Utente:Lydia Tuan/Generative Literature: differenze tra le versioni

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[[Utente:Lydia Tuan/Generative Literature#%20ftnref4|[4]]] Taylor, 6.  Taylor is citing Paul Brown from Preston, “Art Ex Machina.”

=== Jean-Pierre Balpe and Surrealism ===

Unlike generative art, the introduction of generative literature did not receive such negativity.  One of the first, most prominent uses of generative literature as a term can be traced to French generative writer and theorist [[Jean-Pierre Balpe]], who in the mid-1970s, was inspired by [[Surrealismo|surrealism]], which fueled his exploration of automatic text generation’s artistic potential.  Balpe defines generative literature as “the production of texts that continually change since they are based on a specific dictionary, on a set of rules and the use of algorithms”[[Utente:Lydia Tuan/Generative Literature#%20ftn1|[1]]] and that understanding the complexities of generative literature requires awareness of its “''niveaux d’engrammation''” or different levels of engrammation that specify modes of communication between humans and machines behind the generativity.[[Utente:Lydia Tuan/Generative Literature#%20ftn2|[2]]]  Balpe spent the early 2000s working on several computer-generated novels online, including ''Fictions'' and ''Trajectoires'' (2001),[[Utente:Lydia Tuan/Generative Literature#%20ftn3|[3]]] including creating the poetry machine ''Babel Poésie'' (2004), which produced poems by generating French, Italian, and Spanish words (but interestingly not German, as it was created to be exhibited as a gallery installation in a Berlin poetry festival).  Poems from ''Babel Poésie'' cannot be generated more than once, and while the content of its poems has been described as “the poetry of trash language, word garbage, chaos speak,” the poems’ forms have been praised as “a new poetry which works with boundless text flow and is conceived as an associative and endless process.”[[Utente:Lydia Tuan/Generative Literature#%20ftn4|[4]]]  According to Balpe, generative texts dismantle normative reading habits of temporally situating texts in relation to texts encountered earlier on the diegetic axis because “[t]he narrative is not totally built in advance but put together from a lot of virtualities which are — or are not — actualizing themselves in the course of reading.”[[Utente:Lydia Tuan/Generative Literature#%20ftn5|[5]]]  In other words, readers will neither see the same texts presented to them a second time nor read the same the text as another reader.

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Balpe’s citation of surrealism as an influence draws comparison of how both styles involve the withdrawal of a conscious human in the writing process.  Surrealism’s contention with authorship derives from the conscious abandonment of logic and reason to allow the subconscious to potentially uncover some degree of truth when least expected.  In generative literature, the human author cedes creative control to allow the program to generate output, similar to how the surrealist willingly retreats from a state of consciousness to relegate creative control to the subconscious. The difference, however, between these two forms is that while surrealists were actively seeking to be surprised by their subconscious when they ceded conscious control, surprise has been interpreted as a source of both positive and negative fascination amongst generative art critics.

=== Codework Poetry ===

the idea that code can be read, analyzed, and written as literature is not unprecedented.  Codework poetry, known as the construction and stylization of verse using a mixture of programming languages with natural languages to produce literature, is a literary treatment of data.  Using programming languages like natural languages by giving them syntactical and semantic meanings produces a concrete poem-esque effect when juxtaposed together in the same context.  Published anonymously in the networked discussion system Usenet, “Black Perl” (1990) exemplifies codework poetry.  Written in the programming language Perl (short for “Practical Extraction and Report Language”) as an example of Perl Poetry, “Black Perl” was intentionally written in valid Perl commands so that it could be understood by computer and human reading.  Run on a computer, the poem compiles without producing output (which means that this codework poem is not generative) but when read by humans in English, the “output” may vary: 

The step-by-step commands listed in each line of the program transform into a narrated event when read line-by-line as a poem.  The code’s form, such as the inclusion the asterisks and parentheses, influences the readability of the code as a poem, as various punctuation marks serve different semantic purposes when read in Perl than in English, for example.  However, “Black Perl” was intentionally written as a poem, meaning that this particular codework poem has more in common with practices of constraint writing than generative literature.  In fact, “Black Perl” is not generative for the reason that it is not program-generated output but, is, instead, the program itself.  The usefulness of this poem, however, is to demonstrate the duality of human and computer readability in “Black Perl” and how programming languages are not completely devoid of literary value.  

== Controversy ==

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== Examples of Generative Literature ==

=== Raymond Kurzweil's "Cybernetic Poet" ===

First introduced sometime in the mid-1980s, Raymond Kurzweil’s Cybernetic Poet is an online program that generates poetry by reading an extensive collection of poems written by human authors.  On his website, entitled “CyberArt Technologies,”[[Utente:Lydia Tuan/Generative Literature#%20ftn1|[1]]] Kurzweil introduces the Cybernetic Poet’s functionalities in greater detail:

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[[Utente:Lydia Tuan/Generative Literature#%20ftnref3|[3]]] Kurzweil, “The Cybernetic Poet.”

