Combinatory Poetry

 

After Chapter two, I learned a lot more about Poetry. It was amazing how poetry could be on computer and have different ways to be creative. I thought it was really cool that they would gather different snippets of words to put together a poem. I liked how it went into detail about the first program that generate words together. I also loved the title. Dada was a great example on how the organization wanted to break rules of normal literature. They arrived during World War I and craved to make a program that could keep people engaged. I like the question "Can machines think?" It gave a deeper insight about how computers worked. Especially after Turing created an imitation game. And then I found it interesting that they talked about Bots. I always was wondering how Bots got into E-lit. It was cool that some people use bots to make the poetry.

My reference was the first program Love Letters by Christopher Strachey. It was made in 1952 program that generated romantic love letters using words that was already picked. The machine was cool because a computer was trying to sound human and romantic. It was a big step for the E-Lit world. It takes nouns, adjectives, and terms of endearment. That program went with Dada's saying. Like how generated words from computer. 

Combinatory Poetics!!

 Chapter Two of "Electronic Literature," By Scott Rettberg, was filled with so much valuable information, almost to the point where I felt as though I couldn't absorb as much of it as I had hoped. The discussion of combinatory poetics was intriguing, as I adore poetry as much as the next, and I always found generative poetics interesting, as I try to understand how it has altered the state of "human poetics." As it is quite obvious that the context will change depending on the medium, whether it be a computer-programmed project or a print publication, it changes how each viewer interacts with that piece. 

Throughout the chapter, various techniques were discussed. From surrealist practices, which are essentially automatic writing techniques that go into things such as written interactive games. And then we have the exquisite corpse technique, which follows the idea of having many outcomes depending on the player or viewer. Collaging, especially in a digital sense, was what the Dada and the Surrealists used when producing work. The procedural nature goes into the initial practices behind the game rather than creative inspiration. A last example can be the use of found texts and how that coheres with the practices of many writers in the process of combinatory poetics. The reason I mention these techniques is because it shows how fixed digital literature is and, more specifically, combinatory poetics. 

A piece that stuck out to me within the text that I had looked into was House of Trust, by Stephanie Strickland and Ian Hatcher (2015), as it was inspired by the first computer poem, House of Dust, created by Alison Knowles and James Tenney (1967) Which was the main reason why the House of Trust stuck out to me in the way that it did because of its similarities yet stark differences from the House of Dust. Strickland and Hatcher's creation was made to honor and promote free libraries. Which puts an interesting twist on the digital aspect of the poem; is it to get a larger audience to support the cause? or is it to hint at the spread of digital humanities and its inevitable connections to physical literature? Very interesting! 

Cent Mille Milliards de Poemes reminded me a lot of the House of Trust, as visually, they appear very similar from the start, its definitely different eras that create the distinction of difference. I felt as though the piece was slightly out of context, and while I know that is the point, to take ten poems and turn them into other sonnets. I felt like I couldn't achieve an accurate experience like I did with Strickland and Hatcher's piece.  

Combinatory Poetry

     I found the textbook chapter on combinatory poetics interesting because it evaluated different types of programming and technology to create poetry, and you wouldn't think there would be so many different ways to make poetry on a computer! I thought the difference between arranging and generating important to define. For example, Cent mille milliards de poèmes is an arranger because it takes already human-wrote words and enables them to be arranged into new lines. The textbook calls this "mutating existing texts" which is a large theme in E-Lit itself as a phenomenon is mutating existing rules and formats to create electronic works. Whereas for E-Lit combinatory poetics which generate new poems, the textbooks states that "the author of a poetry generator is striving for multiplicity" and thus the best outputs from the generator will be "compelling literary experiences" that are compelling because they illustrate the "most interesting range of possibilities the literary system can produce". All of this meaning that a poetry algorithm on a computer can be interesting to read the generated poems because it itself as a generator is fascinating on a programable sense, and (in my opinion) it creates something to think about in the mutation of traditional poetry with electronic means. Can you really call these generators poetry? Are they only sketches, or are they finished works? The textbook notes that the poetry generator algorithms are not always good writing but they can be good works of electronic literature because of how they enable programming and the technological platform to create something thoughtful. Still, "compelling poetry often relies on strange juxtapositions and ambiguities" the textbook says, so one can argue that these combinatory poems are just a new way of forming strange meaning in our new technological world. When we use programs and electronic platforms as an extension of human thought in their algorithms, are we creating something fruitful? We are at least creating poetry that is surprising, an artistic display of the technological mediums we have available now. 

