Cultural and methodological framework set by digital humanities implies a substantial shift in authorial paradigms. A sole humanist thinker is replaced by a humanist-programmer, always ready for collaboration with others and whose research is focused not on close-reading and interpretation, but on computational and generative distance-reading. One of the ways to familiarise with the changed paradigm is to look for similar, authorial figures in art, specifically in digital literature. The humanist-programmer, someone with higher than usual set of competencies which spanned across computing and literature, has been directly and indirectly present in the work of Nick Montfort – one of the most prolific artists in the field of electronic literature. By looking at the occurrences of the writer-programmer figure in Montfort’s literary happenings and text-machines and by examining the enhanced model of literary communication, the article aims at encouraging new ways of looking at (digitally) infused literature and culture, establishing Nick Montfort as one of their pioneers and proponents. Part of the article, while discussing a poetry generator Sea and Spar Between, concentrates on several categories related to the figure of humanist-programmer: critical code studies, distributive authorship, culture of collaboration, remix culture.

Author and work in digital culture: the text-machines of Nick Montfort

Cultural and methodological framework set by digital humanities implies a substantial shift in authorial paradigms. A sole humanist thinker is replaced by a humanist-programmer, always ready for collaboration with others and whose research is focused not on close-reading and interpretation, but on computational and generative distance-reading. One of the ways to familiarise with the changed paradigm is to look for similar, authorial figures in arCultural and methodological framework set by digital humanities implies a substantial shift in authorial paradigms. A sole humanist thinker is replaced by a humanist-programmer, always ready for collaboration with others and whose research is focused not on close-reading and interpretation, but on computational and generative distance-reading. One of the ways to familiarise with the changed paradigm is to look for similar, authorial figures in art, specifically in digital literature. The humanist-programmer, someone with higher than usual set of competencies which spanned across computing and literature, has been directly and indirectly present in the work of Nick Montfort – one of the most prolific artists in the field of electronic literature. By looking at the occurrences of the writer-programmer figure in Montfort’s literary happenings and text-machines and by examining the enhanced model of literary communication, the article aims at encouraging new ways of looking at (digitally) infused literature and culture, establishing Nick Montfort as one of their pioneers and proponents. Part of the article, while discussing a poetry generator Sea and Spar Between, concentrates on several categories related to the figure of humanist-programmer: critical code studies, distributive authorship, culture of collaboration, remix culture.t, specifically in digital literature. The humanist-programmer, someone with higher than usual set of competencies which spanned across computing and literature, has been directly and indirectly present in the work of Nick Montfort – one of the most prolific artists in the field of electronic literature. By looking at the occurrences of the writer-programmer figure in Montfort’s literary happenings and text-machines and by examining the enhanced model of literary communication, the article aims at encouraging new ways of looking at (digitally) infused literature and culture, establishing Nick Montfort as one of their pioneers and proponents. Part of the article, while discussing a poetry generator Sea and Spar Between, concentrates on several categories related to the figure of  humanist-programmer: critical code studies, distributive authorship, culture of collaboration, remix culture.