=== William Chamberlain and Thomas Etter's "Racter" ===

In spite of its popularity, the Cybernetic Poet was not the only poetry generator from the mid-1980s. William Chamberlain and Thomas Etter’s Racter, whose namesake derives from ''raconteur'', is a software written in the programming language BASIC that generates prose on an IMS (Information Management System) computer without prompts from a human operator.  A collection of Racter’s early fiction was published in a book entitled, ''The Policeman’s Beard is Half Constructed'' (1984), and aside from spelling mistakes corrected by Chamberlain himself, the text is completely computer-generated.  Racter writes from a database containing 2,400 words to match nouns with contextually appropriate adjectives, and it ensures continuity by tracking used phrases,[[Utente:Lydia Tuan/Generative Literature#%20ftn1|[1]]] allowing the book to have some form of cohesion that we might call a narrative (even though there are human-drawn sketches that serve as visual aids that potentially contribute to this cohesion). Racter’s choice of words is completely random, producing senseless text that literary critic Jack Barley McGraw calls “empty text” resembling “Dadaist nonsense” that cannot be close read.  Any attempt at close reading Racter’s “disturbingly superficial” prose, according to McGraw, would be a futile exercise in “conceptual justification (seemingly out of thin air) for vaguely related strings of words.”[[Utente:Lydia Tuan/Generative Literature#%20ftn2|[2]]]

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[[Utente:Lydia Tuan/Generative Literature#%20ftnref2|[2]]] Ibid. Quotes are Simanowski’s quotation of McGraw.

Prefacing the book, Chamberlain writes that Racter’s goal is to “replicate human thinking” — or, in other words, represent a utopian actualization of the vision that certain people had for computers during the mid-1980s, precisely that computers were “designed to accomplish in seconds (or microseconds) what humans would require years or centuries of concerted calculation effort to achieve,” and, in some cases, were absolutely needed, as certain tasks could not be accomplished without the use or assistance of a computer.[[Utente:Lydia Tuan/Generative Literature#%20ftn1|[1]]]  Chamberlain’s description of Racter parallels Kurzweil’s Cybernetic Poet in the sense that the goal of both poetry generators is to make creative choices that a human might make.  This commonality between Racter and the Cybernetic Poet not only reveals the utopian appeal of computers that some people held during the late twentieth century, but also reveals the hope that people had for computers to be their friendly, helpful companions rather than representative extensions of themselves that may threaten the role of humans in the creation of humanity, as now discussed in many posthumanist discourses of the twenty-first century.[[Utente:Lydia Tuan/Generative Literature#%20ftn2|[2]]] 

[[Utente:Lydia Tuan/Generative Literature#%20ftnref1|[1]]] Chamberlain, ''The Policeman’s Beard is Half Constructed'', Introduction (no pagination).

[[Utente:Lydia Tuan/Generative Literature#%20ftnref2|[2]]] For literature on computers representing extensions of selfhood, refer to Sherry Turkle’s writings on the second self.

=== Nick Montfort's ''#!'' ===

More recent examples of generative literature include Nick Montfort’s book of computational poems, entitled ''#!'' (2014) but pronounced ‘she-bang,’ which, from the dictionary, means “the set of all circumstances.” Published thirty years after Racter and Kurzweil’s Cybernetic Poet, ''#!'' contains poems written by algorithms and the algorithms that generated the poems. The book is divided into sections; each section begins with the algorithm, followed by its output on the subsequent pages.  Some of the outputs end with ellipses to signify that they could not be printed due to their infinite length.  ''#!'' is also ambiguous in its intended readership, as its title, for example, is a valid Python command; the placement of a hashtag before any given text commands the computer not to read any text following the hashtag.  In this interpretation, “#!” conveys surprise — a reaction that summarizes the general sentiment when attempting to read or make sense of this book.

In a review of Montfort’s ''#!'', Cayley writes that even though the programs are meant to read by the program producing the output, but the inclusion of both program and output in ''#!'' makes the code “a (constitutive) facet of the poem.  It is (also) the text.”[[Utente:Lydia Tuan/Generative Literature#%20ftn1|[1]]]  In this way, both the code and its output become the text — but only if they are considered as such in relation to each other.  The effect of sharing the source code, according to Galanter, not only further creates confusion as to whether the source code is the text but also allows other artists to create variations of the output, which “breaks with the paradigm of the heroic single artist creating a ‘fixed’ masterpiece.”[[Utente:Lydia Tuan/Generative Literature#%20ftn2|[2]]]  

[[Utente:Lydia Tuan/Generative Literature#%20ftnref1|[1]]] Ibid.

[[Utente:Lydia Tuan/Generative Literature#%20ftnref2|[2]]] Galanter (2016), 171.

== The Problem of Analysis ==

The problem of analyzing generative literature is two-fold.  The first element is the surprise elicited when source codes produce outputs that do not follow the commands as expected, and the second is the confusion in determining whether the text is in the source code, its output, or even both.  In addressing the second form of the problem of analysis, critics have often voiced uncertainty regarding the roles of non-textual elements as literature.  The confusion of locating the text is often the central contention amongst new media scholars, as echoed by digital poet and theorist John Cayley, whose earlier essay, entitled “The code is not the text (unless it is the text),” summarizes his stance on the topic, especially when asking, “Does language exist if it cannot be humanly read?”[[Utente:Lydia Tuan/Generative Literature#%20ftn1|[1]]]  Galanter compares this contention to a problem already encountered in conceptual art, using the example of conceptual artist Sol LeWitt’s wall drawings.  Produced from 1969 to 2007 by other artists following his directions, the wall drawings feature differing interpretations of LeWitt’s instructions prompted critical responses that questioned whether the art was the wall drawings done by others, the paper containing LeWitt’s instructions, the instructions themselves, or a combination of all three.

[[Utente:Lydia Tuan/Generative Literature#%20ftnref1|[1]]] Cayley, “Poetry and Stuff: A Review of ''#!''”

== Computational Sublime ==

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[[Utente:Lydia Tuan/Generative Literature#%20ftnref2|[2]]] Howe and Soderman, “The Aesthetics of Generative Literature: Lessons from a Digital Writing Workshop.”

== References ==

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== External Links ==