Beyoncé's tweets as sacred text, error messages that tell a tragic tale and the looping program of a failing relationship: we parse a new literary phenomenon
ON STAGE at Stanford University in California last February, the words of Beyoncé were being intoned as a religious text. Next came Richard Branson. Then Elon Musk.
This was the second Stanford Code Poetry Slam: a celebration of code poetry, a reimagining of computer programming languages as a form of literary expression. The winner, Hunter Bacot, had written a short, elegant program called 21st Century Prophecies that pulled in the latest tweets from a selection of famous names to be read out as if they were sacred commandments. The crowd went wild.
"It's really interesting to see language in a new way," says Melissa Kagen, who organises the Stanford slams. "People have been writing in English for so many years. ...
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