Blog 2 Bella DeMarco

 Chapter 2: Combinatory Poetics 

 

After reading Scott Rettberg’s description of combinatory poetics, I have a greater appreciation and understanding for this area of e-lit. I thought that the blatant connection between art, literature, and history was surprising. The artistic history of dada was particularly interesting, with connections to societal defiance in post WW1 Europe. Dada was unfamiliar to me, but the combinatory nature of the practice helps define this genre of e-lit. The collaborative and multimedia elements of computational combinatory writing relate to the artistic roots of dada and relate to the general definition of electronic literature. While combinatory poems can and do often read as heavily computed or non-sensical, the subjectivity and intention behind creation adds individuality. To me, the openness to create a subjective and personal definition for combinatory poems adds value and is what makes things like hypertext great too. The development and history of combinatory poetics is a clear example of how computational generative techniques were not an overnight success, but have been developed since the 1950’s. 

 

The example I chose to investigate was by aforementioned by Rettberg. He wrote, “Christopher Strachey’s Love Letters generator (1952) is most likely the first computer program made to generate literary text…” (31) After completing brief research into Christopher Strachey, the man who is attributed with creating the first artificially intelligent computer program, as Scott Rettberg just said. With his research into denotational semantics and programming language design, the mention of his personal life was unexpected and made me want to investigate Love Letters. The simplicity and elementary style of the generated poems was both due to the technical limitations and completely intentional, serving as commentary on heterosexual relationship norms and their fallacies. Reading that Strachey’s close friend Turing underwent forced hormone treatments that resulted in him taking his own life adds significant nuance and value to the generated poems. At first glance, this program would seem simple, aged even, but with historical context it becomes purposeful. This example was not only crowned as the first example of computer-generated literary text, but an individually valuable program.