dpoetry.com

What is Jason Nelson?

Jason Nelson is a digital artist and writer who works at the intersection of poetry, art-games, and interactive narrative. His site, Jason Nelson, presents a portfolio of works that are typically short, experimental, and meant to be experienced rather than simply read: interactive poems, digital art pieces, locative games, and AI-assisted writing experiments.

What kinds of work are on the site

The portfolio spans a wide range of formats and years:

• Digital poetry and narrative hybrids: Nine Billion Branches (2018–19) is described as an interactive digital poem and fiction hybrid; The False Unlimited (2020) is an interactive digital poem/art-game hybrid about the death of truth in political and social language.
• Art-games and locative works: Impossible Creatures (2022–23) is a locative art-game satirizing games like Pokémon Go; Cheat Codes for Hinterland WalkThroughs (2021) replicates a journey through a bushfire-changed landscape.
• AI and research projects: the Ultra-Large Digital Narrative and Poetry Research Project (2022–ongoing) explores how AI can generate new forms of digital writing.
• Public and site-specific works: A cottage year (2022–ongoing) is a permanent digital artwork in Brisbane using historical climate and weather data; Directions for Ziggurats to Scale (2018) projected video-based digital poetry across a Brisbane bridge.
• Ongoing collections: InterbaseDataface gathers smaller interactive or odd short experiences.

Who it is for

This is most useful for people interested in electronic literature, game studies, digital art, or experimental writing—students and researchers looking for concrete examples, curators seeking work to exhibit, and fellow artists wanting to see how code, data, and place can be folded into poetic form. It is less suited to someone looking for conventional poems or straightforward narrative fiction.

A practical next step

If you want to understand his approach quickly, start with one work that matches your interest: Nine Billion Branches if you care about poetry and fiction, Impossible Creatures if you care about games and location, or the AI research project if you care about machine-generated writing. Each entry on the site names its year and format, so you can judge the medium before committing time to it.

What digital art and poetry projects has Jason Nelson created?

Jason Nelson's site presents a catalogue of digital writing, digital art and art-games, spanning short interactive pieces, large-scale public projections, locative works and AI-driven experiments. The emphasis is on works that are experienced rather than simply read: screen-based poems, game hybrids and site-specific installations.

Recurring threads

• Digital poetry and narrative hybrids: Nine Billion Branches (2018–19) explores the beauty in mundane objects and places; The False Unlimited (2020) is an interactive poem/art-game hybrid about the death of truth in political and social language.
• Games and play: Acesulfame K (2019) puts you in control of a falling skeleton smashing into objects; Impossible Creatures (Curio Creatures) (2022–23) is a locative art-game satirising games like Pokémon Go through speculative zoology.
• Place and archive: The Wonders of Lost Trajectories Project (2018–20) gathers six interactive and screen-based works informed by state archive materials. A cottage year (2022–ongoing) is a permanent digital artwork at Queen's Wharf Precinct, Brisbane, driven by climate, weather and historical environmental data from the early 1850s and '60s.
• Public and architectural scale: Directions for Ziggurats to Scale (2018) projected video-based digital poetry across Brisbane's William Jolly Bridge.
• AI and new forms: Ultra-Large Digital Narrative and Poetry Research Project (2022–ongoing) uses animated and interactive works to test how AI can generate new kinds of digital writing.
• Time, place and voice: Entierly Every Forever (2024) tells a tale through an all-seeing magpie in Meanjin/Brisbane; Diffracted Hemispheres (2023–24) centres on a lighthouse lens and the timeless power of light; The Many Occasions of Moving (2022–23) investigates video game engines and interfaces as vehicles for digital narrative and poetry; Cheat Codes for Hinterland WalkThroughs (2021) turns a bushfire-altered journey through South East Queensland into a digital poetry game.

A quick comparison

For a first visit, pick by format rather than theme: if you want something you can finish in one sitting, start with the shorter interactive pieces collected under InterbaseDataface; if you want to understand the range, move to the longer-running projects such as A cottage year and the AI research work.

How can I experience Jason Nelson's art-games and interactive digital poems?

Jason Nelson's interactive digital poems and art-games are experienced in the browser or in place, depending on the work. His site presents them as a portfolio of short experiences: some are playable pieces, some are screen-based digital writing, and some are tied to a physical location.

Where the works live

• Online, in the browser: Many pieces are interactive digital poems or art-game hybrids that run on the page, including The False Unlimited, Nine Billion Branches, Cheat Codes for Hinterland WalkThroughs, and the ongoing Ultra-Large Digital Narrative and Poetry Research Project.
• In the world, on location: A cottage year is a permanent digital artwork at Queen's Wharf Precinct in Brisbane, Australia, driven by historical climate and weather data. Directions for Ziggurats to Scale was projected across the William Jolly Bridge in central Brisbane. Impossible Creatures (Curio Creatures) is a locative art-game, so it needs a device and a place to walk.
• As augmented reality: Entierly Every Forever is described as AR work, set in Meanjin/Brisbane and narrated by a magpie.
• As exhibitions and archives-based projects: The Wonders of Lost Trajectories Project was an exhibition of six screen-based and interactive works drawing on state archive materials.

