Procedural Creativity and Digital Humanities Scholarship

‘Procedural creativity’ involves the use of procedural systems (such as computers and computer programs) for creative-critical purposes. This workshop will introduce participants to the use of procedural authoring platforms such as Twine (twinery.org), Inform 7 (inform7.com) and Bitsy (bitsy.org) to create virtual models, interactive simulations, ludic adaptations, speculative histories/recreations and hypermedia essays for digital humanities scholarship. The workshop will combine:

• discussion of readings on procedural rhetoric, persuasive games, critical play and other relevant concepts;
• exploration of works that exemplify these concepts--for example:
• A Twine work by Arno de Borres that models an illuminated manuscript written by a fictional mediaeval abbess, Abbess Otilia’s Life and Death (2018), https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=ngifjkhfd4mpj717
• A Bitsy work by Martha Hipley that simulates a visit to a museum with an artefact that inspired a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke, Ekphrasis: A game about looking at things (2020), https://everyoneisugly.itch.io/ekphrasis
• An Inform 7 ludic adaptation by Graham Nelson of Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1997), https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=rvttymjuxw86pjap
• hands-on experimentation with the procedural authoring platforms mentioned above. Prior knowledge of these platforms is not required for this workshop.