Fama and Eucalyptus

This is the story where I live:

A fama is walking through a forest, and although he needs no wood he gazes greedily at the trees. The trees are terribly afraid because they are acquainted with the customs of the famas and anticipate the worst. Dead center of the wood there stands a handsome eucalyptus and the fama on seeing it gives a cry of happiness and dances respite and dances Catalan around the disturbed eucalyptus, talking like this:

— Antiseptic leaves, winter with health, great sanitation!

He fetches an axe and whacks the eucalyptus in the stomach. It doesn’t bother the fama at all. The eucalyptus screams, wounded to death, and the other trees hear him say between sighs:

— To think that all this imbecile had to do was buy some Valda tablets.

Cronopios and Famas by Julio Cortázar, published in 1962, English edition, 1999, New Directions Classic

The algorithmic narrative point of view

With the help of a large list of colleague tree species, the human participants in this experiment managed to tell the story from the narrative point of view of the algorithm Levenhstein Distance. This algorithm operates in spell checkers. It calculates the minimum number of operations required to transform one word into another. An operation can be an insertion, deletion or substitution of a character. The algorithm was an invention of Russian scientist Vladimir Levenshtein in 1965.

Collaborators

The humans who participated in this experiment are Gijs de Heij (code & design), An Mertens (concept & text) and Julio Cortázar (original story). The algorithms participating are Levenhstein Distance, Python programming language, weasyprint, html, css. This experiment was a creation for ÁGORA / CEMENT / CÓDIGO, an online exhibition curated by Lekutan, within the programme of Komisario Berriak supported by Tabakalera in Donostia/San Sebastián, Spain. Many thanks to Andrea Estankona, Jaime Munárriz, Esther Berdión.