A lab and studio with locations in New York City and at MIT, room 14N-336, a temporary location while Building 14 is being renovated. Our mission is developing new poetic practices and new understandings of digital media by focusing on the material, formal, and historical aspects of computation and language.
The Trope Tank hosts postdoctoral,
graduate, and undergraduate researchers, student visits from various
classes, codefests, and other sorts of events and collaborations. The
component of this lab and studio that is situated at MIT is a research
group in
Comparative Media Studies and
Writing. The monthly meetings of the
People's Republic of Interactive Fiction
haven taken place in the original location of the Trope Tank at MIT,
which is also where the
Purple Blurb series of
presentations of digital writing originated. The main letterpress
printing machine of
Bad Quarto (a
micropress) can be found in the current MIT space. The collection housed
in the Trope Tank, both in New York City and at MIT, supplies equipment
for several events and activities, including the international demoparty
Synchrony.
Home computers and videogame systems
ready for use in the Trope Tank
The Oral Poetics project (2019—) is focused on
how we can model remarkable oral poetic practices, and oral creativity, in a
way that is rooted in orature, instead of being based (for instance)
on corpora of written, literate-culture documents. We aim to
develop computational systems that can improvise in oral exchanges with people.
(Logo for the Oral Poetics project is CC BY-SA 3.0, based on a public domain photo of a statue of Homer and a CC BY-SA 3.0 photo of Common at Tufts University by Kelsey Marie Bell.)
The Renderings project (2014—2018)
involved translating computational literature into English. We not
only employed established literary translation techniques, but also
considered how computation and language interact. Literary and
computational experts worldwide participated. The
first phase
of the project (13 works, 6 languages) was published
in
Cura in 2014. The project continued after the first phase,
with translations published in different contexts through 2018.
In addition to particular projects, the Trope Tank supports a variety
of research, teaching, and creative production. For instance, the Trope Tank collaborates with
Bad Quarto on the online literary magazine
Taper. A previous project was translation project
Heftings. We undertook
considerable work on the international collaboration
Slant (2013-2014). A component of this project was
Curveship, an interactive fiction platform for narrative variation.
People
- Prof. Nick Montfort, director
- Judy Heflin, research assisstant since Fall 2018
- Dr. Angela Chang, research affiliate since Spring 2016
In-house researchers from semesters past:
- Sebastian Bartlett, undergraduate volunteer Spring 2018–Spring 2019
- Prof. Scott Rettberg, visiting professor, Fall 2017
- Pierre Tchetgen, visiting predoctoral researcher, Fall 2017—Spring 2018
- Dr. J-S Senécal (a.k.a. Sofian Audry), postdoctoral researcher, Spring 2017
- Chris Kerich, research assisstant, Fall 2015—Spring 2017
- Milton Läufer, writer in residence, Fall 2016—Spring 2017
- Michał Żmuda, visiting Ph.D. student, Spring 2016
- Veli-Matti Karhulahti, postdoctoral researcher, Spring 2016
- Andrew Plotkin, writer in residence, Spring 2015—Fall 2016
- Dr. Piotr Marecki, visiting scholar, November 2013–July 2014
- Prof. Clara Fernández-Vara, visiting scholar, 2012–2013
- Prof. Rafael Pérez y Pérez, visiting scholar, Fall
2012
- Liz Hernandez, undergraduate researcher, Summer 2012
- Dr. Natalia Fedorova, visiting scholar & Fulbright Fellow, 2011–2012
- Robert Long, undergraduate researcher, Summer 2011
- Dr. Zuzana Husarova, visiting scholar & Fulbright Fellow, Spring
2011
- Erik Stayton, research assistant, Fall 2013–Spring 2015
