Week 2: Combinatory Poetics (Sasha Lutz)
This chapter in Scott Rettberg’s book is extremely relevant to issues we are facing today. When discussing the early history of combinatory writing, he delves into artificial intelligence’s capacity for growth and its space within the art-world. He writes about how in the future, people may “develop a machine that could not only beat a grandmaster at chess, but also compose poetry and write novels” (69). Now, we are in that future. AI is everywhere and it is as dangerous as it is fascinating. Earlier in the chapter, he talks about the Dada art movement. In this new era of artificial intelligence, I can’t help but wonder if they would see it as art, or just a capitalism scam. People could make art with artificial intelligence, but on its own, I think that it cannot make art. It will be interesting to see how people can implement modern artificial intelligence into their digital work. This type of digital literature does involve the spontaneity that AI-driven algorithms could benefit. He explains, “Poetry and story generators and other combinatory writing systems are characterized by structured complexity and procedurality,” and that “these programs have the most direct correlation with elementary principles of computation, driven as they are by algorithmic procedures applied to textual datasets” (83). Although my understanding of combinatory poetics is limited, this chapter provided a good foundation that I hope to build on this semester.
One piece that Rettberg touched on, the “Love Letters Generator” by Christopher Strachey. His story was absolutely heartbreaking. There is a version of it available online. I’ll link it below! It’s ironic that this is his lasting project, given the fact that he was gay. It is heartbreaking to think about how the LBGTQ+ community has been treated in these spaces, and how much art they have given to a world that does not accept them. Under the Trump Administration and the removal of DEI, America is embracing its hostility towards the LGBTQ+ community. Despite coming far with technology, the social landscape has changed little.
Thank you for posting the link! I didn't realize and posted the Montfort version to a couple of other posts. Maybe you can talk more about the history you found in class. Perhaps we need another DADAist movement.
ReplyDeleteSasha, I agree that the topics discussed in this chapter are extremely relevant and timely, especially in the world of literature. While AI is slightly terrifying and seems to be replacing many human-operated jobs, the development between artificial intelligence and digital literature is special.
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