A practical way in

Start with the shorter, self-contained pieces. Acesulfame K is a quick, strange interaction; The False Unlimited is an interactive poem about language and truth; Nine Billion Branches is a longer interactive poem-and-fiction hybrid. These need only a browser and a few minutes, so they are the easiest test of whether Nelson's style suits you.

If you want the full range, plan around location and time. The site-specific and locative works are not things you can fully experience from a desk; they belong to Brisbane and to particular precincts. The AR and bridge-projection works in particular are one-off or place-bound, so treat the site as documentation of experiences rather than a complete archive.

For context on digital poetry and art-games more broadly, the Electronic Literature Organization at Electronic Literature Organization and the Rhizome archive at Rhizome are useful references.

What is the AR work Entierly Every Forever about?

Entierly Every Forever is an AR work from 2024 in which the story is told by an all-seeing magpie that exists outside the realms of time. The narrative is set in Meanjin (Brisbane, Australia), and the magpie has witnessed the place across its history — so the piece layers a non-human, timeless perspective onto a specific real-world location. It sits within a broader collection of short interactive and digital writing works on Jason Nelson.

What that means in practice

If you have used location-based or augmented-reality art before, expect something closer to a place-anchored story than a game with objectives. The magpie is a guide and narrator rather than a player character, and the "outside of time" framing is what lets the work move between historical moments in the same city without needing a conventional plot.

A useful comparison with the other works listed on the same site:

The pattern across these is site-specific digital writing: the physical location is not decoration but part of the work's meaning.

Who it suits and what to weigh

It will appeal most to people interested in digital poetry, experimental narrative, and art that responds to a real place — particularly if you are in or visiting Brisbane, since an AR work tied to Meanjin loses much of its force elsewhere. The trade-off is the usual one for locative and AR pieces: it depends on a device, a compatible app or platform, and being in the right area, so it is not something you can simply read on a screen from anywhere. If you want the ideas without the geography, Nine Billion Branches or The False Unlimited are screen-based alternatives from the same body of work.

A practical next step: check the individual project page for Entierly Every Forever for its access requirements and any on-site instructions before travelling to a location for it.

What is the Impossible Creatures locative art-game and how does it critique games like Pokemon Go?

Impossible Creatures (also listed as Curio Creatures) is a locative art-game by Jason Nelson, dated 2022–23 on Jason Nelson. In the artist's own description, it is "satirical of locative games such as Pokemon Go" and explores "speculative and imaginative zoology." So the critique is built into the premise: instead of hunting fictional creatures that are placed in the world for you to collect, the work turns the player's attention toward invented, speculative animals and the act of imagining them.

How the critique works

Locative games like Pokémon Go train players to treat real places as spawn points: you walk a route, a creature appears, you capture it, you move on. The satire in Impossible Creatures targets that loop — the way a location becomes a resource, and the creature becomes a collectible. By framing its creatures as "speculative and imaginative zoology," the work shifts the emphasis from catching to wondering: what would it mean for an animal to belong to a place rather than be dropped into it?

Practical differences a player would notice:

• Goal: collection and completion versus observation and speculation.
• Creature status: designed game assets versus imagined species with a zoological framing.
• Relationship to place: location as a spawn point versus location as habitat or context.
• Tone: competitive progress versus playful, satirical commentary.

What to expect if you try it

This is an art-game, not a service with a large player base, so expect a short, authored experience rather than endless content. It sits alongside Nelson's other locative and site-specific works, such as Directions for Ziggurats to Scale, projected across Brisbane's William Jolly Bridge, and A cottage year, a permanent digital artwork at Queen's Wharf Precinct. If you are interested in how game engines and interfaces get repurposed for digital narrative and poetry, start with Impossible Creatures and then look at The Many Occasions of Moving, which takes that intersection as its explicit subject.

How does Jason Nelson use AI in his Ultra-Large Digital Narrative and Poetry Research Project?

Jason Nelson’s Ultra-Large Digital Narrative and Poetry Research Project (2022–ongoing) is described on his site as a set of animated and interactive works exploring how AI can be used to create new forms of digital writing. That places AI in the role of a compositional collaborator: generating or shaping text and motion rather than simply automating production.

What that means in practice

• Generative writing: AI is used to produce language that becomes part of a poem or narrative, with the artist curating, editing and structuring the output.
• Interactive form: The works are animated and interactive, so the writing is experienced through movement, timing and reader input, not just static lines.
• New forms, not just new tools: The stated aim is to find forms of digital writing that wouldn’t exist without AI — for example, text that shifts, responds or expands beyond a fixed page.

Where it sits in his wider practice

The project is one entry in a portfolio that repeatedly mixes poetry with games, locative media and data. A cottage year (2022–ongoing) draws on climate and historical environmental data; Impossible Creatures (2022–23) is a satirical locative art-game; Cheat Codes for Hinterland WalkThroughs (2021) turns a bushfire-altered landscape into a digital poetry game. The AI project is best understood as the strand where machine-generated language becomes the raw material rather than data or game mechanics.

A useful next step

If you want to judge the work rather than just categorise it, ask three questions while viewing: What did the AI actually generate — words, images, structure or pacing? How much human editing is visible in the final text? And does the interactivity change the meaning, or is it decoration? Those criteria separate genuine AI-driven digital writing from a conventional poem presented on a screen.