Allison Parrish

Allison Parrish
Born	Bountiful, Utah
Known for	Poetry, software engineering, creative coding, game design, electronic literature
Notable work	Everyword, Rewordable, Articulations

Allison Parrish is an American poet, ^[1] software engineer, creative coder, and game designer, notable as one of the most prominent early makers of creative, literary Twitter bots. ^[2] She was named "Best Maker of Poetry Bots" by The Village Voice in 2016. ^[3] Parrish has produced a textbook introduction to creative coding in Python, more specifically Processing.py. ^[4] Parrish holds a BA in Linguistics from UC Berkeley, and a Master of Professional Studies from the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP), NYU. She has been a Writer-in-Residence in the English Department of Fordham University, 2014–16, and an Assistant Arts Professor at the ITP since 2016. ^[5]

Selected works

• Everyword. 2007–2014. A conceptual poetic Twitter bot launched 2007 and later published as a book: Parrish, Allison (2015). Everyword: the book. New York: Instar Books. ISBN   978-0-9904528-5-0. This bot tweeted out an alphabetized list of about 100,000 words, one every 30 minutes. Instead of a definition, the entry for that word contains the social media analytics of that tweet. ^[6] @everyword was one of the first bots to have an ultimate telos, or aim, as well as a clear structure, and a metanarrative as the reactions to each word were substituted for a definition and use of the word. ^[6]
• Frankenstein-Genesis, word vectorization, a machine-readable representation ^[6] mixes two paragraphs from "Frankenstein" and the Bible. ^[7]
• Rewordable. 1999–2000. With collaborators Adam Simon and Tim Szetela. ^{[8] [9]}
• Parrish, Allison (2018). Articulations. Denver: Counterpath. ISBN   978-1933996653. The book uses an algorithm to draw lines between similar linguistic elements of public domain poetry. ^[10]

Awards

Allison Parrish won The Maverick Award from the Electronic Literature Organization in 2024. ^{[11] [12]}

References

1. Temkin, Daniel (May 31, 2020). "The Hacker Aesthetic of Minimalist Code". Hyperallergic . Archived from the original on September 27, 2020. Retrieved August 27, 2020.
2. Fernandez, Mariana (October 12, 2017). "What it Means to Be an 'Experimental Computer Poet'". Vice . Archived from the original on October 12, 2019. Retrieved September 19, 2019.
3. Chiel, Ethan (2016). "Best Maker of Poetry Bots: Allison Parrish". Village Voice. Archived from the original on May 3, 2017. Retrieved September 19, 2019.
4. Parrish, Allison (2016). Make: getting started with Processing.py. San Francisco: Maker Media. ISBN   978-1457186837.
5. "Allison Parrish: Assistant Professor". NYU/TISCH. Archived from the original on September 22, 2019. Retrieved September 22, 2019.
6. "Digging and Sinking and Drifting: Allison Parrish's Machine Poetics - Journal #117". www.e-flux.com. Retrieved July 6, 2024.
7. "Music 256A Reading Response 9". ccrma.stanford.edu. Retrieved July 6, 2024.
8. D'Anastasio, Cecilia (2017). "Five family-friendly board games that aren't monopoly". Kotaku. Archived from the original on August 14, 2020. Retrieved September 19, 2019.
9. "Lucy Family Institute Fireside Chat Series, Data Poetics: Allison Parrish". Lucy Family Institute for Data and Society . November 11, 2022. Archived from the original on February 2, 2023. Retrieved May 11, 2023.
10. "Interview with Allison Parrish". esoteric.codes. April 17, 2018. Retrieved July 6, 2024.
11. Marino, Mark (July 22, 2024). "Announcing the 2024 ELO Awards – Electronic Literature Organization" . Retrieved August 15, 2024.
12. "ELO Annual Awards – Electronic Literature Organization" . Retrieved August 15, 2024.

External links

• Allison Parrish's website "Decontextualize" . Retrieved September 11, 2019.