Drafting Poems: Inverted Potentialities challenges preconceived notions of intelligence, creativity and authorship. In Drafting Poems, an artificially intelligent system reacts to user stimuli and creates meaningful poetry.
Participants are invited to draw with dry-erase marker on the surface of a glass drafting table. Displayed on the table is a soup of letters, which are repelled (like magnets) from the maker, the eraser, and from each other. When the participant draws (or erases) on the table, the letters move fluidly (as if being stirred). This movement provides the user with immediate feedback from the installation.
As participants draw on the table, the installation gathers pen movement statistics. The pen movement statistics are then fed to an AI system that generates poetry which offers commentary on the gap between the analog and digital. For example:
"The tangible is languidly quantized Transforming the physical into the electronic. The ethereal is evocative of its foundation Yet serrated and notched, It conjures the analog only from afar."
(video)