TECH SECTION

TECH SECTION (2022), Nick Montfort

A flat panel presents an ever-scrolling ticker of very short, computer-generated news items. We unquestionably benefit from automation, yet, to put it mildly, mishaps do occur. Imagine a world in which such automated technologies are ubiquitous — but such incidents were routinely cataloged, and only briefly mentioned, as if in a police blotter. In Tech Section, we see all the news that is barely fit to print. Félix Fénéon’s “filler” news items are one inspiration, giving a sense of early 20th Century life in France and written in an oddly engaging style, and including indications of social unrest alongside technological advance. Franz Kafka’s formulaic clerical reports on industrial accidents are another basis. There are also connections to computational projects such as MEXICA by Rafael Pérez y Pérez, a story generator that produces plots in a sophisticated way but also uses simple templates. Perhaps ironically, here the news items that suggest the dangers of computer technology are produced by computer. As visitors learn about incidents that transpired in an imagined world, they may also be prompted to consider how journalists frame and present such events and decide what is newsworthy.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

Nick Montfort is a poet and artist who uses computation. His computer-generated books range from #! to Golem. His digital projects include the collaborations The Deletionist and Sea and Spar Between. Montfort studies creative computing as well; MIT Press has published The New Media Reader (which he co-edited) and his Twisty Little Passages, The Future, and Exploratory Programming for the Arts and Humanities. He directs a lab/studio, The Trope Tank. He is professor of digital media at MIT and principal investigator in the Center for Digital Narrative at the University of Bergen. He lives in New York City.