text manipulation, cut-up technique and computer generated writing links

there's a lot of websites out there covering the cut-up technique, especially with reference to william s burroughs and brion gysin. there are also a reasonable number of cut-up engines and scripts, although some (for example, the one hosted by the now defunct netmonkey online magazine, and also lee worden's cutup engine and website) have now sadly disappeared from the internet.

click here to go back to our main cut-ups page.

online cut-up engines and downloadable cut-up scripts

language is a virus
more cut-up generators, text manipulators and burroughs-inspired articles than you can shake a stick at.

DadaDodo
DadaDodo is a program that analyses texts for word probabilities, and then generates random sentences based on that. the ANSI C source code is provided.

when you run out of words
the outofwords application creates new texts from a source text. the resulting text consists of "likely" words pairs from the source text.

generating random text
takes a block of text as input and works out the proportion of characters within the text according to a chosen order. technically, this process is based on markov chains.

grazulis cut-up machine
david leeming's online javascript cut-up machine

runme.org - say it with software art!
a whole page of downloadable text manipulation software (mainly windows)

bot 002
bot 002 makes cut-ups from texts it fetches randomly on the web. it gets it's urls from the yahoo database. it has a 10000 word database to work with that evolves with what it is fed (instructions in both english and french).

robopoet: the random poetry generator
robopoet cuts up your text, and also substitutes new words into the text.

burroughs non-linear adding machine at morehow hibimoyo
tom's cut-up engine - mixes different texts together as well as cutting them up

cut n' mix info: cut-up software engine
downloadable windows cut-up engine with interesting selection of filter algorithms

a burroughs-esque cutups engine
ben collar's cut-up engine source files (gpl - written in python)

text manipulation and cut-up information and theory

can't we writers have some fun as well?
article written by jeff noon for the guardian newspaper: film-makers use jump cuts, freeze frames, slow motion. musicians remix, scratch, sample. can't we writers have some fun as well?

'get underground' interview with jeff noon
includes some interesting remarks about experimental writing and his non-burroughs-related perspective

the cut-up method of brion gysin
excerpt from a forthcoming book of interviews with brion gysin, edited by genesis p-orridge

cut-up info from grazulis
david leeming's introduction to cut-up

wsb: the cut-up technique
a detailed introduction of cut-up from bigtable.com, a defunct william burroughs site now only available on archive.org

william s burroughs and cut-up
introduction to burroughs-style cut-up from legends magazine

beat godfather meats glitter main man
william burroughs' 1974 interview with david bowie - some interesting discussion of cut-ups

computer generated writing info & scripts, and other miscellaneous related resources

computer-generated writing - a million idiot monkeys make a fine shakespeare.
huge list of links about computer generated writing

the shannonizer: notes on computer-generated text
interesting theories about producing scripts to create computer generated writing. see also...

the shannonizer: a web toy with delusions of literacy
putting the shannonizer theory into practice - a great online script, highly recommended

end notes

we try to check that these links are working as often as we get time, but as is inevitable, websites come and go, and link-rot sets in. if you spot a link that's not working, please contact us with the details. links last checked: november 2007.