Oral Poetics collaborators, 2019—
- Sebastian Bartlett, Spring 2019
- Angela Chang, Spring 2019
- Judy Heflin, Spring 2019—
Renderings phase I collaborators, 2014
- Patsy Baudoin
- Andrew Campana
- Qianxun (Sally) Chen
- Aleksanda Małecka
- Piotr Marecki
- Erik Stayton
Taper editoral collective members, 2018—
- Sebastian Bartlett (co-editor of #1, #2 & #3)
- Lillian-Yvonne Bertram (co-editor of #1, #2, & #3)
- Angela Chang (co-editor of #1, #2 & #3)
- Nick Montfort (co-editor of #1; publisher)
- Rachel Paige Thompson (co-editor of #2)
Renderings phase I collaborators, 2014
- Patsy Baudoin
- Andrew Campana
- Qianxun (Sally) Chen
- Aleksanda Małecka
- Piotr Marecki
- Erik Stayton
Slant collaborators, 2013–2014
- Prof. Rafael Pérez y Pérez
- Prof. D. Fox Harrell
- Iván Guerrero
- Erik Stayton
- Andrew Campana
Racing the Beam and Platform
Studies series collaborator, 2007–
The Deletionist collaborators,
2011–2013
- Prof. Amaranth Borsuk
- Prof. Jesper Juul
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10 collaborators, 2010-2013
- Dr. Patsy Baudoin
- Prof. John Bell
- Prof. Ian Bogost
- Prof. Jeremy Douglass
- Prof. Mark C. Marino
- Prof. Michael Mateas
- Prof. Casey Reas
- Prof. Mark Sample
- Dr. Noah Vawter
Tools for the Telling collaborators, 2007-2008
- Prof. Clara Fernández-Vara
- Prof. Alex Mitchell
Purple Blurb guest organizers:
- Dr. Gretchen Henderson, Spring 2013
- Prof. Amaranth Borsuk, 2011–2012
"Trope Report" Series of Technical Reports
- TROPE-12-01 - The Trivial Program "yes" (Nick Montfort)
- TROPE-12-02 - XS, S, M, XL: Creative Text Generators of Different Scales (Nick Montfort)
- TROPE-12-03 - Creative Material Computing in a Laboratory Context (Nick Montfort and Natalia Fedorova)
- TROPE-12-04 - Carrying across Language and Code (Nick Montfort and Natalia Fedorova)
- TROPE-13-01 - Electronic Literature for All: Performance in Exhibits and Public Readings (Clara Fernández-Vara)
- TROPE-13-02 - Videogame Editions for Play and Study (Clara Fernández-Vara and Nick Montfort)
- TROPE-13-03 - No Code: Null Programs (Nick Montfort)
- TROPE-14-01 - New Novel Machines: Nanowatt and World Clock (Nick Montfort)
- TROPE-14-02 - Stickers as a Literature-Distribution Platform (Piotr Marecki)
- TROPE-15-01 - Textual Demoscene (Piotr
Marecki)
- TROPE-17-01 - Heftings: A Preliminary System to Support Impossible Translation (Chris Kerich and Nick Montfort)
- TROPE-17-02 - 256-Byte Creative Programs (Sofian Audry, Angela Chang, Chris Kerich, Milton Läufer and
Nick Montfort)
- TROPE-20-01 - A Full Explanation of the Petscii Jetski Code (Nick Montfort and Jesper Juul)
- TROPE-20-02 - Autopia and The Truelist: Language Combined in Two Computer-Generated Books (Nick Montfort)
Collection
A catalog of materials in the Trope Tank
(hardware & software) is now available.
Researchers interested in computer and video games, electronic literature
(including interactive fiction, hypertext fiction, and digital poetry),
home computing and hobbyist programming, or related topics are welcome
to contact Nick for access
to the collection of materials, computers, and video game systems
that is housed in the Trope Tank.
Address
The Trope Tank, MIT
77 Massachusetts Ave, Room 14N-233
Cambridge,
MA 02139
Directions
March 2020: Building 14 is now a limited-access building, and is
essentially completely closed. The Trope Tank is at MIT in Building
14, the same building that is the home of the Hayden Library. The room
number is 14N-336; this is in the north wing on the third floor.
After finding building 14,
come in — the entrance on the northeast side, next to the large
black steel Calder sculpture, is the closest one to the Trope Tank. Once
inside, take the stairs or elevator up to the second floor. The Trope
Tank is not inside the library; it is in the wing across the courtyard
from it.
