Individual Work
Tokyo Garage

Tokyo Garage is a form of digital poetry created by Scott Rettberg, originally a remix of Nick Montfort’s “Taroko Garage”. In this type of poetry, factors such as random generation, time, and movement are relevant and important in how this form of poetry is interpreted. Tokyo Garage is an example of digital poetry, formatted by a code, this digital poem never ends. Tokyo Garage is unlike any regular poem out there, simply because it is not your ordinary poem. Tokyo Garage is an example of combinatory poetics, meaning that this poem is generated through the use of a database and an algorithm. The self-generating poem writes itself in front of the viewer, almost like the poem itself is alive. This sense of movement keeps the reader interested, and reading longer. Movement in this poem can create a sense of curiosity in the mind of the reader, wondering what is to come next. This is something that I first noticed with Tokyo Garage, the urge to continue to read the poem that is being written in front of you. There is no sense of closure that one can get from this poem, simply because it does not stop generating lines of poetry.