Kissing the steak: The poetry of text generators

2012

Proceedings of the INLG 2016 Workshop on Computational Creativity in Natural Language Generation, 2016

The paper presents a reconstruction of the automatic poetry generation system realized in Italy in 1961 by Nanni Balestrini to compose the poem Tape Mark I. The major goal of the paper is to provide a critical comparison between the high-level approach that seems to be suggested by the poet, and the low-level combinatorial algorithm that was actually implemented. This comparison allows to assess the relevance of how the available technology constrained and shaped the work of the poet, to reveal some of his aesthetic assumptions, and to discuss some aspects of the relation between human and the machine in the creative process.

2011

TRADUÇÃO EM REVISTA

Untranslatability is more associated with poetry than any other genre because of its formal features-rhyme, meter, paronomasia inter alia-whose functionality so often depends on idiosyncratic qualities of a given language. 1 The difficulties suggested in Roman Jakobson's categorical affirmation that "poetry by definition is untranslatable" (113) and in Robert Frost's definition of poetry as "what gets lost in translation" are compounded further in the synthetic minimalism of Brazilian concrete poetry, as each poem aims to be a selfsufficient structure of linguistic relations, as opposed to a vehicle of mood, rhythmic emotivity, or meaning. Each instance of composition should be a unique, original event, a sui generis verbivocovisual ideogram that by its very nature would pose extreme if not insurmountable challenges to the prospect of satisfactory rendition in another language. Still, the Brazilian originators of poesia concreta indeed sought to see their work rendered in other tongues in order to enhance visibility for the movement and to increase circulation of their neo-vanguard output. Moreover, the poets of the São Paulo Noigandres group-Décio Pignatari, Augusto de Campos, and Haroldo de Campos-also distinguished themselves as translators of all manner of lyric, from troubadour texts, baroque sonnets, and romantic adventures to mellifluous symbolism, avant-garde experiments, and even Chinese ideograms, for which Ezra Pound was a model. To refer to their own practice of translation of select poetry of invention-with express acceptance of the statute of generic impossibility and the imperative of re-imagining aesthetic information-the Campos brothers coined such terms as 1 In these pages I return to ideas that first surfaced in my domain when Haroldo de Campos was visiting professor at the University of Texas in 1981 and some local poetry circles pondered his output, including classic concrete poems and the feasibility of translation. Some of the thoughts expressed here have been simmering since then, while others have been provoked by recent developments in translation studies and poetics, Brazilian varieties. I am grateful to André Vallias and Claus Clüver for their advice and assistance with materials for this undertaking.

Magnificat Cultura i Literatura Medievals

Poetriae and Arte de poesía castellana: basis for the creation of a digital collection of Castilian poetic treatises

Canadian Journal of Language and Literature Studies (CJLLS), 2023

Beuys' expanded concept of the artwork is also relevant in poetry, where we can see the expansion of poetry into other fields and new media; poems can be found in the sky, in space, on the skin of performers, on facades, in the sand, in the snow and in the digital medium, where we also encounter AI-generated poetry. Poetry is contextualised, integrated into the social, alongside esoteric searches towards minimalist texts that can be read by machines or disappear in the process of being read, we encounter poetry in social media and as excellent content in prime time TV shows (Million's poet competition in the United Arab Emirates, from 2007 to the present). In this text we are interested in poetry as research, complementary to research in other fields, which means that we can also understand poetry in terms of cognitive activity and the poet as cognitive worker. We also pay attention to experimental explorations in the temporary poetry, which conflict with the tendency to situate such researches in the printed book. AI-generated texts are something other than poetry understood as an excess of language, the work of a corporeal poet with emotions, experiences and passions.

THE AGE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: An Exploration, 2020

Although there might not seem to be a clear link between Literary Studies and Computer Science, there have been extensive works in the field of Digital Humanities. This way, the purpose of this chapter is to foster the intersection between Literary Studies and Computer Science to cooperate with the solution of language and creativity issues in computer-generated literature. To meet this purpose, the origins of Digital Poetry and the pre-digital experiments that linked poetry to computing will be presented. Next, I will present a brief overview of computer-generated poetry, then, the system PoeTryMe and its variations – Co-PoeTryMe and the Twitter bot @poetartificial. Finally, we will analyze some of the poems generated by/with the use of the systems (during the development of the chapter), in order to point out some (aesthetic) aspects that could be improved from the point of view of the Literary Criticism.

Since the advent of the internet, advocates and critics alike have heralded the end of the book. George P. Landow observed that hypertextuality and poststructuralism emerged at the same moment, both due to dissatisfaction with the printed book and hierarchal thought. Derrida argued the question of writing could only be opened if the book was closed. Consider, then, the paradoxical position of Vienna-based publishers TRAUMAWIEN. Recognizing that although the vast majority of the text produced by computer systems – protocols, listings, error logs, binary codes – is never seen or read by those who consume it, this text is internal to our daily thoughts and actions and is thus literary. TRAUMAWIEN conceives of the print books it publishes as snapshots of computer generated literary processes which would otherwise be disappearing as soon as they are written. This paper will discuss the iterative processes by which I generated one such book published by TRAUMAWIEN in 2010. GENERATION[S] expands upon a series of short fictions generated by Python scripts adapted (with permission) from two 1k story generators written by Nick Montfort, and incorporates GORGE, a never-ending tract spewing poetic paroxysms on food, consumption, decadence and desire, a hack of Montfort’s elegant poetry generator Taroko Gorge. There was only one rule in creating GENERATION[S]: No new texts. All the texts in this book were previously published in some way. The texts the generators produce are intertwined with the generators’ source code, and these two types of texts are in turn interrupted by excerpts from the meta narrative that went into their creation. Most of the sentences in the fiction generators started off as Tweets, which were then pulled into Facebook. Some generated comments which led to responses which led to new texts. All these stages of intermediation are represented in the print book iteration of GENERATION[S].