MFT: THYSELF - Emoji Emotion Tracking Browser Extension

Thyself is a Chrome browser extension developed by Whole Technology Co. This application is one of the most creative uses of emojis in the modern applications. It goes beyond mere gimmickry to being just a handy tool for the cause. The purpose of Thyself extension is to track the user's mood with an assistance of emojis and as a result help to develop a better understanding of one's emotional intelligence and subsequently motivate to improve the quality of emotional intelligence skills.

The idea is that modern life give little to no time to contemplate and comprehnd what is going on emotion-wise. And that takes a toll on the user himself and people surrounding him. Thyself is a kind of very basic tool to analyze the emotional state and find ways to improve your reacting to things and determing your mood. In a way, it is a chance to reflect on how you react to thing and how comprehend how are you feeling.

Over the time, the chosen emojis pile up and you get rather fascinating picture of your emotional dynamics through the day and further. Given the fact that surfing through The Internet and going through life in general is rather underwhelming and at time utterly frustrating and emotionally draining experience - this tool definitily may come in handy at least as a measuring stick.

Here's how it works. Every once in a while (three hours) the user's flow is interrupted by the Thyself tab that asks user to determine his mood with a very straightforward question "How Am I feeling?". Such an extended time periods are intentionally conceived to make user forget about the extension and do his own things long enough only to be caught out of the blue with "How Am I feeling?". This way the answer means more. In addition to that, Thyself's "out of nowhere" tactics are designed to minimize user's ability to overthink the results.

The selection of emojis is broad enough to cover every basic emotional state imaginable. The descriptions are purely practical and you barely if ever even stumble to think which emoji to choose - it comes out very intuitive. Then you can look at the stats on the personal dashboard and see the dynamics of you had emotions throughout the day and further.

I have used this extension for a whole day and it was a fascinating experience. My morning hours are usually very positive and tightly focused on getting into the groove. But then wear and tear kicks in and three hours later I felt like I'm in the full-on grind mode. Three more hours later this feeling got an additional layer of awkwardness and disengagement. I've noticed an unhealthy amount of automatism in my routine. Three more hours later it was all numb final stretch. It was "not ready to give up but not really giving a damn". I have never thought about my day in that manner and it was very insightful.

You can also use this application to build some sort of an emotion description-only time-based narrative. It is a kind of abstraction that let's the reader to fill-in the gaps or identify himself with the emotional layout of the timetable. The reader can build his own stories based on those layouts or channel his own experiences and contemplate about the way certain events affect mood.

Overall, Thyself is a good emotional intelligence tool that gives the most important thing - a chance to reflect and put things into the perspective.

BSPH: Mario Prassinos Automatic Drawings

I feel like there is much more to say about Automatic Drawing beyond what i have already stated in the previous post. So i'm going to write about various approaches to the technique and talk about how different artists are using this glorious technique.

This time it is turn of Mario Prassinos.

Mario Prassinos was one of the youngsters who got swept by the tide of surrealism in the mid 1930s.  An immigrant from the crumbling Ottoman Empire, he was stranger in a strange land from the get go and so embracing the exploratory, boundary pushing attitude of the surrealists was not really bending over backwards to him. He was already alienated, and his perspective allowed his to go even further than the rest.

However, by the 1930s the surrealist movement was getting old real fast. The group slided towards dogmatism, slowly closing in on itself. Breton and folks grew numb of what was going on around them and indulged in retracing same old tricks over and over again. The group was too big for its own good and basically immobile in terms of further aesthetic development as an artistic unit. But as an idea - surrealism still had the flame going.

Due to his youth and relative inexperience Prassinos was more eager to try something different and make mistakes than his older folks. This made one of the more exciting painter associated with the surrealist movement.

His automatic works are particularly interesting. Prassinos way of going applying the automatism was via casual sketching. This is very different from the traditional free styling "stream of consciousness" approach to the technique, practically the complete opposite of automatism, but the combination brought some unusual results.

Sketch drawing is very similar to automatic drawing conceptually. The difference is that you know what you are sketching (at least in some abstract manner) while you have no idea about the eventual end result while doing the automatic drawing. 

What brings sketching and automatic drawing together is that there is no overbearing Damocles Sword weaving over to you to make the things "right". You just do the thing and the fact of that accomplishment contributes to the bigger cause in the form of the empirical knowledge.

