Rewriting Frankenstein was created in anticipation of the bicentenary of Mary Shelley’s novel. Taking Victor Frankenstein’s creature, assembled from mismatched body parts, as its analogy, the work invites readers to reconstruct the story word by word.
A participant begins at the opening of the book or chooses any word found within it. At each step, the interface offers words that follow the current word elsewhere in Shelley’s original text. Each decision splices a new path through the novel while retaining its vocabulary and local grammatical possibilities.
The work used two linked Twitter accounts. @Mary_W_Shelley published sentences completed through the interactive artwork; @Frankenbotstein was an automated bot that answered using the same textual method. People could also address Frankenbotstein directly to elicit a generated reply, extending the cut-up dialogue beyond the artwork’s interface.
The browser-based rewriting interface remains available. Its historical Twitter integration should be understood as part of the original work and may no longer operate following changes to that platform’s services.
The two accounts
@Mary_W_Shelley published the participant-authored text. @Frankenbotstein generated the responding voice.