Writing Flows for an Uncertain World: Jean-Pierre Balpe's Generative Narratives

Abstract

Jean-Pierre Balpe has brought together several threads of his programmed writing under the general heading “Un univers de génération automatique littéraire” [“A universe of automatic literary generation”]. Structured both as a series of hyperfictional textual and audio-visual labyrinths that can be randomly explored, but also as textual sequences and serialized video episodes presented in the form of seasons, his narrative and poetic webs bring together various genres of digital writing: combinatory and generative; kinetic and interactive; hypertext fiction; network writing; and expanded writing. I will briefly analyse this multi-layered literary universe as an experimental engagement with the automation of storytelling, and I will contrast it with current artificial intelligence approaches to the automation of narrative. The differences between those two algorithmic procedures will be described in terms of the dialectics between post-humanist and trans-humanist approaches to narrative production.