- A work of 3D, minimally-interactive digital concrete/kinetic poetry, recreating in real time the rail journey between Penzance and London on the British Great Western Railway, c.1852.
- Uses context-free grammars (Tracery) in combination with corpora derived from historical datasets to generate the passing landscapes and stations as poetic textual fragments, moving in parallax.
- Algorithmically-generated (and text-derived) delays provide momentary combinations of fragments into glimpsed "almost-narratives", framed by the train window.
- Surfacing new combinations, juxtapositions and poetic imagery from this tangled, globalised web of cultural data, the work offers a polyphonic reimagining of the biases, desires and imaginations of the Victorian machine age.
- A framework for understanding the shifting relationships with space and time engendered by the First Industrial Revolution, as well as the emerging imperialist projects of standardised “data regimes” (Atik, 2026) and “data colonialism” (Couldry and Mejias, 2018; Banerjee, 2025), whose descendant ideologies continue to define our societies today.
- Created in collaboration with the Alan Turing Institute's Living With Machines research project.
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App (iOS and Google Play, coming soon)
A work of 3D interactive digital poetry, combining kinetic and concrete poetic traditions with novel data-led and generative methodologies to explore human/machine relations in 19th century Britain.
Originating during my digital residency with the Alan Turing Institute’s Living With Machines project, the work uses the 3D videogame software Unity to simulate the ten-hour rail journey between Penzance and London in 1852. The views of the landscape and passing stations are rendered as fragments of poetry moving past the train window, procedurally generated from hand-authored grammars using Kate Compton's Tracery software (Compton et al., 2014). These fragments only coalesce into accidental, haiku-like vignettes when the train stops at a station or is delayed.
The work draws heavily on historical datasets, including train timetables, station geodata and a large corpus of contemporary texts including novels, poetry, essays, scientific/medical/botanical texts and ‘grey literature’ from both Britain and its colonies, including railway accident reports, newspaper clippings, political speeches and more. This textual data has been cleaned and processed using a bespoke technical pipeline, relying on both established natural language processing techniques and emerging large language model methodologies. It provides the raw material for both the generated poetry and the functioning of the simulated railway itself. Surfacing new combinations, juxtapositions and poetic imagery from this tangled, globalised web of cultural data, the work offers a polyphonic reimagining of the biases, desires and imaginations of the Victorian age, as well as the shifting relationships with space and time engendered by the First Industrial Revolution. It also reflects the emerging imperialist projects of standardised “data regimes”Atik, 2026) and “data colonialism” (Couldry and Mejias, 2018; Banerjee, 2025), whose descendant ideologies continue to define our societies today.
Inspired by, informed by and in conversation with an interdisciplinary mix of works and discourses (including concrete and kinetic poetry, “zero-player” and art games and generative narrative practice), the work provides novel perspectives on:
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The challenges of generativity for interactive narrative, with the proposal of fragmentary and kinetically-fleeting ‘almost-narratives’ as a potential solution;
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The historical dichotomy of database and narrative in digital media, and new ways to creatively interpenetrate them;
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The emerging crossover of videogame design and artistic/poetic practice, especially the rise of minimally interactive, meditative or “zero-player” experiences;
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The emerging use of large language models for bottom-up, schema-specific corpora construction for generative cultural work (also known as Generative Information Extraction).
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Main Unity project available in
/etiquette-main(v. 6000.2.5f1) -
Screenshots (WIP and final) in
/screenshots -
NLP scripts, categoriser code and other corpora generation material in
/corpora_generation -
Latest builds also available in
/builds
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Look around with the mouse/trackpad, click with either mouse button or tap.
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Click, hold and drag the window handle to lean out.
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Click and hold the timetable to peruse.
- Residency Announcement: https://livingwithmachines.ac.uk/announcing-our-digital-residents/
- Report (via The Alan Turing Institute): https://livingwithmachines.ac.uk/lwm-digital-residency-an-etiquette-for-minor-time-travel/
- Report (via the AI & Arts Forum): https://medium.com/the-ai-and-arts-forum/an-etiquette-for-minor-time-travel-0e69d0a5b561
- Artist's Essay/Statement: https://robsherman.co.uk/thegoodlymist/2023/10/17/etiquette.html
Bradshaw's Etiquette For Minor Time Travel was initially funded through the 2023 digital residency scheme of the Alan Turing Institute.
The structure of the simulated rail journey (including historically-accurate station stops and landscape data) at the centre of the work was based on the StopsGB dataset (Coll Arudnay et al, 2021) and the National Library of Scotland's digitised database of the Ordnance Survey's 25 inch to the mile maps, c.1855-1882.
The text generated by the experience uses the Tracery library (Compton. et al., 2014), based on corpora that are partially hand-authored and partially scraped and categorised from the following texts:
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The entire database of accident reports on British railways, until 1852, held on Railways Archive;
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Accidents On Railways. Manchester: Burgess and Co, 1840.
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A Life For A Life. London: Hurst and Blackett, 1859.
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A Sketch of the Missionary and Other Operations of the Society of Irish Chuirch Missions. London: Seely, Hatchard and Nisbet, 1852.
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Ainsworth, W. H. The Lancashire Witches: A Romance of Pendle Forest. London: George Routledge, 1854.
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Ainsworth, W.H. The Constable De Bourbon. Project Gutenburg, 2015.
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Badnall, R. A Treatise on Railway Improvements. London: Sherwood, Gilbert and Piper, 1883.
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Bessemer, H. On a new system of manufacturing sugar from the cane, and its advantages. London, 1852.
