of nothing]. Authors hold the rights to their individual works. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. 0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Theoretical Perspectives on the Substance Preceding

William Gillespie

A Palindrome Story in 2002 Words

2002

David Baker

Harryette Mullen

Jennifer Scappettone

John Taylor

Philip Levine

Gary Snyder

Johanna Drucker

Bruce Bond

Curzio Malaparte

Alice Notley

Lyn Hejinian

Charles Wright

Jerome Rothenberg

Ilya Kaminsky

Rita Dove

Dana Levin

David Huerta

Martin Woodside

Fady Joudah

Juana Adcock

Rachel Galvin

Marc Vincenz

Alan Sondheim

MARGENTO

mIEKAL aND

David Jhave Johnston

Chris Funkhouser

Brian Kim Stefans

Maria Mencia

John Cayley & Daniel C. Howe

Jim Carpenter

Sandy Baldwin

JD McClatchy

GC Waldrep

Page Hill Starzinger

Șerban Foarță

Stephanie Strickland & Ian Hatcher

Babylonians as Americans as Babylonians

Jared Pierce

A Computationally Assembled Anthology / Antologie asamblată computațional

"US" Poets Foreign Poets / Noi poeți "americani" poeți străini

The Atari Video Computer System dominated the home video game market so completely that "Atari" became the generic term for a video game console. This BIT examines the interplay between computation and culture in the Atari emulator Stella and the Atari VCS game Combat.

A BIT of Racing the Beam

Stella and Combat

Poetry. Art. THE TRUELIST is a book- length poem generated by a one-page, stand-alone computer program. Based around compound words, some more conventional, some quite unusual, the poem invites the reader to imagine moving through a strange landscape that seems to arise from the English language itself. The unusual compounds are open to being understood differently by each reader, given that person's cultural and individual background. The core text that Nick Montfort wrote is the generating computer program. It defines the sets of words that combine, the way some lines are extended with additional language, the stanza form, and the order of these words and the lines in which they appear. The program is included on the last page. Anyone who wishes is free to study it, modify it to see what happens, and make use of it in their own work.

The Truelist

A study of the relationship between platform and creative expression in the Atari VCS. The Atari Video Computer System dominated the home video game market so completely that "Atari" became the generic term for a video game console. The Atari VCS was affordable and offered the flexibility of changeable cartridges. Nearly a thousand of these were created, the most significant of which established new techniques, mechanics, and even entire genres. This book offers a detailed and accessible study of this influential video game console from both computational and cultural perspectives. Studies of digital media have rarely investigated platforms--the systems underlying computing. This book (the first in a series of Platform Studies) does so, developing a critical approach that examines the relationship between platforms and creative expression. Nick Montfort and Ian Bogost discuss the Atari VCS itself and examine in detail six game cartridges: Combat, Adventure, Pac-Man, Yars' Revenge, Pitfall , and Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. They describe the technical constraints and affordances of the system and track developments in programming, gameplay, interface, and aesthetics. Adventure, for example, was the first game to represent a virtual space larger than the screen (anticipating the boundless virtual spaces of such later games as World of Warcraft and Grand Theft Auto), by allowing the player to walk off one side into another space; and Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back was an early instance of interaction between media properties and video games. Montfort and Bogost show that the Atari VCS--often considered merely a retro fetish object--is an essential part of the history of video games.

Racing the Beam - the Atari Video Computer System

John Bell

Patsy Baudoin

Jeremy Douglass

A single line of code offers a way to understand the cultural context of computing. This book takes a single line of code—the extremely concise BASIC program for the Commodore 64 inscribed in the title—and uses it as a lens through which to consider the phenomenon of creative computing and the way computer programs exist in culture. The authors of this collaboratively written book treat code not as merely functional but as a text—in the case of 10 PRINT, a text that appeared in many different printed sources—that yields a story about its making, its purpose, its assumptions, and more. They consider randomness and regularity in computing and art, the maze in culture, the popular BASIC programming language, and the highly influential Commodore 64 computer.

10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10

A single line of code offers a way to understand the cultural context of computing. This book takes a single line of code--the extremely concise BASIC program for the Commodore 64 inscribed in the title--and uses it as a lens through which to consider the phenomenon of creative computing and the way computer programs exist in culture. The authors of this collaboratively written book treat code not as merely functional but as a text--in the case of 10 PRINT, a text that appeared in many different printed sources--that yields a story about its making, its purpose, its assumptions, and more. They consider randomness and regularity in computing and art, the maze in culture, the popular BASIC programming language, and the highly influential Commodore 64 computer.

10 Print Chr$(205. 5+rnd(1)); : Goto 10

Nick Montfort

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