K-A’s Week Two: Bring It To The Table

     Combinatory Poetics can be understood by considering the genre as randomized literature. It was created as a way to test the literary capabilities of machines through providing a bunch of related or useful words and a code to organize them, then allowing the program to select them in a different order each time. I find it interesting that randomness plays such a big part in teaching machines to utilize literature, especially when you consider that we still don’t have a program for being truly random. Combinatory Poetics does not just use any word in existence and it uses them in a specific pattern, no matter how long or complicated that pattern might be. In fact, many of the examples given in Electronic Literature have particular sources they’re drawing their “random” words and sentence structures from. In this way it is less about creating something truly new and more about pushing the limits of what we can create with the same variables.

    I choose to look a bit more at Theodore Lutz’s Stochastic Texts. The program will continue to generate new lines endlessly unless paused and the user can choose to put on a caps lock if they so desire for aesthetic purposes. The structures are incredibly simple and the words that it pulls from are clearly very limited, but the sheer variety of combinations it can make with its limited verbiage is captivating. It is surprising how often the sentences it creates make logical sense while still seeming just the slightest bit off. The most common setups I’ve seen are “A – is –. Every – is –.” and “Every – is – therefore every – is –.” The simplicity of these restraints is likely what gives the application that uncanny feeling.