    Cent mille milliards de poèmes is not always going to create a poem that makes sense. In fact, that's likely not the point of the program at all in it's "peeling back" of the ten layers of sonnets. Raymond Queneau's book has 10 sonnets with 14 lines each, making 10x14th combinations. That's a lot of multiplicity. The combinations work well because the sonnets are all written in similar style and rhyme. The textbook says this commentary poetry can be understood as "procedural writing games or algorithms" and it does indeed feel like a game working with the poetry on the website making my own sonnet. In the Oulipian sense, these "writers described the constraints as liberating: by focusing on the constraints, they can allow the writing they produce to surprise them". I was surprised with some of the themes and poetic stories I could create in the sonnets through their layering. I found that different voices appeared to me, and I liked that I could save the beginning of a sonnet and patch together a different ending. l love that it combines traditional strict sonnet rules of petameter and rhyming with a way to interact with these strict rules in a new context. I think again what we read last week that e-lit cannot exist without the prior rules of literature and poetry. Looking further into e-lit projects, I can see now the mutations appearing that have created this genre on top of the prior traditional guidelines. I can also see how multiplicity is in an important theme in these modern mutations because we have the language, we have the baselines, but now we have to find new ways to combine them and present them. I think Cent mille milliards de poèmes is a great example of how this can be done. 

Intro!

 

Hello everyone! My name is Mia Lynch and I am a junior english major! I have a (almost) two year old tortie cat named Eloise who I love very much. I love to read and write obviously but my favorite style of writing is personal non-fiction and memoir. I love using old memories and transforming them into something different with just a hint of truth. I am very excited about this class and cannot wait to learn more! 

 

    Before reading this chapter I really had no idea what electronic literature consisted of. I assumed it was blogs or online newspapers but it really is so much more. The chapter explained how it is more than just a blog but instead it is an art created through technological advances and the will to create art. One quote that I found particularly fascinating was, "A key advantage of the term “electronic literature” is its generality, and thus its ability to include those emerging genres that did not exist in the 1990s" (page 30). It is a constantly evolving genre that will keep changing until it becomes unrecognizable, and then change some more.

    

I wanted to look more into Judd Morrissey’s The Last Performance [dot org] (2007). When I typed it into Google it brought me to a bright red old-looking website so naturally I followed some links and found one dead link, one video downloaded onto my laptop, and photos from the installation in Berlin. The photos were on a self-moving carousel of 13 photos. All blurry old digital camera photos of the art or of random people using the installation. The installation consisted of a writing station in the middle for people to use and a large dot matrix printer mounted to the wall. On the floor writing is scattered in six directions away from the central point representing the project's writing constraints extend in six directions away from this central point. The video I downloaded was a full video on a shaky camera of the actual performance. It was wild and cool and on point a man wears a horse mask. How cool it must have been to be in that room.

 

As many of us seemed to do, I came into this class completely blind. English and literature have been my passion in life for so long, and I wanted to take a class that can bring me back into my roots. Lucky for me, electronic literature perfectly amalgamates my passion for literature with my lifestyle of marketing and business. While I was unable to identify and define electronic literature previously, I am confident I have now grasped it. Throughout the reading, however, it was made clear that defining this term is not easy. It is difficult to properly assign a definition to a topic that combines two extremely broad words: Electronic and literature. While the true definition remained controversial within the community, the Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) produced guidelines and expectations for pieces that fit into this "box." Some of these included hypertext fiction, novels that take the form of emails, and computer art installations. 

To expand on this further, I looked into Roberto Simanowski's Digital Art and Meaning. This piqued my interest because, even though it was written in 2011, it focuses on the digital age and the "takeover" that is coming with it. This felt very relevant for this period of AI domination we are living through. While I was unable to fully explore it, I noted that Simanowski's beliefs lie with the mind in understanding the mediated world and the mediated work. He draws a distinction between the two, focusing on the mediated world being a part of the mind reacting to media, and more of a bodily experience interacting with the work. 

Going into this class with no knowledge of what this course entailed, reading the first chapter of Electronic Literature by Scott Rettberg and Katherine Hayes's article gave me a little bit more understanding. They both talk about the difference of what a physical form of literature is and what a digital form is. But they also talk about what is similar. They both use technology of some sort to be created and formed. E-lit is something that is constantly developing and changing. E-lit doesn't have a set genre and it's important that it doesn't. This allows E-lit to be limitless and allows creators the freedom to make anything. 

The reference I chose to look further into is Nick Montfort's Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction. It gives a very well written introduction to the history of the interactive fiction genre. This book offers first time users of interactive fiction to approach this type of genre in a way that will lead to a more entertaining experience. Unfortunately, when I tried to read more into it, the website requires a sign up process. It does sound like an interesting book to read though. 

https://direct.mit.edu/books/book/2907/Twisty-Little-PassagesAn-Approach-to-Interactive