Surrealistic Web

Photo courtesy Surreal Corpse At "The Exquisite Corpse" website fragments of computer generated artwork are passed between players to create pictures such as "Corpse No. 12" (above)

So reads a quip from the near-infamous "Surrealist Compliment Generator", just one of many web-sites dedicated to surrealist art, lit erature and linguistic tom-foolery. As a vast realm of randomness itself, the Web is the perfect playground for an international team of surrealist gamers, intent on mixing metaphors, displacing logic and making known "what was not previously knowable" th rough automatic, technologically generated language.

The "Exquisite Cadaver," (http://pharmdec.wustl.edu/juju/surr/games/ExCad.html) is a word game which has been popular in paper format for years. Like the Surrealist Compliment Generator, t he web-version of the Cadaver randomly combines word fragments submitted by each player, producing endless sentences and stories. The game is named after a book by Wolf Mankowitz, who allegedly penned the first whimsically generated sentence, which reads "The exquisite cadaver shall drink the new wine." Mankowitz' phrase is an example of the Cadaver's ability to produce sometimes eerie, sometimes witty, but often meaningless imagery.

A graphical variation on the same idea is found in "The Exquisite Corpse," (http://www.ipa.net/~dmmwalt/Corpse.html/) where one-quarter-inch fragments of computer generated artwork are randomly passe d within a small circle of players, producing works which join skulls with trombones, fish with pomegranetes, and every dadaist combination in between.

"Questions & Responses" (http://pharmdec.wustl.edu/juju/surr/games/Q+R/Q+R.html) is just what one would expect, a Dali-esque "Book of Answers." Take, for example, what happens when one "unanswered question" is joined with a "questionless response":

Q: What do you want for that old recliner, mister?

A: Don't tempt me with such perversion.

Obviously, if you're looking for simple answers to simple questions, this surrealist oracle is probably not for you. However, if you like reading meaning into mish-mash, the playfulness of language and stretching the conventional rules of semantics, this site may be a refreshing road-stop during more serious Web-browsing.

For those who like their nonsense cloaked in some semblance of a story, StoryFun is definitely not to be missed (http://www.mit.edu/storyfun). This game, created by students at MIT, is just like the MadLibs you us ed to play on long family road trips. Players enter verbs, nouns, names, etc., when prompted, and the server spits out a story in less than a second. For those who don't believe this exercise is worthwhile, I offer a few key phrases from my StoryFun gener ated tale, entitled "My Interview": "I had an interview today...I wore a glossy cloak...everyone at the company wore porous clothing. They all asked me about my sheath, and also about my stack. I nearly slid."

Good fun, no question, but one has to wonder if all of this is what artists like Salvador Dali had in mind. Or is it out of mind?