Tom Hinkle

Welcome to Tom Hinkle's Wiki HomePage.

If you want to collaborate with me in any of my madness (see below), please add to this page, or send mailto:Thomas_Hinkle@brown.edu.

Symmys Symmys is my greatest creation thus far. You can learn about it at http://tommyrot.arrr.net. [dead link 2010 -- JasonGrossman] Please contribute to the SymMys wiki.

In search of a Fractal Form

I created symmys with the goal of producing beauty in form. I started with the crude idea that symmetry is one fundamental form of beauty in nature - of the divine. That was before I read Chaos and began thinking about fractal symmetry. Since then, my goal has been to find a fractal literary form. I believe that computers are necessary for a fractal literature, just as they were necessary for generating the most stunning visual fractals.

The desire to create such a form is what led me to wikis.

A fractal literary form, like a visual fractal, must in some sense exceed itself. That is, like Mandelbrot's infinitely long shoreline, the fractal form must trace an infinite narrative which circumscribes a limited area.

So far, my only ideas for fractal forms are based on crude substitution rules. Such substitution is ideally suited to hypertext linking conventions.

The fractal form should be 'infinitely expandable' according to firm rules. The user should be able to navigate the text by changing scale. The user should be able to expand the text according to these rules.

To implement such a form as a wiki would involve building a validator. Such a wiki would not be completely free. Instead, it would be severely restricted. But any user could change the text in any way so long as the text adhered to formal rules set up from the start.

A prototype of my fractal text is now up and running at http://tommyrot.arrr.net/qwiki/ [dead link 2010 -- JasonGrossman] This is a wiki in the sense that anyone can add to it, but it is a Oulipean venture in the sense that there are rules and the rules are strictly enforced.

-- TomHinkle