Press and Exhibits for Atari Game Poem

I know it's been a while since I've updated everybody regarding my Atari game poetry project, and in light of recent events surrounding this project, I thought that now would be a great time to do so.

First, I wanted to mention that my second Atari game poem, Calm, Mute, Moving, was featured in an article on page 4 of the October 2011 issue of Game Developer Magazine.

Suweeet.

Secondly regarding "CMM," I received a much appreciated "Wow" by Ian Bogost on the AtariAge.com forums, and was subsequently contacted by Mr. Bogost requesting that I include Calm, Mute, Moving in an Atari Art Game exhibition that he is curating at Babycastles on November 13. Ian Bogost is Director of the Graduate Program in Digital Media at Georgia Tech, and is also a game designer (Persuasive Games), author (How to Do Things with Video Games, Racing the Beam), and Atari "game poet" himself (A Slow Year). Babycastles is an independent video games arcade in New York City.

Super suweeet.

Lastly, regarding the project as a whole: I have only sound programming left to do on the third installment of the Atari game poem triptych Monday. Still untitled, the third poem will be premiered, along with the other two pieces, at the Louisville Arcade Expo, March 2-4, 2012 at the Ramada Plaza Hotel, Louisville, Kentucky. Going back upon my original Moment Art concept Monday, this third Atari poem features... well I guess you're going to have to attend the expo to find out! (similey*)! Word is, you'll have a chance to win my entire Monday exhibit in a select game tournament, complete with the game poem cartriges, an Atari, a TV, and all necessary controllers and documentation.

How suweeet is that?

Touched by the positive response that this project has received, it occurs to me that I may not be the only one who appreciates this form of expression, and since there may actually be others besides me reading this blog, I guess I'll post a little teaser shot, from the early stages of development, of the final untitled game poem for the Atari:

Untitled Atari game poem screenshot

Post-Lastly, there are some creative ventures coming your way for those who are enjoying the Daily Moment Art process, so stay tuned for some how-tos!

-SRT

* similey - it's like an emoticon, only a little more textual in context.

[squared]: A Dice Poem

[squared] is not an attempt to reincarnate a chick-v-egg debate. Rather, it is an analog[ue?] vision of a computer generated poem.

More specifically, the 6 faces of each of 3 die display 1 of 18 pieces of prose, and are a tangible means of randomly generating one of my previously untitled generative projects. Should we encounter an EMP, blackout, or summertime power outage, these poetry dice will accommodate unlimited rolling while your CPU remains DOA, thus providing, to the user, endless enjoyment [or what we call in the business "poetic appeasement"].

[We don't really call it that.][I made that up.][Sorry.].

Poetry dice require no coding experience, so this is something that can be done by anyone [and I hope you do!]. Nevertheless, for those interested, here is the .python code for [squared]:

# [squared]
# Sonny Rae Tempest


from random import choice
from time import sleep


dice1=['The middle-aged woman closed the curtains. She then,','The old woman picked up the glass. She then,','The young woman dashed down the stairs. She then,','The old man closed the book. He then,','The middle-aged man put down the shovel. He then,','The young man washed his hands. He then']
dice2=['laughing,','winking,','blushing,','without a word,','sobbing,','shaking,']
dice3=['took the diamond from the middle-aged woman.',"petted the young woman's sandy hair.",'gave the worn pages to the old woman.','tossed the young man the glove.','handed the middle-aged man a folded check.','embraced the old man.']


while True:
print ('\n'+choice(dice1)+' '+choice(dice2)+' '+choice(dice3))
sleep(4)

-SRT