About Taper #4

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+1^th issue is issued when the N^th 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

Download our template in a zipfile so that you can edit it. After you have it and have unzipped it, edit only two parts of the file: The long comment at the top, which will hold your title, your name, and a creative statement from you, and the very end of the file, where your tiny computational poem is to be placed.
All of your code (in the form of ES6, CSS, and HTML) must must fit within 2KB (2048 bytes) and be placed between the template’s closing header tag (</header>) and the closing body tag (</body>). The whole page must be valid HTML5 when you finish.
Submissions should not use any external libraries or APIs, nor link to any external resources, including fonts. This is so that pages will be self-contained following Taper’s vision. It also has the practical purpose of allowing all of Taper work without a network connection, for instance on a stand-alone computer in a gallery.
Please refer to this About page for license terms under which all poems have been and will be released; by submitting to Taper #5, you agree that, if we accept your work, we may release it, copyright by you, under this same short all-permissive license. Since you are submitting the work to us in the provided template, licensing your work in this way will be part of your submission.

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