Machine Writing: Lesson 11

Lesson 11: Can Machines Write Poetry?

From http://delightsprings.blogspot.com/2010_11_01_archive.html

A. Online ''Turing Tests''

Go to the following sites and try to determine if the pieces were written by a human or by a machine:

1. Human Or Machine: Can You Tell Who Wrote These Poems?

http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/06/27/480639265/human-or-machine-can-you-tell-who-wrote-these-poems.

2. Bot or Not. http://botpoet.com/.

3. What is a ''Turing'' test? Link up here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test.

4. Submit a one-page report of how well you did and how you felt. Were you able to tell the difference easily?

B. Reading Assignment:

The piece we will be reading will be an excerpt from Ray Di Palma:

JANUARY ZERO

by Ray Di Palma

I take a glass. I fill the glass. I drink the water. I wash the glass I dry the glass. I give the glass to you. I take a bottle of milk. I put the bottle on the table.  I open the bottle of milk.  I take a clean glass.  I fill the clean glass with milk. I give a glass of milk to you I drink a glass of milk.

I go to the door. I stop at the door. I push the door open. I go out of the door. I go into the hall. I pull the door shut. I go to the EXIT. I stop at the EXIT. I push the door open. I go out of the EXIT. I go into the hall. I pull the door shut.

I come to the door. I stop at the door. I push the door open. I come into the room. I pull the door shut. I come to the ENTRANCE. I stop at the ENTRANCE. I push the door open. I come in at the ENTRANCE. I come into the room. I pull the door shut.

I walk to the window. I open the window. I look out. I close the window. I walk to my seat. I sit down. I stand up. I walk to the door. I open the door. I pick up the letter. I close the door. I walk to my seat and sit down.

I pick up the letter. I open the envelope. I take out the letter. I read the letter. I put the letter on the desk. I put the envelope the desk. I stand up. I walk to the desk. I take a book. I open the book. I look at a picture. I close the book. I put the book on the desk. I walk to my seat and sit down.

This is my book. I open my book. I turn the pages. I look at the pictures. I read the book. I close the book. I put the book on the desk. I walk to my seat and sit down. It is six o'clock. I wake up. I get out of bed. I throw the covers back. I close the windows. I wash my face and hands. I brush my teeth. I put on my clothes. I brush and comb my hair.

It is half past six. I take two rolls and butter. I put the rolls and butter on a plate. I take two eggs. I break the eggs into a cup. I put salt and pepper on the eggs. I eat a roll and butter with the eggs I take a cup of coffee. I put sugar into the coffee. I put cream into the coffee. I take a spoon. I stir the sugar in the coffee. I stir the sugar with the spoon. I eat a roll and butter with the coffee. I eat eggs and rolls for breakfast. I drink coffee with cream for breakfast.

I take a loaf of bread. I put the bread on the table. I cut six slices of bread. I put butter on each slice of bread. I put chopped onion between two slices of bread. I put chopped meat between two slices of bread. I put jelly between two slices of bread. I make three sandwiches. I wrap the onion sandwich in wax paper. I wrap the meat sandwich in wax paper. I wrap the jelly sandwich in wax paper. I wrap a piece of cake in wax paper. I put the sandwiches and cake into my lunch box. I put two oranges into my lunch box. I fasten my lunch box.

It is seven o'clock. I put on my coat and my hat. I take my lunch box. I say, "Good by." I walk to the streetcar. I wait until the car stops. I get on the streetcar I pay my fare. I ride the street—car to work. The streetcar stops I get off the car. I walk to the ENTRANCE. I go in at the ENTRANCE I go into the locker room. I take off my coat and hat. I put my lunch box in my locker. I hang my coat and hat on the hook in my locker.

C. Guide questions:

1. Did diPalma use a text generator to write this? In short, is this human or is this an algorithm? That is, is it a machine trying to sound human, or is it a human being trying to sound like a machine? Is it still possible to tell the difference?

2. What could be the motivation behind writing this way?

3. How would you characterize the sentences and the subject matter? How do you like the sound of the title?

4. Is this style "personal" or "impersonal?" Can you imagine a person speaking this way?

5. What does this difference imply concerning human language in an age where algorithm and machines can basically take over this very function that distinguishes humans from animals?

