My name is Helen Shewolfe Tseng, and I am an interdisciplinary artist, designer, wildlife naturalist, and occasional computational poet based in San Francisco. I tend toward mythological and ecological themes in my work, and you will see some of that in what I show tonight. In 2024, I joined the editorial collective for Taper, a browser-based literary magazine for computational poetry under 2KB (2048 bytes).
 what is computational poetry?
Computational poetry is a subset of electronic literature, which encompasses the various genres and processes of writing that engage digital or computational capabilities aesthetically. Computational poetry involves poetics on both the levels of syntax (that is, the poetry in the code itself) and affect (that is, how the code works to arrange language and produce creative expression). The School for Poetic Computation expands their definition of poetic computation to include alternate, radical, and critical engagements with computing, that reimagine its uses beyond the dominant patterns of serving capitalistic goals.

 on taper and sizecoding
Sizecoding is the art and practice of writing tiny computer programs (as measured in bytes). Relatedly, the demoscene is a computer art subculture focused on producing small, self-contained programs that are often (impressively!) audio-visual in form. Taper is a sizecoding publication that is sometimes demoscene-adjacent, though maybe also distinct in its literary origins and focus.

Taper’s 2KB constraint serves as both a creative and ideological limitation. On the former, the choices one makes to reduce code to size while maintaining its intentions are not only challenging, but often poetic in nature. On the latter, the weight of a website is relevant to its carbon footprint, and websites with lower byte counts typically consume less energy.* Taper pieces are also written as standalone code, without the use of external libraries or other externally-linked resources that would further increase energy costs.

* Low-Tech Magazine is a good resource for learning more.

 on the handmade web
J. R. Carpenter evoked the term handmade web to refer to the portion of websites coded by hand and maintained by individuals, likening the practice to that of zines and artists books. Carpenter’s ethos of the handmade web advocates for ongoing active engagement with its making, draws attention to the body and the manual labor involved, and suggests slowness and smallness as forms of resistance.

I am an enthusiastic participant in the handmade web! All of the projects I will show today are hand-coded pieces. I often imagine hand-coding going the way of hobby crafts like knitting, hand-weaving, or embroidery, which may be rendered “obsolete” by contemporary technologies (and “vibes” ??), but still retain the pleasures and principles that make them worth returning to as an artistic medium and process.

some recent projects


AXIS MUNDI: 狐仙 (2022)
a soothing altar space for pause and breath

A Compass of Lunar Trigrams (2022, for Taper #8: 8-Bit Nostalgia)
As the word “nostalgia” in this issue’s prompt derives from the Greek words for “homecoming” and “grief,” this piece borrows from the visual language of the octagonal feng shui mirror (a protective talisman for the home) and the compass (a magnetic wayfinding device originally invented in Han Dynasty China for divinatory purposes). The auspicious number 8 also appears through the ba gua (eight trigrams) of Taoist cosmology, and the eight phases of the Moon (culturally and linguistically associated with home, family, and timekeeping). UTF-8 encodes these symbols and emoji for the web, allowing them to be displayed here with minimal impact to the file size constraints.

K9-tailed (2022, for Taper #9: Nine Lives)
A durational visual poem that unfurls over time. The Chinese word for the number nine, 九, is a homophone for 久, a word signifying a long period of time; in Chinese culture, the number nine is associated with longevity and eternity. The mythical nine-tailed fox, originating in Chinese mythology and appearing in various forms throughout East Asian folklore, is said to grow each of its tails over a long lifetime, gaining shapeshifting abilities and magical powers with each one, and eventually ascending to the heavens after 999 years. As you remain on the page, the virtual canine’s tails, each formed by the 9 glyph, slowly fade into view, with each tail taking longer than the last. If you wait long enough, you can witness the fox transform into a golden celestial being. The poem reaches completion within minutes, but per our expectations for the web, the process seems to take forever.

X/十/10: Wheel of Fortune (2023, for Taper #10: Powers of Ten)
In the tarot, the tenth Major Arcana card is the Wheel of Fortune. Throughout history, people have turned their gazes toward the sky (天, ten) in order to divine their fortunes. This piece features a Wheel of Fortune drawn with the shapes of X, 十, and 10, all glyphs for the number ten, dividing the wheel into ten segments. A play on astrological charts, a spin of the wheel generates a visual poem in the form of a constellation of stars and words (the latter all containing the letters “ten”). The reader is invited to use this piece as a divination tool: inquire with a question or concern, interpret meaning in the generated poem, and gain insight.

Smoke Signals (2023, for Taper #11: Parallels)
A participatory poem that invites the reader to transmit messages to loved ones who have passed on to the spirit realm. The piece is a nod to wind phones, which make space for grieving visitors to hold one-way conversations with their dead. Referencing the Chinese tradition of burning incense as offerings to the departed, transmissions are rendered as ephemeral smoke, rising from joss sticks that gather in parallel with each message sent. The digital incense sticks appear to burn down and recede from view, mirroring our own brief timelines in our parallel sphere of the living.

FLUXIIS (2024, for Taper #12: Tools)
An instructional poem generator for experimental rituals, inspired by the participatory performance pieces of the Fluxus art movement. Each poem is constructed from lists of words informed by canonical dozens (the Western and Chinese zodiacs, the Greek Pantheon, the Twelve Days of Christmas) and the occult tools of the Minor Arcana (wand, cup, pentacle, sword). The instructions combine the mundane, abstract, and absurd, and invite the reader to use them as tools of their own interpretations. Roll the dice to generate a new ritual.

Preambles (2024)
poetic prompts and lyric games for walks, web version of a print game published by Bathers Library Artist Games

Coyote Spotting Simulator (2024, for Taper #13: Superstitions)
A game of sorts: 𓃥 Look for coyotes. Zoom in for a closer view. 𓃦 Attune yourself to subtle shifts and signs. 𓃢 Sit with the landscape as it changes over time. I share my city with a small population of coyotes. For a long time, I never encountered them. Often, they camouflage perfectly within their surroundings. Often, they notice me first, then vanish before I have a chance to notice them. Over the recent past, as my interest in coyotes has grown from fleeting curiosity to dedicated study, my senses have also adapted to better detecting them. Even so, every day I spot a coyote is a lucky day indeed.
Field Sonata (2025, for Taper #14: Sonnets)
The word “sonnet,” deriving from “little song” or “little sound,” is etymologically linked to the word “sonata,” a musical composition structured in movements. This piece collects and disperses little songs and sounds as a spatial onomatopoeic sonata against a simulation of changing light and sky, a score for the ambient soundscapes naturally occurring on a particular stretch of wild land I know and love. Movements of movement, the ecological nested within the planetary. The duration of the piece, four minutes and thirty-three seconds, is an homage to John Cage’s 4’33”, and an invitation for the viewer to bring awareness to your own ambient soundscapes as you watch the poem unfold.

Lycanthrobot (2016–present)
a moon phase and werewolf bot, formerly on twitter, ported to bsky in 2025

straw dogs (2025)
a microgame-poem about cycles, change, and coexistence

coyote.computer (ongoing)
tiny self-hosted server

Edited and augmented for Quinn R. Keck's opening of +/- 3,919 GRIDS at Confloptus in Oakland, California on September 21, 2025. Originally written for and presented at WordHack at Wonderville in Brooklyn, New York on August 21, 2025.