Tasty Gougère

"Helen J Burgess is an Associate Professor of English at North Carolina State University, editor of the journal Hyperrhiz: New Media Cultures, and co-founder of the long-form digital monograph series Electric Press. 

This Taroko Gorge remix is based on eating deliciously fatty and unhealthy foods, such as the Gougère cheese mentioned in the title, but Burgess adds two other factors: one is an LDL cholesterol counter that counts up to 160 and provides advice on seeking medical attention, and another is a marquee strip that scrolls information on high levels of triglycerides and cholesterol levels. The masterstroke in this variation is the use of the 'path' function in the code. In Montfort's version, this line of code produces a small possibility for a monkey to appear within the forest landscape whereas Burgess' applies this moment of statistical rarity to surprise the reader with 'myocardial infarction.' The endless consumption of unhealthy food, which even continues past the random heart attack in Tasty Gougère, serves as a reminder of how the gourmand in all of us can only roll so many dice before our bodies run out of luck." -- from Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 3