6. What does it imply concerning the production of literature or art in this age of mechanical and cybernetic reproduction if the words that no longer belonged to the poet, writer or artist finally end up becoming the property of the Machine?

Warhol by Mr. Brainwash, from http://guyhepner.com/product/warhol-by-mr-brainwash/.

 

D. Project output: Machine Notebook

Visit any text generator site online or try the ones listed under "Exciting Sites" on the left panel of this blog. Explore and experiment. Enjoy the end of your humanity and produce a one-page "Machine Notebook."

Present your work and the process you chose. You can use random text generators if you feel a great gush of inspired uncreativity, or feed it some pre-made text to mutilate. Discover your own immanent necessity, the whisper of the ineluctable swerve within. (Was it Wittgenstein who said "We can never break a rule because we always follow one"?)

The many difficult questions on the subjects of Language, Reality, Chance, Identity, Memory, Necessity, and Technology were approached by the writers we took up by their use of different and mixed techniques. Employ any which combination to reinvent the language you normally use. Here, there are no right or wrong answers, just the boundless hum of the vast and infinite net.

Submit your work with a printed copy of your selfie transformed via the Warhol Generator page at http://otoro.net/ml/warhol/. And who is Warhol again?

Machine Writing: Lesson 10

Lesson 10: The Cyborg Connection

An Opte Project visualization of routing paths through a portion of the Internet. From Wikipedia, s.v. "Internet"

 
A. Ghost in the Shell

To begin this section, watch Ghost in the Shell: Arise. The YouTube link is:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1z3IV01g1U. Likewise, you can get a copy of the e-book animé version from me. Ideally, we watch the animated adaptation and the manga comics "original." The elements that I would like us to pay more attention to would be:

1. The cyborg status of Motoko Kusanagi
2. The scene of fusion with the Puppeteer
3. The song at the end: "There is no me"
4. Motoko's line: “The net is vast and infinite.”
5. The brain transfer motif in sci-fi in general.

Masamune Shirow, Ghost in the Shell, 1995, e-book version .p.348

There is also a good background information here, including a review of the recent movie adaptation starring Scarlett Johansson, and some video clips on this page: "How the original 'Ghost in the Shell' changed sci-fi and the way we think about the future," http://uk.businessinsider.com/original-ghost-in-the-shell-movie-influence-2017-3.



B. Cyborgs and prosthetics

1. What is a Cyborg? Do you recall any famous film or TV cyborg character? If you can't, try reading this article from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyborgs_in_fiction. 

2. Is a Cyborg possible in reality? If you are a big skeptic, try reading through this entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosthesis where you will see the picture below:

The myoelectric prosthetic arm of a United States Marine.

According to Marshall McLuhan who predicted the "World Wide Web almost thirty years before it was invented," technology itself is an "extension" of human beings:

"After three thousand years of explosion, by means of fragmentary and mechanical technologies, the Western world is imploding. During the mechanical ages we had extended our bodies in space. Today, after more than a century of electric technology, we have extended our central nervous system itself in a global embrace, abolishing both space and time as far as our planet is concerned. Rapidly, we approach the final phase of the extensions of man — the technological simulation of consciousness, when the creative process of knowing will be collectively and corporately extended to the whole of human society, much as we have already extended our senses and our nerves by the various media. Whether the extension of consciousness, so long sought by advertisers for specific products, will be “a good thing” is a question that admits of a wide solution. There is little possibility of answering such questions about the extensions of man without considering all of them together. Any extension, whether of skin, hand, or foot, affects the whole psychic and social complex."

From Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Italics mine.


3. What technology are you using everyday that "extends" your body, your senses, and your nervous system? What does "connectivity" imply?

4. When McLuhan wrote,"Today, after more than a century of electric technology, we have extended our central nervous system itself in a global embrace, abolishing both space and time as far as our planet is concerned," what do you think is he referring to?

5. How can we relate this state of technology to Motoko Kusanagi's character?

6. If you are using some technological extension (apart from skinput devices, implantable electronics, augmented reality goggles, mechanical or cyber prosthetics, etc.), wouldn't you be considered a cybernetic organism already?

