Allison Parrish

Allison Parrish is a computer programmer, poet and game designer whose teaching and practice address the unusual phenomena that blossom when language and computers meet. She has recently given talks on computer-generated poetry at the Electronic Literature Organization conference, !!Con, Alt-AI, SXSW Interactive and Eyeo. From 2014 to 2016, Allison was the Digital Creative Writer-in-Residence at Fordham University, and has recently been a research resident at DBRS Innovation Labs, a Processing Foundation fellow, and a visiting artist at the Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry at CMU. Allison holds a master's degree from NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program, where she is currently a member of the full-time faculty.

Performing A Literary Reading with Jeff Thompson, Daniel Temkin, and Ranjit Bhatnagar

Reading of Texts From the Network

When talking about networks, we almost exclusively talk about the interfaces we interact with, intangible but powerful forces like the cloud and algorithms, or the physical infrastructure of the network. But many intermediate layers exist in the network written as readable texts. These include HTTP headers, OUI registrants, and network SSIDs. They reveal human connections between us and our computers, the devices of others, programmers, and corporations. While hackers and other explorers of the network may see these texts, we usually register them only as information, not writing to be read or critiqued.