Nanowatt

Nanowatt is a very small program that generates some of the most bizarre portions of Samuel Beckett’s second novel, Watt. It runs on the Commodore VIC-20, a 1981 computer that displays only 22 characters per line. The 3.5KB program exactly quotes 8KB of English text, then exactly quotes 8KB in French translation, all while music (composed by Michael C. Martin) plays. The “demo” concludes with a second song, braggadocio explaining our accomplishment, and shout-outs to others. Although shown in the graphics-dominated context of the demoscene (at Récursion, a demoparty in Montréal), the program is a conceptual project and a special-purpose compression system, customized to Beckett’s prose.