D. Fox Harrell considers what is computational about composition, and describes the GRIOT system for generating literary texts.
The source is the essay-review on www.electronicbookreview.com written by D. Fox Harrell
"The GRIOT computational narrative system utilizes techniques suitable for representing meaning and expression such as the thoughts in the paragraph above. GRIOT is a computer program developed to implement systems that output narratives in response to user input."
"In algebraic semiotics the structure of complex signs, including multimedia signs (e.g., a film with closed captioning), and the blending of such structures are described using semiotic systems (also called sign systems) and semiotic morphisms (mappings between sign systems).
This does not imply a belief that meaning can be reduced to mathematical formalization; on the contrary, the underlying theories in cognitive linguistics assert that meaning is considered to be contextual and dynamic, and has a basis in embodied human experience. This means that meaning is "actively constructed by staggeringly complex mental operations" such as conceptual blending (Ibid., 8). Furthermore, meaning depends upon the fact that humans exist "in a world that is inseparable from our bodies, our language, and our social history" (Varela, Thompson and Rosch 1991). These underlying assumptions about the nature of meaning and the use of formalization are some of the characteristics that distinguish GRIOT from other work in poetry and narrative generation."
"My longer-term project involves using this technical and theoretical framework as a basis for creating further computational narrative artworks where in addition to textual input, users can interact with graphical or gamelike interfaces. This user interaction will still drive the generation of new metaphors and concepts, but along with text will also result in blends of graphical and/or audio media."
All quotes were directly rewritten from the essay.
[meme.garden] is an Internet service that blends software art and search tool to visualize participants' interests in prevalent streams of information, encouraging browsing and interaction between users in real time, through time. Utilizing the WordNet lexical reference system from Princeton University, [meme.garden] introduces concepts of temporality, space, and empathy into a network-oriented search tool. Participants search for words which expand contextually through the use of a lexical database. English nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs are organized into floating synonym "seeds," each representing one underlying lexical concept. When participants "plant" their interests, each becomes a tree that "grows" over time. Each organism's leaves are linked to related streaming RSS feeds, and by interacting with their own and other participants' trees, participants create a contextual timescape in which interests can be seen growing and changing within an environment that endures.
Primary Text: Marko Niemi’s Stud Poetry, a demo of which would run during the presentation.
The paper opens with a brief discussion of the inherently conservative nature of the ELO’s definition of electronic-literature and the critical tendencies which this encourages. It has a strong focus on those critics who identify the forms which electronic literature has taken as an extension of modernist experimentation in the Twentieth Century, while disregarding the new possibilities which programmable media furnishes the poet with.
These possibilities are manifest in Niemi’s Stud Poetry, a text which has been consistently overlooked since its publication, perhaps because it presents a challenge to the dominant critical trends. Stud Poetry cannot fully be understood in terms of print-based modernist experimentation, Dada or Burroughs, because it would be impossible to achieve without a computer program. Niemi wrote the code which ‘writes’ each poem/game.
‘The text’ is thus suspended somewhere in between each iteration as it appears to the user, and the overarching structure provided by the code. Niemi selects the program’s vocabulary, the rules which it must adhere to, the inputs which a user can make, and the probabilities which determine the text’s production, but remains one step removed from the text as it appears on screen. Some control, in the shape of the buttons at the bottom of the screen, is given over to the user- who plays the role of glamorous assistant to Niemi’s conjurer and follows his prompts as the poem/game progresses.
The only serious attempt to critique this relationship as it exists within Stud Poetry is available on C. T. Funkhouser’s New Directions in Poetry website after it was omitted from the print version. Funkhouser’s reading is fundamentally flawed as he misreads the code and believes it impossible to learn from each hand. The value of the words is calculated only once, at the beginning of the game and not at the beginning of each hand as Funkhouser has it. Through experience of the text, the user gains increasing control of it as they understand the value of each word, and can predict with increasing accuracy the way the poem/game will proceed, while recognizing that an element of uncertainty is involved. The element of competition quickly creates a narrative.
With its random-generation and interactivity, Stud Poetry is authored by Niemi without being controlled by him. He uses internet poker as a form, as a print poet might use a sonnet, but his is the more radical utilisation as it challenges what can be conceived of as literature, and where ‘the text’ may be in a work of this kind. His poem/game embodies the challenge which electronic literature poses to print literature, and should be recognised with discussion at a major conference rather than becoming an anomaly or outlier of the Electronic Literature Collection.
(Source: Author's abstract at ELO 2013)
