The Trope Tank: A Laboratory with Material Resources for Creative Computing

Authors

  • Nick Montfort Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, United States
  • Erik Stayton Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, United States
  • Natalia Fedorova St. Petersburg State University, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, St. Petersburg, Russia

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5007/1807-9288.2014v10n2p53

Abstract

Principles for organizing and making use of a laboratory with material computing resources are articulated. This laboratory, the Trope Tank, is a facility for teaching, research, and creative collaboration and offers hardware (in working condition and set up for use) from the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, including videogame systems, home computers, and an arcade cabinet. To aid in investigating the material history of texts, the lab has a small 19th century letterpress, a typewriter, a print terminal, and dot-matrix printers. Other resources include controllers, peripherals, manuals, books, and software on physical media. These resources are used for teaching, loaned for local exhibitions and presentations, and accessed by researchers and artists. The space is primarily a laboratory (rather than a library, studio, or museum), so materials are organized by platform and intended use. Textual information about the historical contexts of the available systems, and resources are set up to allow easy operation, and even casual use, by researchers, teachers, students, and artists.

Author Biographies

Nick Montfort, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, United States

Nick Montfort is an Associate Professor of Digital Media and director of the Trope Tank Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Montfort develops literary generators and other computational art and poetry, and has participated in dozens of writing collaborations. He is the principal of the naming firm Nomnym. He is also a director of the Electronic Literature Organization. Montfort wrote the books of poems #! and Riddle & Bind, co-wrote 2002: A Palindrome Story, and developed more than forty digital projects. The MIT Press has published four of his collaborative and individual books: The New Media Reader, Twisty Little Passages, Racing the Beam, and 10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10.

Erik Stayton, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, United States

Erik Stayton works as a Research Assistant at the Trope Tank.  He is a graduate student in Comparative Media Studies and has a dual-degree in Physics and English (2011, Brown University - Providence). Stayton is a writer, designer, and programmer. He also co-runs Cinnamon Bird, a programming partnership building tools for distributed knowledge production.

Natalia Fedorova, St. Petersburg State University, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, St. Petersburg, Russia

Natalia Fedorova is a new media artist, writer, literary scholar and translator. Natalia holds a PhD in Literary Theory from Herzen State University (St-Petersburg). She is an author of publications on avant-garde poetry, kinetic poetry, concrete poetry, hyperfiction, literary text generators and video poetry, as well as a curator and creator of VIDEO.txt, videopoetry festival in St- Petersburg. During 2011 – 2012 Natalia was a Fulbright guest researcher at the Trope Tank, MIT. In collaboration with Taras Mashtalir she founded Machine Libertine, a media poetry project. Currently Natalia is a SPIRE guest researcher with the ELMCIP group at the University of Bergen (Norway) and an editor of e-lit and new media writing column in Rattapallax mMagazine (NY).

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Published

2014-12-16

Issue

Vol. 10 No. 2 (2014)

Section

Articles

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