In Summer 2023 I attended the Electronic Literature Organization’s conference in Coimbra, Portugal to present a bot that generates aphorisms on social media. The bot is also featured in the virtual gallery for IMPEC 2024. The code repo is here, and you can read all the generated aphorisms here. I initially used Twitter X but because that platform is a dumpster fire I now use Mastodon.

This project is an experiment in using computation to produce an electronic literature that is attentive to social concerns and promotes constructive contact between different publics that coexist but do not always interact within a shared social media platform. So far the bot has 12 followers. It’s a start!