Friday, March 11, 2011

The Face of Computer Poetry


No, not the cat's face...

Posing with Fluffy is the computer that I wrote the code for Poesytron 575 on, and the computer that has generated almost all of the resulting poems.

I wanted to put up a picture of it to show how ordinary it is.  It's a plain little netbook, going on two years old, which means it's beginning to show its age a little and get some quirks (ie, never restarting properly, and fun things like that).

On the screen, the computer has just finished running, and is displaying the haiku:

utterly am well
a the foam curved her the wind
land swaying a she

It takes a couple of minutes for my little netbook to process each haiku.  Of course, on a computer with some actual processing speed, like my work computer, each haiku is generated near-instantaneously.

2 comments:

  1. Does the anticipation effect your reading of the poem? I'd imagine it feels close to a divine miracle on the notebook!

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  2. I don't think it changes my reading of the poems, but what I think it does is change how I feel about the computer. My netbook seems to really accomplish something and I feel a strange sort of pride in it.

    Okay, I've just admitted to having much stronger feelings towards my laptop than I should. Isn't it weird that we live in a culture that gives so much attention and love to inanimate objects?

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