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A bespoke literary chance machine
This generative, (near) infinite poetry project is based on an original poem, as follows:
The way the river carves its own neck is like you
The way it grinds and sallies
All the lumps took from the hillock
Taking time as finally we all do
The shape of the neck and all it feels is like you
And I don’t know rivers good
They hold down folk sometimes
in infinite regret but hold anyway
Leaving none but sedimented flush in their lung
I make pray for them, for valleys
And viruses in the whip and ruin of your ways
Down to the ocean’s healthy arms
That greeting is above me and it is like you
I may never find a way
To have your neck or the voice in it, the feel
Of your rush and rolling road
Random examples below, from a collection of 365 created on the tezos-based generative art platform fx hash:
The Managed Miles Pt.1 fx hash NFT covers verse 1 of this poem. This verse is broken down into a set of modules, as follows:
The way [LINE 1 module A] [LINE 1 module B] its own [LINE 1 module C] is like [LINE 1 module D]
The way it [LINE 2 module A] and [LINE 2 module B]
All the [LINE 3 module A] [LINE 3 module B] [LINE 3 module C] [LINE 3 module D]
[LINE 4 module A] [LINE 4 module B] as [LINE 4 module C] [LINE 4 module D] [LINE 4 module E]
Each module has 12 options, all ranked manually from 1-12 on four scales: Rarity / Intensity / Temperature / Positivity – this gives each entry a ‘value’ that an algorithm can recognise.
The entries are all written by, and with ‘values’ gauged by, the author, so with this information, the algorithm that drives the poem is able to select module options with the aesthetic literary values of the author as part of an evolving feature map. Each word’s literary ‘value’, when selected, contributes to the selection of the following words. After the poem has been generated, a title is then selected to match the literary tone of the verse.
This process enables the poem to evolve in a way that is deterministic but with very random roots, and crucially, with a clear literary style intact, despite the generative nature of the project. The chance of two transactions generating the same poem from the system is about 1 in 450,000.
Poetry by Johnny Dean Mann, AKA Wily Guys
Coding by Liam Egan