Submissions for Issue #5

All are welcome to submit for possible publication in future issues, but please see the information about our reading periods and the specific calls for each issue. Read previous issues of Taper to understand the unusual sorts of projects we invite.

The call for work for each N+1th issue is issued when the Nth issue is released.

Taper #5: Pent Up invites submissions in response to the following themes: Amidst global “social distancing,” we seek submissions that reflect upon or chafe against our confines — or that make it easier to pass the time, reach out to others, or thrive while limited to only “virtual” society. We also invite works that take this opportunity to say what they’ve never felt free to say, that emerge from hibernation and chrysalides, that are combustible or spring-loaded, that teem with artificial life. Alternatively, and in the minimalistic spirit of Taper, works could embrace compression, austerity, and secrecy. In the phrase Pent Up, we also hear the (false) etymology of the number five (pentagons, pentameters), and so this fifth issue encourages pieces that reflect on this number’s significances and shapes.

Submission Details

Timeline

Submissions will be accepted beginning as soon as Taper #4 is published through July 31, 2020. (Anywhere on Earth, or time zone UTC-12:00.) Taper #5 will be published in Fall 2020.

Editorial Collective for #5

The collective for Taper #5 consists of Angela Chang, Kyle Booten, Judy Heflin, Leonardo Flores, and Milton Läufer.

We invite submissions at pentup@badquar.to. Simply attach your work in one zip file containing your HTML pages (up to five per author will be considered).

Sofian Audry is an artist, scholar, and Professor of Interactive Media in the School of Media at the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM). Audry's work is inspired by visual art, artificial intelligence, artificial life, biology and cognitive sciences. His computational artistic practice branches through multiple media including robotics, interactive installations, immersive environments, physical computing interventions, internet art, and electronic literature — see sofianaudry.com
Sebastian Bartlett is an undergraduate studying computer science at MIT. He is an arcade game enthusiast who owns, maintains, and is currently studying vintage coin-operated games. He is developing online cross-platform computer games using the Löve2D framework, and has created educational tutorials and lectures on game development principles — see sebastianbartlett.com
Angela Chang enjoys tinkering with technology to craft shared experiences and bring people closer together. She researches how sensorial design can enhance cognition, collaboration, and presence. Chang is interested in simplifying representations of hidden or complex relationships to improve understanding and communication. People across five continents, from rural children in Ethiopia to audiences in Japan, have experienced her work. She founded TinkerStories to encourage parents to learn storytelling rituals that help with early literacy. She is a member of the MIT Trope Tank, treasurer for the Berkley Cultural Council, an alumna of the MIT Media Lab and adjunct faculty at Roger Williams University — see anjchang.com
Daniel Elfanbaum is a writer from St. Louis who now lives just outside Boston. He will soon be a graduate from the MFA program at UMass Boston. Outside of exploring computational literature, he writes fiction, rides bikes, and works as a production editor. Occasionally he posts on Twitter as @delfanbaum — also see danielelfanbaum.com
Judy Heflin is a writer and researcher focusing on computational narrative intelligence and the literary aspects of new media. She graduated from Yonsei University in South Korea with a BA in comparative literature and cultures and a certificate in creative writing. At MIT, Judy works at The Trope Tank assisting with interactive fiction systems and computational narrative models — see judyannheflin.com
Milton Läufer is an Argentinian writer, journalist and teacher who lives in Brooklyn. He has published articles and short stories in Esquire, Vice, Guernica, CIA Revista, and Otra Parte, and participated in art exhibitions in Latin America, the US and Europe. He earned a creative writing MFA at NYU and is now doing a PhD there focused on digital literature in Latin America. He was the 2016-2017 writer-in-residence at The Trope Tank, at MIT. In 2015 he published Lagunas, a partially algorithmic-generated novel, online. His second computer generated novel, A Sound Such as a Man Might Make, was published in 2018 by Counterpath — see miltonlaufer.com.ar
Nick Montfort’s books of poetry include The Truelist (Counterpath); Sliders (Bad Quarto); Autopia (Troll Thread); with collaborators, 2x6 (Les Figues); #! (Counterpath), and Riddle & Bind (Spineless Books). He lives in New York and Boston, teaches at MIT, edits the Counterpath series of computer-generated books Using Electricity, and has completed more than fifty individual and collaborative digital projects of different sorts — see nickm.com
PERSONA is Jocelyn Ibarra & Sofia Ivarsson, a studio operating from the Nordics developing a field inside speculative design they call “Speculative Optimism.” In their practice, they combine speculative design & future fiction with optimism to collectively shape better futures through workshops and installations. Their aim is to empower people to feel optimistic about the future. “The Algorithm of Donated Dreams,” a project using code chopped by Jocelyn, brought them here. Jocelyn (kattfantastiskt.nu/) is an artist interested in sociotechnical artifacts, and the human love affair with the Internet; Sofia (IG: @noga.cph) is a lighting designer and artist interested in physical phenomena, and investigations of our connection to nature and ourselves. Engage with them on Instagram — @persona_____x_____persona — and read more about them at personaxpersona.com
Eugenio Tisselli practices programming as a form of writing, and writes poems following algorithmic procedures. He has published his work using different media formats, and has presented it at international festivals, talks and exhibitions. He slowly uploads most of his pieces and texts to his website — motorhueso.net
This page and the main page of Taper #4 are offered under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license so you can copy and share these two pages, and the whole issue, without modifications. (These pages are mainly informational; we do not want you to edit the author's biographies, modify the open call for Taper #5, or change the way our authors and editors spell their names, for instance.) Each poem is offered individually under a short all-permissive free software license that appears in a comment at the top of each poem's source code. That means you can use any or all of the poems however you like. You are free to study, modify, and share these poems, use them as the basis for projects of your own, and share your modified versions, among other things.
Taper #4 contents