I am a Purple Leaf Plum living at Calle de las Huertas 45 in the las Letras area of Madrid (ES). In June 2021 I was part of the publication experiment around the Markov Chain algorithm, during a research residency on algoliterary storytelling in Medialab Prado. Made with the support of Flemish Government - Arts - Digital Culture Residencies. You can generate a publication here: https://algoliterarypublishing.net/paseo-por-arboles-de-madrid.html
2021, Purple Leaf Plum, Las Letras, Madrid
With the help of a long list of fellow tree species, the human participants in this experiment managed to create a story from the narrative viewpoint of the Markov Chain algorithm.
Markov Chain
The Markov Chain algorithm simultaneously generates a poem and a walk along trees in the Las Letras area in the centre of Madrid where I live. Markov Chain was designed in 1906 by Andrey Markov, a Russian mathematician who died in 1992. This algorithm is at the basis of many spam-generating software programmes. It is used for systems that describe a series of interdependent events. What happens depends only on the previous step. That is why Markov Chains are also called ‘memoryless’.
Each tree is associated with a meaningful word. The trees form the database for the Markov Chain. We choose a tree/word to begin with. We pick a new word rolling the dice. We approach the specific tree, write the word that is linked with this tree on a piece of paper, and so on. We can insert stop words to make the syntax fluent.
Madrid tree database
Despite the impression that there are few trees in the area, the algorithm counts 460 of them in the database Un alcorque, Un arbol of which I was a part. The database was an initiative of the Madrid municipality, set up in 2017 and unfortunately taken offline in 2024.
Collaborators
The human participants in this project were: Emilia Pardo Bazán, Benito Pérez Gáldos, Jaime Munárriz, Luis Morell, An Mertens, Eva Marina Gracia, Gijs de Heij, Ana Isabel Garrido Mártinez, Alfredo Calosci, Daniel Arribas Hedo.
The trees participating in this prject were: all the trees of Madrid, which are geolocated between Medialab Prado, Plaza del Sol and Atocha Renfe, and were present in the database Un Alcorque, un Árbol.
The algorithms participating were Markov Chain, Python programming language, javascript, weasyprint, html, css.
This experiment was created as part of the residency of Anaïs Berck in Medialab Prado in Madrid, granted by the Government of Flanders as part of their ‘Residency Digital Culture’ programme. The creation happened in the company of collaborators of Medialab Prado, who assisted in various workshops.