Writing Machines
This is an archival page for the Special Issue #28. Writing Machines–Protocols–Feedback.
First Radion Show: Radio Ghost
Radio Ghost is the third radio show of 2025 for Special Issue #28. It was held on 6th of October 2025 at Radio WORM. Each of the hosts brought their own writing machine and presented it during the 1 hour radio show.
Moderator: Youjung | Producer: Ema | Secretary: Bart
Spam e-mail recipes
For the first radio show, I made a spam e-mail cooker using Nick Montfort's Python code for The House of Dust and Throughthe Park. I have been developing poem generators since the workshop in Brussels. With the draft that I had, I borrowed ideas from Nick Montfort and Lillian-yvonne Bertram. Their work uses randomness but also has context and meaning in the output. I read Output and Travesty Generator to get some ideas for the Python code.
The input text is as important as the code itself. I thought using spam e-mails would be fun. Spam e-mails are usually not interesting; they are filled with flashy words to seduce readers to open the mail. But ironically, these phrases echo meaninglessly in our inboxes. The majority of them are directly moved to the trash. It would be fun to break these e-mails down into phrases and words and cook them like fried rice.
I enjoyed working with the text "Tips from ABN AMRO". They really did a great job on the opening statement, trying to lure expats/students into insurance, talking about the Dutch customs. Reordering them made it nonsensical, but at the same time, it made sense. I found myself trying to add humor to it. I hope it was humorous for the audience...
[Original Text] Are you getting used to the Dutch and their ways? Like cycling against the traffic, celebrating St Nicholas, and eating a buttered slice of bread with chocolate sprinkles? Still, some Dutch customs can be very useful, and one of these is being insured against all manner of risks.
[Cooked Text] Dear Client, Are you getting used to cross the road without looking? Still, Dutch customs can be useful, faced by a hefty bill. It's normal to eating a buttered slice of bread with chocolate sprinkles for your home. You can insure yourself for causing a cyclist to have a nasty fall under one roof Get properly damage something Kind regards, Tanja Bom Head of Customer Communications ABN AMRO
Message from the Radio Ghost
(in progress)
Looking back...
Preparing for the show, we had 3 meetings, one after class and two online. We thought of doing a collective writing machine, but in the end, we did our own separate machines. Everyone had different interests, and we didn't have enough time to fuse our machines together. But a lot of ideas emerged during the rehearsal, an online meeting we did the night before the show to align everything together. A lot of ideas popped up during this meeting; the tone of the show, radio ghost interrupting us. We also measured the time for the introduction to see if we can make it on time. I wrote my script for my session and prepared things to discuss during Bart and Ema's session.
On the day of the show, time passed extremely quickly. When I was talking about my writing machine, my face turned red. And to be honest, when I had to improvise during the discussion, my brain went blank. I'll have to fill my brain with some inputs and materials to talk about. I was the moderator, the person who kept track of time, but I accidentally miscalculated my time. I cut my part to soon. But after that, everything was on time, I gave signals to others when they had 5, 3, and 1 minutes left. Maybe I did it too strictly; we had 3 minutes left at the end, and had quite an awkward silence. But by the end of the show, I found myself enjoying being on live and speaking on the microphone.