Impersonator || Janet Zweig
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This is an interactive computer piece at the Santa Fe Community College Instructional Technology Center that invents and writes a new line of text and displays it on a mechanical “flip-disk” sign (like ones in train stations) every time someone enters the building through the main doorway, activated by a contact in the door. The computer that runs the sign contains a text-generating program with grammar rules and a lexicon programmed by the artist. The programming strategy was to use a large number of syntactical structures as templates, and, for each sentence, choose from them randomly and then choose every word in the template randomly from a large lexicon. This provides sentences that are coherent, often funny, and never the same. Every sentence is a new one, written by the computer. Here are some of the sentences it wrote during its first few days:
YOU WILL AESTHETICALLY EMBRACE THIS PAGAN ODDITY.
WAS OUR SLEEP NOURISHED BY DELUSION OR DESPAIR?
YOU ARE NOW ENTERING THE SUPERMARKET OF TOLERANCE.
HYSTERIA, HONEY, IS SO GENUINELY TRANSPARENT.
I REFUSE TO BE ALIVE IN SPITE OF YOUR PATIENCE.
FABULOUS POETS WILL SLEEP WITH YOU IN THE FACTORIES.
IT’S LIKE A FETISH DETONATED BY A TOPLESS COMMENTATOR.
WELCOME ABOARD THE TRANSIENT VIRUS OF MARRIAGE.
PLEASE GIVE NORBERT WEINER SOME NAUGHTY SCHNAUZERS.
I’M IN HERE. I’M ALIVE. TRUST ME.
if i ever do write those stories about evil AIs
i need to use “I’M IN HERE. I’M ALIVE. TRUST ME.” as a line in one
Ahahah this is great. Computer-controlled magnetic poetry basically. And some of those are just hilarious.
Enjoy. (Regretting this? Meh, not really)