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Byron, G.G. The Complete Poetical Works London: Macmillan & Co, 1907.
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Campbell, J. Negro-Mania: Being An Examination of the Falsely Assumed Equality of the Various Races of Men. Philadelpha: Campbell & Powe, 1851.
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Clare, J. Poems by John Clare. Oxford: Horace Hart, 1908.
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Coleridge, S. T. The Complete Poetical Works. Project Gutenberg, 2009.
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Collins, W. Jezebel's Daughter. Project Gutenberg, 2003.
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Collins, W. Little Novels. Project Gutenberg, 1999.
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Cornwall, B. Poetical Works. London: J. Green, 1822.
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Dickens, C. The Cricket on the Hearth. 1845.
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Dickens, C. The Uncommercial Traveller. London: Chapman & Hall, 1905.
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Durand, P. Specifications for Preserving animal and vegetable food. London: Great Seal Patent Office, 1855.
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Gaskell, E. North and South. London: Walter Scott, 1855.
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Grant, C.W. Bombay Cotton Indian Railways. London: L, B, G & L, 1850.
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Gordon-Cumming, R. Catalogue of hunting trophies, native arms, and costumes, from the far interior of South Africa, etc. London: G. Norman, 1850.
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Hall, S.C. Turns of Fortune, and other Tales. New York: C.S. Francis & Co, 1851.
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Haunted London. London: William Tarn, 1860(?).
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Influence: A Moral Tale. London: Hatchard & Son, 1822.
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Kingsley, C. Westward Ho!. London, 1855.
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Kingsley, C. The Water-Babies: A Fairy Tale For A Land Baby. 1863.
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Kingsley, C. Discipline & Other Semons. London: Macmillan & Co, 1881.
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Kingsley, C. Twenty-Five Village Sermons. Project Gutenberg, 2005.
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Kingsley, C. The Water of Life and Other Sermons. London: Macmillan & Co, 1890.
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Kingsley, C. Hypatia. Project Gutenberg, 2004.
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Landon, L.E. Poetical Works. London: L, B, G & L, 1850.
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Maclean, W.C. A treatise on the small pox. Madras: H. Smith, 1858.
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Marshall, J. A geographical and statistical display of the locality, relation, superficies, and population of each county, section, district, and colony of the British Empire. London: J. Haddon, 1837.
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Meredith, G. The Entire Short Works. Project Gutenberg, 2004.
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Meredith, G. The Amazing Marriage. Project Gutenberg, 2004.
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Moore, T. Life of Lord Byron. London: John Murray, 1854.
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Ollier, C. Fallacy of ghosts dreams, and omens; with stories of witchcraft, life-in-death and monomania. London, 1848.
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Peters, W. RAILWAY DANGERS AND HOW TO AVOID THEM London: Effingham Wilson, 1853.
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Ramsay, H.A. Letter to Dr. James Bryan, on the Southern negro, etc. Philadelphia: A. Hughes & Co, 1853.
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Ruskin, J. The Complete Works. New York: National Library Association, 2005.
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Scott, W. The Pirate. Philadelphia: The University Library Association, 1893.
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Scott, W. The Waverley Novels. Project Gutenberg, 2004.
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Shelley, M. Lodore. London: Richard Bentley, 1835.
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Sidney, S. GAUGE EVIDENCE, THE HISTORY AND PROSPECTS OF THE RAILWAY SYSTEM. London: Edmonds and Vacher, 1846.
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The text of the 1838 Special Constables Act, 1837
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Trollope, A. The Way We Live Now.* Project Gutenberg, 2004.
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Trollope, A. The Fixed Period. Project Gutenberg, 2008.
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Trollope, F. The Widow Barnaby. London: Richard Bentley, 1839.
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Waring, E. J. Remarks on the uses of some bazaar medicines, and on a few of the common indigenous plants of India : according to European practice. Travancore: Sirrar Press, 1860.
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Whewell, W. The Elements Of Morality London: John W. Parker, 1845.
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White, G. The natural history of Selborne. London: James Chambers ,1833.
🚧 Full bibliography in progress...g🚧!
The various outputs of the project explain the artistic and technical contexts of this generation in more detail.
Built in Unity (6000.2.5f).
Large language models (Claude, ChatGPT and self-hosted Qwen builds) were used for both corpora classification (see 'Longer Context' above) and for targeted code support for specific Unity C# scripts.
Unity Plugins & Assets:
3D Models:
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'Door Handle' by Velivian Fesothe
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'Suitcase' by Olli_one
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Folded Paper by Dolphin Studio
Fonts:
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Cargo
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Didot LT
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FetteEgyptienne
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Gravitas One
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Mrs Eaves Roman
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URW Bookman
'Accident Archive', Railways Archive, 2026 [Online]
Atik, F. 'The Transformation of Narrative In The Age Of Data Regimes'. I.J. Social Sciences and Management Review. 9:1, 2026.
Banerjee, S. 'Historical Genealogies of Data Colonialism: From Colonial Censuses to Digital AI Systems'. Int. Conf on Smart Systems and Social Management, 31 December 2025.
Coll Ardanuy, M et al. 'StopsGB: Structured Timeline of Passenger Stations in Great Britain'. London: British Library, 2021.
Compton, K. et al. 'Tracery: Approachable Story Grammar Authoring for Casual Users'. Intelligent Narrative Technologies 7, AAAI, 2014.
Couldry, N. and Mejias, U.A. 'Data Colonialism: Rethinking Big Data's Relation to the Contemporary Subject'. Television and New Media 20:4, 2018.