Text animation

can we enhance ulysses by animating the text?


cf breaking up penelope into short lines??







Matt Schneider suggests ELIZA as a model for Ithaca's q&a,maybe with the question appearing a letter at a time, and the answer flowing back after a pause?

Parsers

http://cogcomp.cs.illinois.edu/page/demo_view/srl

Generating monologs

more than any previous book, ulysses is a compilation of monologs along paths.

it's easy to generate random pseudo-joycean monologs

refining them is an infinite challenge


 one possibility is to time the output to approximate realtime


one approach is to classify the kinds of thoughts each character has at each moment,
and generalise those patterns


create a simplified ulysses where characters' monologs consist entirely of a small fixed set of cliches of each type


compile list of things-to-see with gps positions

choose path and compile sequence of things along path


different characters may have different memories/associations to things
good memories/ bad memories


internal states like hunger, thirst, anxiety, lust,
randomly noticed, or systematically


daily to-do list for each character
tendency to dillydally
monitoring time


financial calculations
budget for self-indulgence


encountering people
names, ages, families and occupations from census
friendship/enmity
allowing oneself time to socialise
ask about housemates

guilt/hiding?
detours

Thinking about sex

Each character has a level of libido that varies according to obscure rules: cycles, times of day, stimulation, boredom, flattery...

Each person they meet or think of has some level of attractiveness, accessibility, risk...

(Prostitutes may be attractive and accessible but risky wrt stds. Clergymen may be attractive but inaccessible.)


We see Stephen choosing a semi-random image to fantasize about.

Bloom understands Martha is just an amusing game he'll never really dare to meet.


Drinking lowers standards, increases accessibility.

WikiData knowledgebase

WikiData.org invites anyone to flesh out their mirror of Wikipedia's knowledgebase, eg by adding additional Ulysses characters, and spelling out the links between characters.

Their representation language is still quite limited, and discourages shortcuts like representing a character's spouse as a simple name-string instead of instantiating an entire new fictional-human item.

There's lots of colorful details Joyce introduces to define character, but few of these fit neatly into existing categories: occupation, 'uses', nickname, member of, educated at, significant person...

Ideally we'll be able to extract useful 'views' of the data, down the line.


One tricky thing is differentiating real people from their fictional doubles: is 'Cranly' identical to JF Byrne?

Is Shakespeare 'present in' chapter 9?

Story representation languages

Cyc
OpenCyc [toplevel]

dbpedia [Person]

wikidata q-numbers

wordnet [person]

babelnet [person]


a problem with these is that they prefer to treat 'stuff' as specialisations of modalities (like TemporallyStuff-likeThing) instead of viceversa, relying on the brain's fondness for abstract linguistic categories (unfortunately infinite)

better to give the gist first without modalities, then elaborate (see emoji below)

Career Ladder story-template

Kim Kardashian Hollywood could be the prototype for a whole class of more-or-less realistic simulation games in which the player tries to reach a goal over an extended period, usually a lifetime.

Fame, prizes, money, power... all these quests share similar frameworks in which fellow humans can be manipulated to move 'upwards'.

We can see the framework in biographies, and represent individual variations using standard properties (cf WikiData)

earliest awareness of goal: saw PERSON via MEDIA

teachers

contests
rivals

social ladder
levels

gatekeepers to charm

skills to master

dues/bribes to pay

signs of advancement/decline

role-models
rivals
teachers
utensils
books
purchases

acceptance/rejection by communities