The Markov Poet

Type or say some words. Get a film cut from 16,153 shots of the public Moving Image Archive. Change any shot. Send the film.

Write a filmThe Poet: an empty screen; type a line, press Return Watch a poemNarrative: a poem line by line, every shot weighed beside it Board a storySAM: a panel a line, with cut-out figures you move by hand Board the Odyssey152 scenes, footage foraged for every beat Cool Radio Odysseyeach book a radio film: voices, music, the archive's sound Markov Seaa sea of footage, a captain who judges every shot The Found Odysseyevery line spoken by the archive in its own words Odyssey Drivethe whole poem for the road, with Homer's Greek word by word What the archive sayssearch every clip's transcript Open the workshopThe Engine: any text, a transcript, a recording; tests

How it works

One sentence, through the engine, live.

loading the archive to run the example (about 20 MB, once)

The colour of a shot

Eight kinds of image, from the Cineosis periodic table.

Why "Markov"

In 1913 Andrey Markov counted which letter follows which in Pushkin's Eugene Onegin. Each choice here works the same way: the next shot depends on the line and on the shots already cut. The machinery says which shots were possible. It does not say which one you kept.

So every room keeps the path: what was offered, how sure the engine was, and where somebody chose otherwise. A class is not a path.