Daniel C. Howe is an artist and researcher whose work focuses on generative systems for image, sound and text, and on the social and political implications of computational technologies. He has a PhD in computer science and an MFA in interactive media and digital literature. He currently lives in Hong Kong where he teaches at City University's School of Creative Media.

Howe’s new piece, “Automatype,” which can be seen as either ambient text art, a weird game of solitaire for the computer, or an absorbing ongoing puzzle for a human viewer, is an apt demonstration of some of the powers of “RiTa,” as it uses algorithms to find the bridges between English words, Six-Degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon-style — not bridges of garbled nonsense but composed of normative English. You will spend either 10 seconds or 5 minutes staring at this thing; you will also see either a bunch of random words, or occasionally, if not always, engaging samples of minimalist poetry.

“Automatype,”

by Daniel Howe