7. Why do you think the song "There is no me" applies to Motoko? What is the story's idea of the relationship between memory, identity, and technology?

8. Where do you keep your memory of yourself? How do you retrieve it? How is it organized? Who has access to it?

The art of unoriginality: lesson 9

Lesson 9: Uncreative writing

From https://www.slideshare.net/AdityaMehetre1/copy-paste-75320421

A. A short ("original") introduction:

To begin this section, we can make the observation that, however jumbled the words or elements are in Mac Low's works, one thing was constant: the words are familiar. In short, what we have are repetitions of words that don't really belong to the writer. We can jumble words in any way we like, but they are still not our words.

Can there be any originality in Chance formations? Can we create arrangements or orders of language that are so absolutely new that they escape clichés and yet remain understandable? Or does originality mean going beyond sense, and not just pretending to jumble words up and yet really mean something unoriginal behind it? Isn't "Chance" itself  an old, old idea (Ancient Greek: tychaíos)? And if Chance is everywhere, won't it also exist inside any Order? That Order itself is Chance?

In short, whatever we do, it will be merely the repetition of Chance. Examine your Chance Notebook. Is there anything there really that is absolutely new? Isn't Tzara just making a big joke when he said you will be original, and yet the poem will be like you, and hence not original? (Like a copy of your DNA, which is a copy of your parent's DNA, and so on.)

This is not something so surprising. Even great writers were accused of "furta," or literary theft, when they borrow material from other works. Today, we call that "plagiarism." But if we don't own our words, aren't we committing some kind of plagiarism everyday? Even when I just say "Hello" I am already quoting. Even the word "I" is not mine. Try Googling any sentence, you will see how big the statistic is for that sentence. The only ones that will probably not appear are "mojibake" (example: £) and other gibberish that computer code cannot yet translate. (A potential dimension for experimentation? We will take up this point later.)

If we imagine Tzara's bag as the totality of all the permutations possible for language, then we have what is called the Library of Babel, something theoretically much bigger than the whole Internet itself. (What an upgrade!) In fact, such a thing does exist: it is the site where all possible combinations of the English alphabet (at least) can be found, theoretically containing all the books that were written and that will be written in the world! It was based on a story by Jorge Luis Borges, "The Library of Babel." Wikipedia has an entry about that. The URL for the The Library of Babel is https://libraryofbabel.info/.

If you have the patience to read the explanation of this labyrinth, you can do so under "Theory." But you can skip that, too, and just have fun "browsing." Alternately, you can watch an excerpt from the film Interstellar where Joseph Cooper falls into the "tesseract."  It's a good way to imagine this hypothetical library. Here is the Wikipedia link to what it is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesseract. The YouTube explanation of tesseract can be watched here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_-mE_vsXgo.

B. Kenneth Goldsmith a.k.a. Kenneth Goldsmith

The extreme exploration of this absolute absence of originality is the basis of the writing philosophy of Kenneth Goldsmith. Here is a short article about his approach:

UNCREATIVITY AS A CREATIVE PRACTICE
Kenneth Goldsmith

I am spending my 39th year practicing uncreativity.

On Friday, September 1, 2000, I began retyping the day's New York Times, word for word, letter for letter, from the upper left hand corner to the lower right hand corner, page by page. Today, November 10, 2000, I am approximately half way through the project. I intend to finish by New Year's Day.

The object of the project is to be as uncreative in the process as possible. It's one of the hardest constraints an artist can muster, particularly on a project of this scale; with every keystroke comes the temptation to "fudge," "cut-and-paste," and "skew" the mundane language. But to do so would be to foil the exercise.

I've long been an advocate of extreme process writing–recording every move my body has made in a day, recording every word I spoke over the course of a week, recording every sound I heard ending in the sound of "r" for almost four years–but never have I faced a writing process this dry, this extreme, this boring.

John Cage said "If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all."

I'm interested in a valueless practice. Nothing has less value than yesterday's news (in this case yesterday's newspaper–what could be of less value, say, than stock quotes from September 1, 2000?). I'm interested in quantifying and concretizing the vast amount of "nutritionless" language; I'm also interested in the process itself being equally nutritionless.

Retyping the New York Times is the most nutritionless act of literary appropriation I could conceive of. Had I instead, for example, retyped Ulysses, there would have been too much value, for Ulysses, as we all know, is a very valuable book.

