Pien Shyu



Beatrice Emails (2025)


Inspired by “The Beatrice Letters” (2006) by Lemony Snicket, this web art piece generates poetry lines based on Lemony’s writing style by users interacting with the infinite pop up windows of charms and letters.

The project explores how narrative structure can be embedded into interaction logic, turning authorship into a system rather than a fixed output.

Beatrice Emails (2025)




Context

Web Design, Web Development, Creative Coding

Tools 


HTML, CSS, JavaScript

I designed the underlying Markov chain system, defining how text is parsed and recombined to model narrative voice. Trained on the Beatrice letters, the system generates new sequences through probability, which Flask serves to an interactive interface where each interaction produces and places new text.



The interface responds differently based on user interaction.
Clicking on Charms: generates new windows, creating an expanding, layered environment,
Clicking on Letters: triggers the Markov system to generate and drop new poetic lines onto the canvas.