Forty-Four Esolangs

“Through the lens of magical realism, Forty-Four Esolangs delves into the improbable and impossible of language design. Serving as both a window into the wild world of esoteric programming languages and a philosophical daydream on the nature of code and communication, this is a work of startling technical curiosity and profound poetic beauty that will leave you pondering the uncharted avenues of language design and swirling with ideas to explore on your own.”—Sy Brand, esolanger (Vizh, Enjamb, li1I); poet (Cloud Picker); author (Building a Debugger)“This is a book inspired as much by Calvino, Perec, and Fluxus as it is by any programming manual. Daniel Temkin brings humor and humanity to his examinations of language and its proliferating outcomes. At a time when most thinkers position code in opposition to human creativity, Temkin’s ‘prompts’ invite us to play with the possibilities of meaning in the way that all the best art does.”—Nayland Blake, artist; Guggenheim Fellow; Co-Director, Studio Art Program, Bard College“Every new spread in the book makes a reader feel like they’re discovering new territory with a worthy explorer who’s there for the joy of it.”—Douglas Coupland, artist; author of Generation X and Microserfs“Esolangs reveals what it would be like if Yoko Ono, Guy Debord, Sol LeWitt, Harryette Mullen, and Georges Perec had written programming languages. Every text is a program, and every program here is exemplary.”—Craig Dworkin, Professor of English, University of Utah; author of No Medium“This one-of-a-kind research challenges all the preexisting dogmas about programming code, finally breaking it free from its conventional technical space.”—Neural

Daniel Temkin makes photographic and computational art exploring logic and human irrationality. He began interviewing other esolangers and code artists in 2011, creating the blog esoteric.codes. ZKM exhibited the blog and commissioned videos of Temkin explaining esolang history for their Open Codes show in 2018-19. Esoteric.codes earned an ArtsWriters.org grant and a residency at New Museum’s NEW INC, the first museum-led cultural incubator. Temkin has written about esolangs for Hyperallergic and Leonardo, and his aesthetic theory of the form was published by Digital Humanities Quarterly.