sonnet

The larger project is my first foray into digital poetry that uses a relatively large data set, in this case, the complete sonnets of William Shakespeare.

In Volume 1, the user has the ability to stir lines from Shakespeare’s original 154 sonnets into their “own” creation and to render a screenshot of any particular stirring by pressing the “collect the ephemera” button. The user also has the option to “defeat the ephemera” and return the text to one of Shakespeare’s originals.

In Volume 2, the user does not have the ability to stir Shakespeare’s texts into their “own” creation as the texts are generative or “self-stirring.”  Instead, the user has the opportunity to “read the ephemera” by pressing the “Thou shouldst print more, not let that copy die” button rendering a screenshot of any particular stirring. “Thou shouldst print more…” is the last line of Sonnet XI.

(Source: http://thenewriver.us/95-2/)

“Sonnet Corona” is a generated monometer poem that generates 4782969 possible texts.

Penelope is a combinatory sonnet generator film based on the Odyssey, addressing themes of longing, mass extinction, and migration. Recombinations of lines of the poem, video clips, and musical arrangements produce a different version of the project on each run. Penelope was co-produced by Alejandro Albornoz (Sound), Roderick Coover (Video), and Scott Rettberg (Text and Code). Using a similar combinatory structure to that of Raymond Queneau's Cent mille milliards de poèmes, the computer-code-driven combinatory film can produce millions of variations of a sonnet that weaves and then unweaves itself. The program writes 13 lines of a sonnet and then reverses the rhyme scheme at the center couplet. Each 26 line poem is produced as an audiovisual composition, with lines spoken by voice actress Heather Morgan. The system determines their composition, produces and plays the video and musical composition, and then displays the text of the generated poem before composing a new sonnet pair. The videos by Roderick Coover and the sound compositions by Alejandro Albornoz also recombine in an algorithmic structure. Albornoz remixed oboe solos by Kristiansand Symphony Orchestra musician Marion Walker in developing the aleatory soundtrack. The video and the text were developed by Coover and Rettberg during 2017 residencies at the Ionian Center for Arts and Culture. Actors in non-speaking roles in the film include Kefalonian residents Helen Amourgi, Kostas Annikas Deftereos, and Sophia Kagadis.

(Description: Author's description)

Sonnet One Four is a cryptographic experience. While the puzzle is relatively simple, each tweet is representative of a line of the poem, in scrambled, random order, each tweet is meant to take you on your own unique journey to matching the clue to the line of the poem. Each line is unique and thus you as an individual will ultimately take your own path to not only interpreting the poem, decoding/encoding the poem, but you will also take different implications away from the clues. The clues sometimes are metaphorical, otherwise they are literally pointed at a word or phrase within the line of the poem the clue correlates to. In summation, when you start trying to match tweets to meanings and the lines of the poem as we have assigned each tweet to, you may in fact Google different things, or think of different references and meanings true to your experiences (intertextuality). I expect people will use the internet as a main resource to decode/match each tweet to each line but that is because I made the twitter that way. However, you could use other resources or prior knowledge. The digital aspect of the twitter is important though, it is current, it involves metrics like trending and popularity, it takes on the Shakespearean sonnet in a totally new, unexpected way. The way that the twitter functions as an art piece is in how it is an interactive installation of poetry which can be projected in a public space for people to strive to understand. You have all the answers in front of you, the name of the sonnet, each line in coded form, but the goal is to make your own meaning of the poem with our guidance.

(Source: http://conference.eliterature.org/media/first-encounter-jaci-jones-jaso…)

Transient self–portrait is an artistic research project questioning notions of reading and the electronic medium while exploring the possibilities of coding to interact with the work. I take as the point of departure two pivotal sonnets in Spanish literature that are normally studied alongside each other, En tanto que de rosa y azucena by Garcilaso de La Vega, a 16th Century Spanish poet, using Italian Renaissance verse forms and Mientras por competir con tu cabello by Luís de Gongora, a 17th Century Spanish poet from the Baroque period. Gongora's sonnet is a homage to Garcilaso's and the styles and the cultural aspects that appear on the sonnets are very different reflecting the attitudes from the Renaissance and the Baroque. This project is a response to some of the concepts that emerge from these sonnets; ephemerality of life, consummation, transient entities, fragility, which are also relevant to our age and the electronic world we inhabit. The creative process is that of producing, reflecting, programming and testing the medium to explore these notions in an electronic media society of dialogues with self-images, engaging the participant in a reading experience of ‘in’ and ‘out’ of language, via webcams and interactive aesthetics. The sonnets pass from different stages of written, visual, aural, language and code to dissipate into nothing.

This 41 th kiss of love is a sonnet whose first six couplets consist, for each of their 2 verse 13 monosyllables. The poet has planned to leave to the reader the illusory care to swap them all. 

A simple web version of Queneau's Oulipoan print classic, which shows a sonnet generated from a new combination of lines each time you reload the page. Includes French and English translation.