The sketch is nothing more than a stepping stone towards the bigger, "real thing". It is more of an exploration of possibilities, a study on the ways of doing things, than a fully-fledged and reasoned artistic expression. It is a throwaway, disposable entity of half-measures and wrong moves.

Similarly, automatic drawing is the expression of the spur of the moment, unbound by the constraints of reasonable utilitarianism. It goes somewhere and it comes around the way it is, because it was made in that particular moment. It is a careless document that conceals "the" and exposes "the the".

Prassinos way of doing automatic drawing is to blast it out in a singular burst. In his automatic drawing he is stomping the road through the thick jungle debris of his mind towards the goal that is ain't exactly real or it is real but it aint' exactly there.

His pieces are bombardments of ink on paper made with strategic precision. He exactly knows what he is going to do, the thing is that his intention is not to depict anything specific but to spend that nondescript notion lurking deep inside in a couple of swift moves. In a way, it is a savage offensive on the mind, a routine of recalibrating the sense.

Above anything else, Prassinos is documening the change that occurs within himself while making the pieces. In a way, it is a dance composition between a hand, pen, ink and paper.

The one where the last man standing is the artist who moves on to the other things changed. 

BSPH: Paul Paun - Infra Black Drawings

A couple of days ago I was having a cup of coffee with my friend, meeting after a long break and talking, among other things, about automatism and automatic drawing in particular. The story goes - she complained about being so taken over by the whirl of the job that she abandoned pretty much every creative outlet she had after she started to work for that company. And now, as she quit that frustrating and draining company and had some rest, she's still so exhausted that even after a while she struggles to get into that particular mood and create anything. 

This is a common problem - creative practice requires consistency and in order to keep it that way - you need some sort of conditioning. Just like doing sports - you need to keep yourself in shape - otherwise your so-called "creative muscles" get atrophied and you need to start all over again from the ground up.

So naturally the conversation took a turn into "why don't you just freestyle and see what happens?" direction with a reference to the surrealist technique of automatic drawing. 

I always viewed automatic drawing a shorcut to jumpstarting the creative flow. You just need to that and that is the only real rule. No overthinking, no attachment, no engagement, just a burst of action. 

As one of the examples of this approach i've mentioned Paul Paun and his series of Infra Black Drawings. 

Take a look:

First, lets explain the man behind the work. Paul Paun is the lesser known part of the Romanian Surrealist Holy Trinity that also includes Gherasim Luca and Dolfi Trost. Just like his cohorts he found inspiration in the dynamic intensity of Futurism and inherent nihilism of Dada. Because of that his brand of surrealism was significantly less wishy-washy and much grittier than the mainstream representation of the movement. His works are warped, mutilated, contorted hanging twisted. The way he constructs imagery is very physical and blunt. Think of The Thing from The Thing.

Paul Paun made Infra-black drawings specifically for the exhibition called "Infra-Black" that opened in 1946. It was a sort of a throwback affair organized by the old pals to remind everything what the real surrealism is all about after the reek and rumble of WW2 was finally over.

It is a fascinating example of an automatic drawing that goes beyond into the unknown.

The series presents a sequences of abstract formless shapes in the state of the flux. This kind of texture was achieved by drawing with wide charcoal - there no clear lines - these are swathes of blackness on the white background pulling in every imaginable direction by strokes short and long, hard and soft. It is disjointed and yet it gells together.

The pieces weren't even drawn traditionally, more like stumbled into the way they are by rolling and tumbling the piece of charcoal on the paper. In a way, the drawings are more thrown together than drawn.

Infra-black drawing are a kind of micro-abysses designed to be looked at. It is very nihilist stuff in a straightforward way. The whole "infra" thing is all about avoiding the obvious, staying elusive, slightly beyind the grasp of cognition but still capable of rumbling the impression. These pieces are not designed to evoke images and don't really point out at anything, but the opposite notion persists. Kinda like Rorschach's ink blots but even more asbtract. There is no real definition behind the drawings - they are what they are.

The drawings are intentionally cut from the casual comprehension and left for either blank staring or blatant indulgence to the apophenic pareidolia. Infra-black drawings seemingly taunt the viewer to think about it by the virtue of being nondescript enough to cause that kind of reaction. It is a cognitive loop, a trap of habit that needs to be broken in order to go beyond.

