of being nihilistic and thinking nothing has any meaning. And I read "The Existentialist" and thought, "That makes about the most sense to me." Some writers, like Hemingway and Sam Beckett and others, spoke to me personally and it's a good pose to take that you believe in nothing and nothing means anything and we're all like Sisyphus, rolling that stone up a hill for it to catapult us down and life has no meaning and it's absurd and it's totally irrational. And this is easy to wear as armor for oneself. I thought, "No, I don't really
or for everybody-- I mean, literally the best advice I was ever given was, just keep writing. Samuel Beckett said, you know, fail. Fail better. Just keep on failing, and I think that's what it's all about.
Sorry, this one cracks me up. So we value the role of experience generally Samuel Beckett play where's just sort of a lot of nothingness.
about the creative process if you're not getting along with with one guy you get off the bus before he sees that you're Saunders George Saunders uh Becket you
And in the end, I mean, there were some kind of comically bad attempts, like Marcel Beckett. Nobody's called Marcel Beckett. But Joseph Anton, which came from Joseph Conrad and Anton Chekhov, seemed to have the merit of sounding like a name somebody might actually have.
about the relationship between stories and systems. This is a scene from a Beckett play called "Quad," that was produced for television. And if you read the script, it's really an algorithm-- a system for movement that actually generates the end experience.
But learn from them fast. Oh. I used to always quote this Beckett thing, which was fail again, fail better. I wonder if it's been ripped off by you guys.
Yeah. Good. First live question? Hi. Big fan of Kate Beckett. Thank you. What's your name?
It's called "Megawatt." And it's a book that-- there's some story behind it. The seventh of these ppg256 programs is based on a passage from Samuel Beckett's second novel, "Watt." And after doing this, I made a Demoscene production called
as it turns out. Why did this have to be done? Well, because of the invasive fennel. And I mean, it sounds like something Samuel Beckett would have come up with for a play. 'The Invasive Fennel'. Once the sheep are removed, the fennel, the seeds you use in sausages and so on. This grew up into an enormous thicket. It's the size of this room, 20 feet
I can't go on, I thought. And immediately, its antiphone responded, completing Samuel Beckett's seven words, words I had learned long ago as an undergraduate. I'll go on. I got out of bed and took a step forward, repeating the phrase over and over.
It's called "Megawatt." And it's a book that-- there's some story behind it. And so what I've done is to re-implement these passages from "Watt" computationally-- created programs that would write what Beckett wrote.
get is far, far more rapid and the kind of control that you have over the experience that you get from it is far, far more precise than anything we've seen before. Start off with a cheerful quote from Samuel Beckett. This really is about the idea of recasting failure, not as an absolute -- you failed, therefore it's all over. It's about recasting failure as something that you do better.
someone, you could flee to a church and the civil authorities were not allowed to enter for up to 40 days. So you could have sanctuary there. And to violate this would've been the worst possible offense you could have given, which is why, you know, Thomas Becket 's murder is so, so horrible in England. And the monks had dedicated themselves to a life of studying the Bible, to copying scriptures to prayer, to removing themselves literally from the temptations of the world. And so they would seek
"Have you also considered other media? So no. I mean, I don't know who my influences are, probably more Beckett, probably more Kafka, probably Woody Allen, the Marx Brothers, Monty Python,
And I think their influence is here somewhere in this book. And also, what then developed out of surrealism, which was what was called the theatre of the absurd, playwrights like Eugene Ionesco and Samuel Beckett. So I think that tradition, which to me is the kind of Western counterpart of the Eastern wonder tale-- those two things are the things that
It's called "Megawatt." And it's a book that-- there's some story behind it. And "Megawatt," then, is the third computational project I've undertaken to try to deal with Samuel Beckett's novel.
And in the end, I just decided to start fooling around with names of writers that I admired and putting them together and seeing if they worked. And in the end, I mean, there were some kind of comically bad attempts, like Marcel Beckett. Nobody's called Marcel Beckett.