Carrot Jokes are a genre of dense, joke-like texts first proposed by cognitive linguists Chlopicki and Petray (1981) to undermine emerging computational models of humor analysis. These jokes, further developed by others in the field, depend on a preponderance of background incongruities, blunt omissions, faulty script switch-triggers, “gray” implicature, and missing links in inferencing.

Michael Portnoy’s practice spans dance-theater, vocal power-tools, Relational Stalinism, reptangles, abstract gambling, the improvement of biennials, and Icelandic cockroach porn. His art circles the rules of play and communication—language itself playing a crucial role in the works.