authorial agency

Natural language generation (NLG) – when computers produce text-based output in readable human languages – is becoming increasingly prevalent in our modern digital age. This paper will review the ways in which an NLG system may be framed in popular and scholarly discourse: namely, as a tool or as an agent. It will consider the implications of such perspectives for general perceptions of NLG systems and computer-generated texts. Negotiating claims made by system developers and the opinions of ordinary readers amassed through empirical studies conducted for this research, this paper delves into a theoretical and philosophical exploration of questions of authorial agency related to computer-generated texts, and by considering whether NLG systems constitute tools for manifesting human intention or agents in themselves.

This paper will begin by considering NLG systems as tools for manifesting human intent, the more commonly expressed view amongst developers and readers. An NLG system arguably serves as an extension of a human self (e.g. the developer or the user). Yet one cannot ignore the increasing autonomy of such systems. At what point does an extension of the self become a distinct entity altogether?

The discussion will then shift to considering NLG systems as agents in themselves. As evidenced by the results of studies conducted for this research, ordinary readers do tend to attribute authorship to computer-generated texts. However, these readers often attribute authorship to the system rather than its developers, indicating that – in some way – the system is distinct enough from its creators to warrant the title of author. Yet conventional modern understandings of the word ‘author’ suggest that authorship at least partly presumes intentiondriven agency. Do NLG systems adhere to this expectation? Through reference to various theoretical perspectives, this paper will argue that some NLG systems may surpass the ‘tool’ title and more appropriately be deemed authorial agents. This type of agency, however, is not so characterised by the free-will intention of human writers, but by the intention to fulfil a designated objective that is respected within broader social contexts. When readers attribute authorship to the NLG system itself, that entity is permitted a place within the fluid social networks that humans populate. The NLG system becomes an algorithmic author.

The development of the cultural field of electronic literature faces significant challenges today. As everyday network communication practices and habits of media consumption change, they impose expectations on how narratives are expressed, experienced and interacted with by readers and users. These expectations produce an imperative to accommodate additive and emergent participation processes that influence how narratives are structured. It is increasingly important to strike a balance between authorial agency and user generated content, between the core creative vision of a cultural creator and the contributions of casual participants, between narrative coherence and improvisational interactions. Resolving these antinomies is crucial in order for the field of electronic literature to support both the development of popular digital fiction and a continuing tradition of experimental literature.

In this paper I develop a comparative, multi-layered analysis of network narratives – prose narrative works imagined within and created for a media ecology characterized by networked computing devices, socially mediated interactions, and participatory culture. Using narrative theory and network analysis I explore how the iOS application The Silent History and selected network narratives incorporate additive participatory feedback loops and processes that enable user generated content to be embedded within the narrative that subsequent users engage with. Conditions for the inclusion of user-generated content vary among network narratives, and are typically constrained programmatically or editorially with respect to type, quantity, or subsequent accessibility. The participatory and emergent characteristics of network narratives shape and are shaped by various aspects of the narrative, including the expression of story as discourse, the navigational interface, production circuits, distribution and publishing models and whether and how multimedia elements play a role in the work. These elements of network narratives can be understood as topological strata, and by investigating the homologies and interdependencies between them, this study clarifies how additive participation can be incorporated into a compelling narrative without undermining coherence.

(source: ELO 2015 Conference Catalog)

As chronicled on the “Beard of Bees” website, authors involved with Gnoetry, “an on-going experiment in human/computer collaborative poetry composition”, have collectively engaged with digital textual processing for more than a decade (see http://beardofbees.com/gnoetry.html and also http://gnoetrydaily.wordpress.com/). In 2011, the group published their first anthology, Gnoetry Daily, Vol. 1, a 52 page collection of verse spun with programs named Gnoetry, charNG, Infinite Monkeys, ePoGeeS, welatanschauung, and JanusNode, with accompanying commentary by Eric Elshtain, eRoGK7, Matthew, edde addad, nathanielksmith, and DaveTolkacz.

The software program engineered by the group, Gnoetry, synthesizes language based on its analysis of existing texts, thus mimicking the “statistical properties” of its input texts; users filter language by applying constraints in each of the programs they favor. Concluding the “Methodological Notes” included in Gnoetry Daily, Vol. 1, addad writes, after highlighting capabilities of their preferred programs, “Generally, we just want to write good poetry”. Emphasizing the
contents of Gnoetry Daily, Vol. 1, we analyze successes and failures in this pursuit and discuss how the group’s practice interestingly falls in line with what could be called a “post-TRAVESTY” continuum. TRAVESTY is a text processor constructed in the 1980s by Hugh Kenner and Joseph O’Rourke that had great influence on digital poetry’s development in the United States, by inspiring subsequent important works by Jackson Mac Low, Charles O. Hartman, and others, and initiating dialog between practitioners.

Efforts of those involved with Gnoetry group not only recall the communal rapport initiated by artists who appreciated and worked with TRAVESTY, but also some of the program’s aesthetic and computational agenda as well. In addition to pursuing such topics, we will, using the conference paper as an input, create spontaneous poems that offers us, and the audience, an opportunity to evaluate the program’s qualities in real time—as a way of suggesting the key to interpreting the significance of these alliances and aesthetic directions is to imagine the authorial process as a mode of interactivity.

(Source: Author's abstract, 2012 ELO Conference site)