{"id":1154,"date":"2015-10-25T21:11:20","date_gmt":"2015-10-25T19:11:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/0x0a.li\/?p=1154"},"modified":"2023-04-04T12:39:05","modified_gmt":"2023-04-04T10:39:05","slug":"bot-poetry-at-the-sfpc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/0x0a.li\/de\/bot-poetry-at-the-sfpc\/","title":{"rendered":"Bot Poetry at the SFPC"},"content":{"rendered":"

Leider ist der Eintrag nur auf Amerikanisches Englisch<\/a> verf\u00fcgbar. Der Inhalt wird unten in einer verf\u00fcgbaren Sprache angezeigt. Klicken Sie auf den Link, um die aktuelle Sprache zu \u00e4ndern.<\/p>

On Friday, hidden away in the West Village, one block from the Hudson, the very necessary School for Poetic Computation<\/a> showcased a quickly growing branch of digital literature: bot poetry. The event had been organized last minute by Allison Parrish to make up for Darius Kazemi\u2019s official bot summit that was put off until next year.
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Parrish is herself an author of code poetry, including one of the most iconic and influential bots out there: @everyword<\/a>, which, over a period of 7 years, tweeted every word in the English language, and has now made it into (e)book form<\/a>. In the event description<\/a>, she gave a short definition of what she understands bots to be:<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the purposes of this meetup, a bot is an automated agent (like, say, a computer program) that makes content on the Internet.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But even this innocent working definition was undermined during the course of the evening. What separates a bot from other generative literature became increasingly\u00a0unclear, and the question was something like\u00a0the red thread\u00a0of the evening.<\/p>\n

That \u201ccontent\u201d rather than \u201ctext\u201d is an important point in Parrish\u2019s definition was aptly demonstrated by the first entry, Casey Kolderup\u2019s<\/a> @OminousZoom<\/a>. This twitter bot takes a stock photo and, in a series of four steps, zooms into a detail it recognizes as a face. The effect can be funny \u2013 like in the\u00a0dramatic zoom meme<\/a> (sans the punch line of contagious grimaces).\u00a0However, the most interesting results were those in which the algorithm failed to find a face, bringing about an unresolved tension in the progression of details that assigns significance to, for us, insignificant structures. What is left is nothing but the sense of significance itself \u2013 it<\/em> sees something<\/em>, but we cannot know what or why.<\/p>\n

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ZOOOOOOM pic.twitter.com\/397fDPyats<\/a><\/p>\n

— Ominous Zoom (@OminousZoom) October 22, 2015<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n