Senior Lecturer in Theatre Nathan Walker has a new book of poetic performance instructions published by Manchester based poetry press IF P THEN Q. The book ‘Action Score Generator’ is an exploration of performance writing, performance scores and poetry.
The Action Score Generator book is a print version of Nathan Walker’s website of the same name that runs a JavaScript code. The code produces a text of six words in length for six seconds. Every six seconds the six word text is replaced by another six word text and so on and so, the six word texts disappear. The print version is a sixty-minute performance by a machine writing ten six second texts every minute using only six words at a time. They are ordered as they were produced and remain unedited. The book also features an Afterword written by Dr. Mark Leahy that critically explores the work.
You can visit the Action Score Generator website and might even try performing the instructions as scores or simply reading them aloud as poems. You can by the book here