On one hand, it all seems like a cloud-like formations of steam or smoke with various density and content. One might think what could have caused this kind of formation (my take is that these are flashforward Court Room drawings of the crime scene recreation of the smoke that came from John Baldessari burning his early body work). On the other hand, the smooth nondescript abstractness reminds of the Northern Lights sky phenomenon filtered into a hard black and white. It can go either way, but there is a much more to it if you don't try to comprehend it.

The trick is to resist the temptation to insert your interpretation of the image and treat the drawing as it is, as it was made - a charcoal drawing on a piece of paper. This might be too underwhelming and unsatisfactory - but that's the way it is.

You know the drill - you stare at the abyss long enough and the abyss stares back at you. This occurrence incites that nonplus semblance of a feeling that lurks deep inside and rustles quite a bit before vanishing and leaving a void of known unknown. That's what the great automatic drawing are able to do better than any other form of artistic expression.

MFT: Jack Palance talks about lunch with James Dean

Jack Palance was an effortlessly cool kind of an actor. He could convey an imposing presence simply by hanging around and doing stuff. There was something magnetic about him that his every turn count.

Case in point - this fragment from "On the road with Sammy and Elaine" where Jack Palance simply reminesces on his life.

He starts his monologue in the corn field talking about his early years on the farm subtly comparing the craft of farming with an actor's craft with the difference being that farmer don't need to look anything special, while actors need to have that certain panache and arrange networking lunches with the press and stuff.

He then tells one story from 1955. He was having a lunch at Warner Brothers restaurant in Burbank  with a comedy actor Gig Young and the other actor whose name was James Dean (who was working on a "Rebel without a Cause" at that time).

Jack ordered the meal of the day which was corn and potatoes and chicken. Gig ordered an overly complicated sandwich and double martini. James Dean made a spectacle out of his order - he crossed and uncrossed his legs a couple of times, played a melody on his lips, looked at the ceiling for three minutes and then simply ordered a hamburger.

Then two women came in - one of them was Jayne Mansfield and the other was Pierre Angeli. Jayne had ordered a sandwich and a cup of coffee, while Pierre, who was on the diet at that time, ordered some fruit.

And so, these five actors were sitting together at one table, feeling slightly awkward and stranger to each other. As it turned out a bit later - four of them died tragically at a young age. And all Jack was left to do afterwards is to tell about this little absolutely inconsequential episode from his life while walking through a corn field.

It is funny how this little story resonates on the ground level. We all have moments like this, that doesn't mean a thing but just remain for one reason or another.

Pointless Mental Exercise

Read this sentence 10 times and think about what you have done. Seriously: 

“Improving Explorability in Variational Inference with Annealed Variational Objectives”.

BSPH: Del Shannon - One Track Mind

"One Track Mind" is a song by american rock'n'roll singer Del Shannon. It was originally recorded in the late 70s during Shannon excursion into Ireland but left floating in the bootleg dimension until recently being reissued on an album titled "The Dublin Sessions".

Stylistically "One track mind" is the answer to a hypothetical question "what will happen if you combine sloppy jumping hangover swagger of The Rolling Stones with the stoic swamp vibe of John Fogerty and Creedance Clearwater Revival?". It is hard pounding rock song with a genuine emotion bringing it on another level.

Musically, there is not much going on. The song is built on an incredibly catchy Ray Charles-channeling electropiano riff around which the rest of the arrangement is built. The guitar lines are clearly inspired by Keith Richards start-stop bounce, while the drums provide a solid backbone to the proceedings.

The lyrics are by-the-numbers "abstract kitchen sink relationship stuff" about things getting under the skin and then a bit hedgehoggy with tough verbal exchanges.

What makes it interesting is that Shannon sells it like it is the lowbrow high drama with that particular indelible smirk that points out the unreliable narrator flavor behind the performance.

While the text treats the situation as sacramental "these stupid things", the way Shannon performs it suggests that the narrator doesn't take the accusations seriously and is partially delusional about his behavior. This suggests that there is much more obsession involved than it seems.

Del Shannon's story is one of the biggest injustices of rock history. He deserved better. The man wrote one of the most heartwrenching heartbreak songs of all time "Runaway" and spent the rest of his long career in the shadow of this song. While his later works never reached the exposure of his early - the man never stopped to move forwards and update his aesthetic. "One Track Mind" is one of the highlights of his later career.

