I have spent the last few months completing a novel I started a long time ago and turning it into a non-linear interactive experience. For my final project in several classes, I have transferred this novel into a printer-equipped camera to make a new and different type of photographic experience.

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Inside the antique camera is a Raspberry Pi with a camera module behind the lens. The flow of passages is controlled by a single, handwritten JSON file. When there is overlap between the tags detected in an image by Clarifai and the tags assigned to a passage, and the candidate passage occurs next in a storyline that has already begun, that passage is printed out. If no passage can be found, the camera prints poetry enabled by a recursive context-free grammar and constructed from words detected in the image.

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This week, I am planning to add a back end component that will allow photos taken to be preserved as albums, and passages printed to be read later online. For now, here is the JSON file that controls the order of output:

And here is the code that’s currently running on the Raspberry Pi:

 

Click here for a Google Drive folder with all the passages from the novel.