Les Trois Machines de Poésie by Alexandre Gherban are three poetry generators that use text entered by the reader. Gherban’s program is dynamic, meaning that the text changes with every new reading. The program is at times transitory, at others not. The interesting thing is that the program offers an impersonal perspective, which makes the reader feel like an observer rather than a participant; but at the same time, the necessity for the reader to click at times and enter text makes the reader an explicit participant in the story of the creation of the poetry. The machine asks the reader for a series of text that will be controlled, and yet the only times the reader truly has control over the work is this same textonic aspect, the reader’s textual entry, and the reader’s transitory responsibilities. The third machine also gives the reader a choice. After having entered the mandatory text, the reader must also choose the “two parents” who “will create 901 nursery rhymes by playing with your text, a few of which you will read.” The reader has more power in this moment than in all the rest of the work, but the machine also gives the reader a sense of lack of control by declaring that we will only see “a few” of the entire work. The limited access to the different parts of the poem that play out underlines this sense of lack of control.
According to Alexandre Gherban, “the author creates a program but the reader or the spectator interacts with an observable process that escapes all desires.” Gherban believes that the capacity of computers to manifest a work of art in the present moment is a new form of art. According to Gherban, the instantaneous moment is essential for these works of art because it allows us to see that the interaction between humans and machines is the most important concept for poetry. Every time a new reader approaches Gherban’s poetry machines, new letterist poems are created. The second machine declares that it will create a “self portrait” in real time. Here we see the aesthetic of artificial life: a shape enlarges on the screen after each sequence before asking the reader for more textual input. This shape is the manifestation of a visual self portrait and represents the poem that is being created in that instant. Like in the third machine, the two parents, the machine and the reader, create their descendant, the poem.
(Source: Alexandra Martin)
