The Death of the Authors, 1941

http://publicdomainday.constantvzw.org/

Download the books: http://publicdomainday.constantvzw.org/#1941
Printed copies (set of 3): 15€ (excl shipping costs)
Interested to order a copy? Please email info@constantvzw.org

The Death of the Authors, 1941 is a generative novel made with Python and nltk, based on texts by Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Rabindranath Tagore, Elizabeth Von Arnim, Sherwood Anderson and Henri Bergson, some of the authors we welcomed in the public domain on 1-1-12.
Every time you launch the script on http://publicdomainday.constantvzw.org/#1941, a different novel is created. As a hommage to the life and demise of authors whose bodies merged with earth in 1941, each version takes you through four seasons that are composed of thematically selected sentences from their liberated texts.
The selection of the texts used for this publication is very much influenced by the availability of works online. Famous authors are easy to find, English works and translations are often available as free e-books, thanks to an initiative such as The Gutenberg Project.

The Death of the Authors is a series of generative narratives based on work by authors in the public domain. Each year in January, when Constant celebrates Public Domain Day in collaboration with Cinema Nova, CRIDS and The Royal Library of Belgium, we present a new derivative work, as a way to inspire you to make public works electronically available and rediscover them.
Every year on New Year’s Day, due to the expiration of copyright protection terms on works produced by authors who died seven decades earlier, thousands of works enter the public domain - that is, their content is no longer owned or controlled by anyone, but it rather becomes a common treasure, available for anyone to freely use for any purpose.