I´m born into a house with no computer

For this midterm assignment I wanted to work and play with generative text, grabbing text form personal blogs in the web. Using the logic of the Exquisite Corpse, the program, based on a word chosen by the user, starts to find it into the first text file and extracts the word and the 11 words that follows. Then, the last word extract became the keyword that the program will look in the following text and the process starts to repeat itself till it doesn't find more phrases.

To make the process easier, I started by copying text from 5 blogs and pasting into separate txt files, simulating different url's and what the crawler could get.
The next stop will be creating the crawler to look on the web for personal blogs.

The result needs to be tuned a little more but once I get the crawler working, I can see better the results and improve the program.

here are some examples of the output:

see source code

One idea of where this could go is to create a fake blog, writing a program that everyday crawl personal blogs, search for posts with the same date and using this set rules, creates a "fake" post or a mash/up post.

It was an interesting exercise to get my hands in regular expressions and feel more comfortable with programming in java

Thanks Meng for bringing Sophie Calle to this conversation. I love her work and for several times that i felt compelled to do something similar as a personal experience to see how following strangers go take me to new paths and explore the city in a different way. It's interesting how we create our own paths to go from point A to point B and how that paths are transformed so quickly into daily routines that are hard to break.

In 2004 Spectrapolis event in NY, Christina Ray and Lee Walton "performed" Following The Man of the Crowd, a 24 hour/walk in which both artists, linked by text messaging, drift separately through the city in an alternating pattern according to the movements of strangers, inspired by a Vito Acconci piece.

Sometimes I stay in the streets or squares looking to the people passing by. I really enjoyed to do that, imaging where they are going, what they are thinking, who they are. I create the same imaginary stories in the subway, trying to entertain myself when I’ not reading or thinking about assignments and in the subway is much easier to recognize people that you had seen before, the Familiar Strangers that Meng also pointed out and that reminded me of a project by Eric Paulos and Elizabeth Goodman. They developed a wireless device that you can use or wear that try to capture and extend the essence of the Familiar Stranger concept. Take a look of the project . What I enjoy so much in this application/device is the way the device can be used both ways: to visualize the network of Familiar Strangers and find places where you can feel more "familiar " or use it to avoid familiar people and go to places where you are "more" anonymous

I should try to follow people one of this days!