This Bitsy art game invites you to spend a couple of minutes in a garden that changes with the time of day and the passing seasons, reading generative haikus drawn from the work of Matsuo Bashō (translated by David Landis Barnhill) and Yosa Buson (translated by Allan Persinger). You are invited to return to the garden at different points during the day, and throughout the year, to witness the changing scene, with the generated text reflecting these temporal shifts.
The garden uses location data to determine the time of day and season. The garden scene therefore changes automatically in the morning (roughly between 5-10am), at daytime (between 10-5pm), in the evening (~5-8pm), and at night-time (~8pm-5am), depending on the time of year. It will also change seasons depending on the local hemisphere. For Northern latitudes, the start of Spring is 1 March; Summer is 1 June; Autumn is 1 September; Winter is 1 December. These invert for Southern latitudes. The piece also marks solstices and equinoxes, along with new and full moons.
This piece was inspired by poem.exe, a haiku generating bot by Liam Cooke.
You can explore the piece at itch.io.