2×6 consists of short “stanzories”—stanzas that are also stories, each one relating an encounter between two people. Appearing in English, French, Spanish, Russian, Japanese, and Polish, the stanzories are generated by a similar underlying process, even as they do not neatly correspond to one another the way a translation typically does to a source text. These sixfold verses are generated by six short computer programs, the code of which is also presented in full. These simple programs can endlessly churn out combinatorial lines that challenge readers to determine to whom “she” and “he,” and “him” and “her,” refer, as well as which is the more powerful signifier, which the underdog. As John Cayley writes, “Gender is the chief generative obstacle here—making more than two times six—distributed across the natural grammars of these micro- dramas, with their psychosocial, vocational, and hierarchical narrative vectors.”
This title is a second edition of a book originally published by Les Figues Press, released as part of punctum’s Special Collections project.
About the Authors
Nick Montfort lives in New York City and is a professor at MIT and principal investigator at the Center for Digital Narrative, Bergen, Norway. He is author or editor of twenty books and has developed and collaborated on many digital projects.
Serge Bouchardon is professor at the Université de technologie de Compiègne (Alliance Sorbonne Université, France), where he teaches interactive writing. His research focuses on digital creation, in particular electronic literature. As an author, he is particularly interested in the way the gestures specific to the digital contribute to the construction of meaning.
Carlos León, an associate professor at Complutense University of Madrid, is interested in narrative and the intersection between artificial intelligence, cognitive systems, and computational creativity.
Andrew Campana is a poet, translator, and Assistant Professor of Japanese literature at Cornell University. He is the author of Expanding Verse: Japanese Poetry at the Edge of Media (California, 2024).
Natalia Fedorova is an artist, curator, researcher, and educator in the field of contemporary art and literature. Her work is centered around mediation between the languages of humans, technology, and ecosystems. Natalia lives in Paris and teaches online at Smolny Beyond Borders (Bard Berlin) and in person at Université Paris 8.
Piotr Marecki lives in Kraków. He is a writer and a professor at Jagiellonian University, where he runs the UBU lab. He is also the founder and editor-in-chief of the Ha!art publishing house.
Aleksandra Małecka is an editor, translator and publisher. She lives in Kraków, where she runs the Ha!art publishing house together with Piotr Marecki.