MFT: Christopher Lambert's Dummy Head from "Highlander"

This is an image from the 1986 seminal high-concept action classic "Highlander". It is a snapshot from the post-showdown thunder and lightning extravaganza when the protagonist Connor MacLeod was in the process of "receiving the prize" for winning the elimination beheading game. It is a split second image that depicts a rubber dummy head in the shape of the film lead Christopher Lambert.

Curiously enough, the dummy head looks kinda uncanny valley off. It sloppily depicts slightly unenthused approximation of Christopher Lambert's casual brooding grimace but due to melted candy presentation - it looks like The Thing going for an audition in "The Hidden" (which is a great idea).

Here's how i happened to find this image.

The story goes - I happened to catch "Highlander" on TV. Since it is one of my all-time favorites - i've spent the rest of the day casually surfing in the Highlander-related web pages. And probably because i have nothing better to do. And I'm curious to know more, even if it doesn't mean anything in particular and not really leads to anything. 

The thing is - "Highlander" is a fascinating film that manages to be pathologically dumb and at the same time incredibly heartfelt and fun. It is a simple story that does some interesting tricks with its building blocks and delivers on the tense spectacle and sweeping emotion. It is seminal "don't think too hard about it" exhibit.

While going through various reviews of the film, i've stumbled upon Outlaw Vern's reviews of the series (his take on Part 2 is rather interesting) and there i've found that fascinating image. And so i thought it would be a good idea to make a post with this image on my blog.

End of story.

MFT: OpenAI Talk to Transformer

You know it seems like a floodgate of different text generating projects had opened recently. You get a new one almost each week and each time things get a little bit more interesting. 

Previously on this blog, i have covered Google's Talk to Books and Poem Portraits. Both were promising but unremarkable thingies.

Now it is turn of OpenAI-based endevour.

The tool is called "Talk to Transformer". It is a natural language processing machine learning neural network designed to perform an autocomplete on the text based on an input query. Its modus operandi is simple - analyze an input text and predicts the most fitting completion sequence.

Long story short: it is interesting but all over the place and not exactly any good (but i like it, because it's only rock and roll).

Talk to Transformer (bizarrely enough still not abbreviated into Triple T, that's a serious oversight) was developed by Adam King. The application is based on OpenAI machine learning model GTP-2 that is known for its capability to produce coherent chunks of text that are barely distinguishable from the human-written text output. At least in the case of generic, bland-o, template-o, SEO wet dream text. 

So - GTP-2 is really intense when it comes to generating text. But the thing with generating text is that you need to provide a direction for the generative algorithm in order to get results. Talk to Transformer is doing just that. 

The idea behind Triple T is cute - to make an easier interface of showcasing the GTP-2 framework in action. It is not as much a tool itself but a glorified interactive advert. It is designed to inspire to use GTP-2. Which is great. 

The autocomplete feature is a good way of showing the flexibility of the system. It provides a reasonable amount of interactivity for the users and shows just enough to make a positive impression.

If you give the algorithm one word - it is going to built a text out of it. At all cost. The length of the text depends on the generative potential of the word from the corpus point of view. In addition to that, there are vector equations that add to the picture. 

The usual result is a word salad snipped from here and there into a text that is readable but not exactly informative but otherwise borderline entertaining. The reason for that is the limited amount of input. Due to lack of information the algorithm starts to generate text from the text it generates - the phenomenon known as recursion. The contexts mix-up and the whole thing just strolls wherever the eyes are looking at the moment. Because of that you get that sweet subtle nonsense. It is fun to play.

Things get better when you give the algorithm a complete sentence. With more stuff to play with - the algorithm is capable of producing a coherent text. If the sentence's message is straightforward - you get a couple of vignettes around the central message that bring some colors to the context. If the sentence is ambiguous or heavily relies on tongue-in-cheek meaning displacement - hillarity ensues. 

I've typed "Kylie Minogue fans don't masturbate" (known as one of the ways to decipher KMFDM band name) and got some saccharine stream of consciousness heavily reminiscent of teenage op-ed from the good old Tumblr. It confirmed the assumption that Kylie Minogue fans don't masturbate and then claimed that when they do, they listen to Taylor Swift's Shake it off (fair statement, tbh). Then the conversation switched to porn in general with references to Wall Street Journal study and then it was cut off mid-sentence on "This is why". 

This kind of structure is called "divagation" - when the subject of the conversation strays away to something somewhat related or even something else entirely. It's nice to know that NLP generative algorithms are capable of doing that, because jumping from subject to subject within one text was never my strong suit and it is probably good for SEO.   

