Robopoetics

William Haskins

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http://www.theawl.com/2014/03/robopoetics-the-complete-operators-manual

Here’s a game: which of these poems was written by a human, and which by a computer?

A wounded deer leaps highest,
I've heard the daffodil
I've heard the flag to-day
I've heard the hunter tell;
'Tis but the ecstasy of death,
And then the brake is almost done,
And sunrise grows so near
sunrise grows so near
That we can touch the despair and
frenzied hope of all the ages.

vs.

Red flags the reason for pretty flags.
And ribbons.
Ribbons of flags
And wearing material
Reason for wearing material.
Give pleasure.
Can you give me the regions.
The regions and the land.
The regions and wheels.
All wheels are perfect.
Enthusiasm.
Is anything about computer-generated poetry radically new? Mostly, yes. Robopoetics challenge several conventional theories about literature and bolster other claims (like Barthes’ death of the author) with hard, non-theoretical proof. In electronic literature there is no dyadic author and text: the new creative schema is a triad of programmer, robotic author, and text. Robopoetics shifts the burden of creativity onto programming and the selection of source materials. (If you’re feeling contrarian you might argue that this contemporary triad isn’t so different from the classical muse-author-text model, but anyway.) …


I’ve written and read more than the average amount of poetry, but somehow amidst all the difficult poetry, I forgot that relatability and straightforwardness are the marks of a mature poet, too. Once, I read computer-generated poetry for 10 hours straight. The next week I could only stomach plainspoken Du Fu. I had to turn the clock back 1200 years. In this and other ways, games like Bot or Not might be a good learning tool. The same skill you refine by playing Bot or Not—the detection of gibberish—can also assist in separating the livejournal from the laureate. … In the words of Bot or Not’s creator, “The ability to tell whether something is of human or computer provenance … might become really important. We will all be like blade runner people, trying to tell if a text is human.”
 

Magdalen

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I thought the construct & repeats of the 1st one were stiff - not to mention the abstract "despair" and "hope" - so thought it bad poetry - while finding a certain whimsy and cynical humor in the second poem. But then, I did dream of electric sheep last night, so who really knows?!!
 

kuwisdelu

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Well, I didn't like either of them, but I guessed the first one was by the computer. I've programmed this stuff before, and the pattern of the first one felt familiar to me.

I don't like the haiku generator mentioned in the article. It takes the least important part of haiku in English (the 5-7-5 syllable pattern which is usually ignored for English haiku) as its primary directive and ignores the other more-important rules of haiku. They read more like bad senryu.