Saturday, May 26, 2007
They keep on giving each other awards....
I just got back from Paris, where I attended (and participated in) E-Poetry 2007. As seems to happen more often that not, I managed to offend quite a few people, even though this time I tried really hard not to. Oh well.... Guess I won't be invited back. Not that I really want to be. This was a strange experience. Although there were a few outstanding presentations (Talan Memmott's Twittering was the best piece there, one whose text and presentation were meaningless without and completely dependent upon one another, elegant, nuanced, compelling and engaging in every possible way), but more were actually embarrassing, kind of slam meets the quest for tenure--lots of noise and wild graphics, little substance, even some nudity (not recorded nudity--a real-by-god presenter disrobing on stage).
After Pablo Gervas' presentation of his research on artificial creativity (specifically his project's attempt to generate poetry), a participant pointed back to Pablo's statement of motivation, and asked just why would you want to make a computer write poetry. It was a reactionary question. The questioner felt that poetry is a way to link people, poet to reader, and with the machine at one end, you've debased the form. This at a conference that feinted at asking questions about their placement vis-a-vis the avant!!! Why would an attendee even think to ask the question, suggesting as it does self-censorship? Really very out of place.
In January I mused over why any avant poet would want to read at the MLA Convention. I'm starting to feel that way about "e-poetry" conflabs.
I think I've figured it out: If you get together all your friends and find ways to host such things, everyone gets lots of c.v. entries and a better shot at tenure.
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Of the nature of writing
Yesterday, I performed a concurrency test, which resulted in a couple of pieces I thought were interesting.
Writing
Immortality
A man
An eye
Water
The mention of love
A giant
A tongue of accounts
A morning
Of nature
Go
Part me but don't use me
Like an archangel
Final as an
eye
Blue wife next to
me on a trade
Bearing nature
Saving
Tottering
Sleeping
Coming
Adjusting
Will I be single?
Will I be stiff?
Monday, May 14, 2007
Etc3 1.0
I have Etc3 to the point that it seems to be working consistently and reliably. And so I've sent her out into the wild: etc.wharton.upenn.edu. The site is actually called etc3beta, but that's because I'm just about out of gas and don't want to deploy a new Tom Cat app for 1.0 right now. Maybe someday.
Performance is much better. The engine spewed out a 5000-line work this morning in less than 10 minutes. Concurrency seems not to be a problem, but then again, it never does during development.
This version of the software is very much a tool. The quality of the poetry is a function of the inputs into the engine, explained on the help page.
Comments, bug reports, and criticism are actively encouraged.
Thanks to all who sent comments on the real beta.