If you give a significant chunk of text - things get weirdly scattershot. At first, i've dropped a couple of generic random generated sentences and got nothing really special. It was more of the same that managed to blend into generic text. Then i've tried more sophisticated writing and the algorithm more or less adapted itself to the while. It added nothing to the text, but was serviceable enough to make a pass. 

Then i thought it would be a good idea to try to autocomplete some short poetry. My usual suspects are well-known. 

- Ezra Pound' In a Station of the Metro delivered the best bad result - "Huh? I don't get really get it. This is too dense." Good to know that NLP algorithm can't dig ye olde Ezra.

- Kenneth Patchen's "The Murder of Two Men by a Young Kid Wearing Lemon-colored Gloves" fared better. The autocomplete was nice and simple "Now I Know You Love Me."

- William Carlos Williams' This is just to say. I've fed the whole text and the resulting autocomplete was "!!! So, I guess I'll be staying here again next time... Thank you so much!!". Kinda cute. 

Finally, i've typed some mad lib a strings of random characters into it. The resulting text was an arcane something-something out of the depth of its big bad booty text corpus. Funnily enough, the latter option seems to be the best way of using Talk to Transformer. The resulting text was inhuman slab of characters that persisted on the comprehension but denied contemplation. Here's an example:

"click click click clicking clicking clicking clicking CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK

Uncomment this line to show
Ear Beard **********

PlayAlertSound "00000000000"

DOO DA DA DA DA DA DA DA DA DA DE DIO DA DA DA

honk hum tinkle tisk tisk tsk tsk tsk p.p. p.p. p.p.
hokum hohum hmm hmph hmmm mmmm hmm mmmm mmmmm mmmmmm mmmm hm hm mmmmmm"

Now this is something i would like to see more.

Overall, I really like what Talk to Transformer has to offer. It is a very good tool for tongue-in-cheek inserts and inhuman machine texts. 

BSPH: Chubby Checker - Love Tunnel

"Love Tunnel" is a song by American rock 'n' roll singer Chubby Checker. It was released in 1971 on Chubby's fascinating attempt at artistic comeback titled "Chequered".

The story goes - after a lacklustre decade of trying to recapture the flame of "The Twist" and "Let's Twist Again", Chubby decided to move on and try something different. He wanted to update his sound to a modern times. In order to do that he studied religiously the records of Jimi Hendrix and Arthur Lee. While he was trying reinventing himself, things have changed in the american showbiz and nobody was interested in Chubby Checker's artistic reinvention. He was a joke. But Chubby wasn't the one who backs down and so he relocated to Holland and later recorded his reinvention record with the local session men. Nobody cared, but the document persists.

The song "Love Tunnel" is a highlight of an album. It is the longest song of the bunch and the one with the most intricate structure. It is an odd mix of straightforward upbeat psychedelic rock mixed with mid-60s Rhythm and Blues with "less is more" arrangement spliced with a old school gospel linings.

Chubby's performance is on fire. And it feels very natural, Chubby is in his natural element. He's all in and it shows. Chubby's voice is very intense and raw - he's on the edge, he plows through the song like a bulldozer leaving a cathartic bliss afterwards.

The first part of the song is an fast tempo stomper. It starts in medias res skipping the convention intro - going straight from the transition to the verse. Chubby is out of breath trying to keep up with the high tempo and it reflects the themes of the song - getting hung up in the whirl of love feeling up to the point of getting tunnel vision. Then the stomp slowly falls apart into a series of breaks during which Chubby ravages like a cat closed in a box.

The middle part of the song drops the tempo down to the crawl. It is as if the entire band decided to lay down as close to the ground as possible. Chubby goes for somber sprachtgesung repeating a couple of phrases in a manic thousand yard stare manner. It is as if he was shellshocked for real after the initial ordeal. The words circle around like a gang of crows waiting for the gravely feast. It is haunting.

Then the song picks up and resumes the uptempo stomp. But now its loose and sloppy. The bits and pieces of the song are falling apart and the whole construction runs at the breath's end - it is going as if it was shot in the back at the end of the first section and only now an impact starts to wear the body down. And then, before you know, it is over as if nothing happened.

"Love Tunnel" is a fascinating document of an artist trying to get find himself, defy expectations and try something more adventurous than usual.

