Allison Parrish
Creative coder
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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]
Allison Parrish | |
|---|---|
| Born | |
| Known for | Poetry, software engineering, creative coding, game design, electronic literature |
| Notable work | Everyword, Rewordable, Articulations |
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]
