Procedural Generation for Divination and Inspiration

Abstract

This paper presents a series of experiments that map the expressive space of specific procedural generation techniques with playful aleatory interventions. They are tools for inspiration based on divinatory practices. This paper connects these ancient procedural techniques to contemporary technologies like Twitter bots. We challenge the limits of these technologies in order to playfully explore the role they can play in everyday life. The first experiment, Nostrandomus, remixes ancient prophecies. The second one, Five Sparrows on a Vampire, generates proposals for dining experiences featuring recipes and accompanying eating instructions. The third tool, Haikookies, is a self-help inspired twitter bot that shares fortune cookie-style wisdom in haiku form. The final experiment, Tiphareth, is a set of partially procedurally generated tarot cards. Additionally, Ephemerald, a tool for streamlined Tracery-based [6] procedural content generation is introduced. The takeaway of this paper is that data curation is a fundamental component of working with generative systems. In other words, the human aspect needs to be present in order to create meaningful results.