***

BSPH: Lou Reed - No Money Down

Sometimes I feel like there is something missing when it comes to discussing Lou Reed. Don't get me wrong - the man is got a well-rounded conversation on his body of work. However, there are few sorely missing spots. The usual conversation about Lou Reed usually revolves around his early years with Velvet Underground, his solo triumphs of Transformer and Berlin, the epic story of the Metal Machine Machine, his collaboration with John Cale and also his last project with Metallica. Everything else is basically swept under the rug or so it feels.

Case in point - this thing.


This is a music video for a song "No Money Down". It was released in 1986 on an album "Mistrial" also known as "You thought you've heard Lou Reed at his most misguided and pointless? Try this". It is mechanistic assembly line new wave cliche-ridden business-as-usual plastic death march to oblivion with trademark sprechstimme that populated much of Reed's oeuvre of the 1980s. But the video is what makes it really special.

The video depicts an animatronic recreation of Lou Reed's head lip-syncing the song on a black background. The head is actually quite well-designed and its artificially doesn't come into attention until a bit later on (almost immediately, actually, but you don't really think about until the things get weird). The movements are chunky but not really that noticeable. It is off, but not much to annoy. I mean - when you have to lip-sync such song - the head is going to move like that even if you are an actual living breathing creature - it is that kind of a torture.

So - Lou Reed is staring at the viewer from behind his cool and cheap sunglasses. There is an infinite blackness in the background. The look on his face begs for Judge Dredd's helmet because it is an atrocity. He looks tough as in "too tough to dance".

His head moves as if the neck got stiff and also numb. There is feign and shoddiness in the movements. The more he moves his head around - the more "uncanny valley" feeling you get. But there is nothing really going on - so there is also a growing tension of expecting something to happen.

The train of thought watching this is looking like this: "- fighting; the timid tune; soniferous; horrid 'n appallin' words - you speculate upon that feeling - in order to be dragged away to your adapted apparition...".

Right before the boredom gulp shifts from an intention to action, things start to happen. Lou Reed's uncanny valley head takes off the glasses and he does in style. And then, in an unexpected expected turn of events, things go in a slightly "Hellraiser" direction. The hands, which are definitely real human hands, start to tear off the skin from the head. For some reason, it is oddly satisfactory and even displeasedly beautiful.

Here's how this sequence looks like:

• The hands are tearing off the cheeks;
• show off the teeth;
• tear off the skin on the temples;
• tear off the tip of the nose ;
• tear off the hairpiece;
• tear away the rest of the nose ;
• then go the ears ;
• then go the brows;

What you are left to witness is the machinery of the head. Those eldritch eyebulbs and that rube goldberg face construction. It feel weird to look at it, even though there is nothing really appaling.

And then, as a finishing stroke the hands are ripping off the jaw and you now it looks even more like some retroactive Hellraiser tribute.

•  and fade out.

Notes on Aram Saroyan's Lighght Poem

Aram Saroyan’s “Lighght” is probably one of the greatest things ever created by mankind - so simple and yet so powerful.

It is the poem you can’t really read but only comprehend, if that makes sense.

This poem consists of just one word, slightly modified - and nothing else. In a way, it is just an instant, a moment of comprehension that causes deep repercussions - something very different from the casual poem reading experience.

The entire poem is based on a fact that are silent letters in English language. Saroyan adds another “-gh-” and by that adds a new dimension to the word “light” and elaborates on the concept behind it. You can’t spell it, but can see the difference when you look at the poem and that triggers a different reaction. The one that leads to parts unknown.

The poem plays on the cognitive dissonance between the common way of writing the word “light” and its appearance with an additional “-gh-” which does not really make any difference in the spelling. And yet it makes the reader to reconsider what the concept of “light” and what does it mean when there is an additional “-gh-” thrown in. Does it mean more light or a different kind of light?

It is very reminiscent of how Inuit language have multiple ways of describing the snow and its states. There are numerous variations of words that signify different types and states of snow. They add functional parts to the core word so that it would describe the thing more precise detail.

“Lighght” works in a similar manner. The addition of another “-gh-” is subtle notion that this particular instance of experiencing “light” is somewhat different from the one that is casually experienced.

And that is basically what the poetry is doing with language in a nutshell. It uses its aesthetic properties and creative potential to uncover new things, new shades, to transform casual matters, to defamiliarize common concepts and move forwards into the unknown and hopefully, makes us understand the nature of the world and its perception better.