I took inspiration from Warhol's "Empire," his "unwatchable" 24-hour film of the Empire State Building. Similarly, imagine a book that is written with the intention not to be read. The book as object: conceptual writing; we're happy that the idea exists without ever having to open the book.

Innovative poetry seems to be a perfect place to place a valueless practice; as a gift economy, it is one of the last places in late hyper-capitalism that allows non-function as an attribute. Both theoretically and politically, the field remains wide open.

But in capitalism, labor equals value. So certainly my project must have value, for if my time is worth an hourly wage, then I might be paid handsomely for this work. But the truth is that I've subverted this equation by OCR'ing as much of the newspaper as I can.

Almost 100 years ago, the visual arts came to terms with this issue in Duchamp's "Urinal." Later, Warhol, then Koons extended this practice. In music we have vast examples from John Oswald's Plunderphonics to the ubiquitous practice of sampling. Where has literature been in this dialogue? One hundred years after Duchamp, why hasn't straight appropriation become a valid, sustained or even tested literary practice?

John Cage, whose mission it was to accept all sound as music, failed; his filter was on too high. He permitted only the sounds that fell into his worldview. Commercial sounds, pop music, lowbrow culture, sounds of violence and aggression, etc. held no place in the Cagean pantheon; certainly, nutritionlessness was not what we would consider a Cagean attribute.

However, if John Cage theoretically claimed that any sound can be music, then we logically must conclude that, properly framed, any language can be poetry.

When I reach 40, I hope to have cleansed myself of all creativity.

From Kenneth Goldsmith, Electronic Poetry Center, http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/goldsmith/uncreativity.html.

C. Further reading for context:

1. Marcel Duchamp's "Urinal" at Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_(Duchamp). Why did Duchamp submit a "urinal" as an art object (called "ready-made")?

2. Andy Warhol's film "Empire" at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_(1964_film). What is the point of filming a building, just the building, for a few hours?


D. Project Output: A Copycat Notebook

If you think about it, there was nothing new at all in what we have been doing so far. We are the best example of the practice of unoriginality. The more faithful we are, the more unoriginal. Now, was that so hard?

Your next project is very similar in nature. Your task is not to be original. I won't assign any specific constraint or text. All you need to do is find the best way to produce the most unoriginal copycat work you can manage.

We will have a class presentation and we will try to vote on which Copycat Notebook is the most copycat of all.

Although unoriginality seems a breeze, some standards are still left. For example, Goldsmith says that ''labor equals value.'' Secondly, using the techniques we saw in the previous lessons don't count for creativity since they've already been done before.

However, there is a ''signature'' for the kind of unoriginality that Goldsmith is pointing us to. There is an extreme side to it, a radical trait which he calls a ''nutritionless'' quality. Thus, the most boring, most repetitious, the most mindless kind of copying you can think of are the ones that will qualify.

Between chance and repetition: Lesson 8

Lesson 8: The repetitions of Chance

From http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?m=201507

A. Constrained writing and chance variations

In the previous lesson, we saw how the conception of Chance required a certain dual play where one aspect is kept as a constant. It appears that Chance and Repetition go hand in hand for either to be perceptible at all. Even the most radical of Chance practitioners would need a baseline. This feature where a certain process adheres to a core or a seed as a parameter of composition is something we find in ''procedure'' writing or the use of constraints in art other than the usually or traditionally known ones (like meter or grammar).  If you look for OULIPO in Wikipedia, this group is an example of procedural writers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oulipo).  In other words, the composition as a whole process is seen as the interplay of constraints and anti-constraints.

If you recall your Permutation Notebook, you will probably notice how you still used a seed text as a baseline that the online text generator (mutilator) requires for it to work at all. This generator is also an algorithm or a programming code that was rigorously written (else it will be too buggy or won't work as designed).

As defined in Wikipedia, "Constrained writing is a literary technique in which the writer is bound by some condition that forbids certain things or imposes a pattern" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constrained_writing).

