Aka our OCR software is insanely inaccurate.
It’s interesting that mapping random noise to characters via OCR generally produces valid perl… but I always hated how they phrased the title of this experiment since it’s obviously bullshit. Essentially, a good interesting experiment made less interesting by a sensationalist title.
It’s whimsical, Leland.
I think it’s okay to relax a little when we’re just having a bit of fun.
Perl programs are, by definition, text. So “paint splatters are valid Perl” implies that there’s a mapping from paint splatters to text.
Do you have a suggested mapping of paint splatters to text that would be more “accurate” than OCR? And do you really think it would result in fewer valid Perl programs?
I love SIGBOVIK - truly some insane projects are presented there. Like Tom Murphy’s projects of creating a hard drive from pings, or using AI to create uppest and lowest case letters. Or reverse emulating a Nintendo (which is a particular favorite of mine).
One other project that I really love was presented at the 2021 Sigbovik: Fontemon, created by Michael Mulet. It’s a full-blown choose-your-own-adventure game in a font. Truly insane. Here’s a short video showing the basics of how it works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VY1hDQMeU3A