MFT: Google Poem Portraits

Baba Google Strikes Again. The last time i've covered Google's exploits in the field of artificial intelligence, machine learning and natural language processing was around the time Talk to Books was presented. It was fun but not much else.

Now they have unveiled their brand new toy - Poem Portraits. Long story short: at least they tried.

Developed by Es Devlin with an assistance from Google's Ross Goodwin, Poem Portraits is another attempt to explore the possibilities of natural language generation in a specific environment. This time - it is poetry. Because, you know, poetry is the most effective way of showcasing the aesthetic possibilities of language and push the boundaries of comprehension deep into the parts unknown. Poems do stuff other forms of literature skim over - such playing with semantics, clashing the disparate meanings of words, subverting the narrative by context and overall wrecking the common perception of language use. This makes it a good to choice for natural language processing algorithms. It is challenging and the results may be stagering.

Also - it helps to refine customer support conversational interfaces, but that's absolutely not the point of it all. Not even a bit. For real. For sure. Yup.

Poem Portraits is all about composing a text that is technically poetic based around an input query. The user is asked to donate the word. After the word is entered, the thing does a fancy animation with the word being sliced up and digested (by algorithm). Then it overlays the text on the user's selfie because gimmickry. Or you can skip and get a semi-abstract thingie with the text.

Poem Portraits uses semantics to figure out the best fitting sequence and applies its extensive vocabulary and sample base in order to compose a short piece of text. The algorithm is trained on 19th century poetry (it is stated that algorithm ate around 25 million words - now that's an alphabet soup). This means it is verbose and flowery and diverse in stylistic flourishes. These features make it easier to embellish the input query with ornate verbiage. The resulting text is supposed to be poetry by proxy - because it was generated out of poetry. And it seems like poetry, all the ingridients are definitely there, except it is slightly off.

The text is just there. It looks pretty but it makes nothing happen. Since there is this overused aphorism "poetry makes nothing happen" - that's it. The resulting text is just a couple of phrases thrown together with an input word sticking out of a glory hole.

But at the same time - Poem Portraits is an interesting case of simulacrum. The thing is - Poem Portraits exploits the elusive notion of poetry, not the poetry itself. It revolves around the feel that is not exactly present in the text or its perception or it is present but not really there.

Poem Portrait simply makes impressions which cause a certain kinds of reaction based on common perception of the concept of poetry. It clicks and that is it. It is a perfect fodder for "yeah, uh-huh".

The most interesting thing about it is that the thing doesn't know the word "eellogofusciouhipoppokunurious" but it knows "floccinaucinihilipilification". It makes no sense regardless but it is baffling that one word is there while the other is don't. Whatever.

Deconstructing Joy Division "Unknown Pleasures" cover into an abstract landscape sketch

Sometimes an idea hits you and you can't help but try to do something with it. This is how it happened.

So - a couple of days ago I was surfing on the Internet haven't nothing else to do. It is mildly frustrating but otherwise unmemorable. I was going through my subscriptions - looking for something interesting, probably something to write about it. And there was just nothing of note.

Disappointed, i went to my favorite MP3 blogs feed and started clicking around at random, hoping to stumble upon something unexpected. It didn't happened, so i was rolling the mouse wheel until the end of the feed. And down there - there was something i was aware of but never really thought of it this way before.

It was Peter Saville's a poster based on the front cover art for Joy Division's "Unknown Pleasures" album. The one with an image of radio waves from CP-1919 pulsar, the signal from little green men.

Here it is:

For some unknown reason, I was looking at it as if i haven't it before. I was mystified by it and I knew i needed to do something with it or it will never go away and i'll be stuck with forever.

And so i did what any sane man with a nondescript creative urge would do - messed with it. 

Before starting, I reverted the color scheme of the original image. Then made a copy of an image, wiped it clean and used it as a pinboard canvas. Then i've used a capture tool that grabbed the lines and started composing my own piece out of Unknown Pleasures cover. 

Due to compression artifacts and image resolution - i couldn't grab the entire lines. The tool was capturing them in a very erratic and disjointed manner - a little of this and a little bit of that. At first I wanted to do an asemic writing thing but soon it became apparent that this thing was perfect for the fake abstract pencil sketch of some landscape.

Here's the result:

This is an example of how to make something new out of something old and well-known. The only thing you need is go for it.