An example of constraint writing is the use of LIPOGRAM. A lipogram is "a kind of constrained writing or word game consisting of writing paragraphs or longer works in which a particular letter or group of letters is avoided—usually a common vowel, and frequently E, the most common letter in the English language" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipogram). An example from Wikipedia is below:

Original

Mary had a little lamb

Its fleece was white as snow

And everywhere that Mary went

The lamb was sure to go

He followed her to school one day

That was against the rule

It made the children laugh and play

To see the lamb in school

Without "S":

Mary had a little lamb

With fleece a pale white hue

And everywhere that Mary went

The lamb kept her in view

To academe he went with her,

Illegal, and quite rare;

It made the children laugh and play

To view the lamb in there

Without "A":

Polly owned one little sheep

Its fleece shone white like snow

Every region where Polly went

The sheep did surely go

He followed her to school one time

Which broke the rigid rule

The children frolicked in their room

To see the sheep in school

As you can see, this is no different from the funny game we play when we speak only using E as vowel for all words. You can easily find a number of  references and samples for constraint writing all over the net. Sites like http://mentalfloss.com/article/88172/8-extraordinary-examples-constrained-writing, or another like http://www.emptymirrorbooks.com/publishing/7-examples-of-constrained-writing.html are just two examples. In theory, there may be an unlimited number of possible constraints and combinations, in the same manner that someone like Raymond Queneau can create a piece called "A Hundred Thousand Billion Poems"! (And, yes, it exists. Here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Thousand_Billion_Poems.)

The most famous example of a composition in constraints is, of course, none other than "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." It is called a PANGRAM. Look it up here if you're interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangram.

Procedural techniques are not confined to small works. Many writers have written novels around some constraints. Georg Perec, for example, wrote a novel entitled La disparition without the letter E. Thus, its translation has an option of omitting that missing thing or drop A or I or U, as in  Vanishing Point or It's Missing (''The Disappearance'' uses E).

B. The Six-Word Memoir

From http://www.smithmag.net/

 

The Six-word memoir is a type of constraint writing whose alleged famous predecessor was Ernest Hemingway, the renowned American novelist and short story writer. "Taking a cue from novelist Ernest Hemingway, who, according to literary legend, was once challenged to write a short story in only six words, Smith Magazine [who founded the Six-word memoir project in 2006] set out to do the same. Hemingway's six-word story read: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

Here is an example where the Six-word memoir is cross-bred with Word-cloud tech:

From http://rapidcityjournal.com/lifestyles/readers-tell-unique-story-with-six-word-
memoirs/article_028ce167-bf87-5c82-9006-6457424f9c94.html

So, take a hint. This is your next project. Make me a Six-Word Memoir Notebook. It does not need to be so grammatically correct. You can use Cut-ups, permutations, automatic writing. The essential part is that it follows the Six-Word memoir constraint composition. Hey, it's shorter than a Twit!



C. Things That Go Faster Than Type

Read the poem below for next class discussion.


Things that go faster than light

Jackson MacLow, 1960

Things that go faster than light

To however. It nothing go surprised

To however, and to

Go out

Faster and surprised to. Eventually, rotated

To however, and nothing

Long. It go however, to

The hits is, namely, granting speed

The hits at the

Granting oscilloscope

Far at speed the electron rigid

The hits at namely,

Length is granting hits the

Transmitted horizon in not gone succession

Transmitted horizon a transmitted

Gone ocean.

Form a succession transmitted equal rule

Transmitted horizon a not

Large in gone horizon transmitted

Than hand, interval never group shuttling

Than hand, arrows, than

Group or

Frequency arrows, shuttling than effectively radiation.

Than hand, arrows, nearer

Light, interval group hand, than

That high ionosphere number guide. Shift,

That high amount that

Guide. On

Followed amount shift, effects represent

That high amount number

Lies ionosphere guide. High that

Guide questions:

1. What do you think of the grammar of this text? How many complete sentences can you spot?

2. This highly idiosyncratic text seems to be not following verse rules nor good grammar rules. Is there a procedure or constraint that Mac Low employed here? Any pattern or baseline you can notice?

3. Clue: the first stanza has seven lines, while the rest have only six. Why is that so?

4. When something moves faster than light, what does this mean in astrophysics? How do we relate it to Mac Low's idea of writing? Are there really "things" that can do this?

5. Which part is determined, and which is "random?"