We can all agree that technology is improving at a rapid pace. What does this mean for the arts, mainly poetry(since we are studying it)? Well let us take a look at some other forms of art first to get an idea. Not too long ago there was something created call "Emi". This was a program written by David Cope to imitate music styles and create it's own adaption. Now he's working on something he's calling "Emily Howell", and this is said to create it's own original, modern music. One could say, "Sure that's possible, music is a system of rules anyways,..." Well,... I will post 2 links below that will show the difference between program constructed music and an actual piece. One is a Bach Invention, and the other is an imitation of a Bach invention. I was a piano student for about 6 years and I couldn't tell the difference between the two, and I even studied Bach Inventions for a time. I'd like to think a more experienced pianist would only know the difference because there is a finite number of Bach inventions, and if they never heard it before, it's likely to be the fake. But I don't really want to go any further into that. The real issue is if there is computer generated poetry, is this to be considered art or even poetry for that matter? I certainly think so, I mean I don't think poetry has to be created from human hands to be significant. There are many cases when people see sunsets, they consider that to be beautiful, and even art, we didn't create that. Poets choose their words for their own purposes, much like how one could think of as a set of rules. On this premise, I extend this out to programs. Programs will create their poetry, based on their own set of rules, or their own set of purposes. If you don't think machines can create such a thing, I could make a relation to such things as God. God created mankind and we are creating something that we consider as art, while God "programmed" us. Why in this case would we consider what we create poetry and not what the programs create poetry. Also, another way one could look at it is that the person who wrote the program is still the poet, and he is just using the program as the medium as to which to write his poetry. My thoughts on this could could go on, but I just wanted to put this idea out there and see how's it taken from outside the computer science department. Oh, I didn't mention that my initial search of poetry writing robots are coming up as nil, but so did my search of music creating robots. I only found this because we happened to discuss this in my ethics class recently, and this was a pretty hot topic.
Inventions
Rags
JOPLIN
Mazurkas
Some other links to check out if you're interested in the music stuff:
Emily Howell - http://www.miller-mccune.com/culture-society/triumph-of-the-cyborg-composer-8507/
Emily Howell - http://www.miller-mccune.com/culture-society/triumph-of-the-cyborg-composer-8507/
