Computational Writing and the Literary Device
Submission Type
Paper
Start Date/Time (EDT)
21-7-2024 9:15 AM
End Date/Time (EDT)
21-7-2024 10:15 AM
Location
Hypertexts & Fictions
Abstract
According to Johanna Drucker, writing can be seen as an algorithmic subject that speaks a language constitutive of rules through a set of procedures. It suggests that computational writing can be a subject of writing when considering human-machine interactions. In this presentation, I argue that computational writing produces creativity through literary device. A literary device is a technique based on particular literary rules. It offers linguistic acts to computational writing. To demonstrate how computational writing works with literary device to produce something new, this presentation draws on a schizophrenic language as a rule that defines, organizes and shapes modalities of computational writing.
American poet Hannah Weiner’s writing with typewriter demonstrates a kind of computational writing in which interface speaks a schizophrenic language that is immediate and indeterminate. Schizophrenia reflects a linguistic regression of cognition. If Weiner’s case shows schizophrenic language is a material process of her mental disorder, then by examining the physiological processes within the schizophrenic brain through British psychiatrist Timothy J. Crow’s theory, we can conceive that human-machine interactions at interface identifies a linguistic act that is schizophrenic. At last, by looking at the early AI chatbot program PARRY, the presentation argues that PARRY as a kind of computational writing works with its literary device of ventriloquism.
Lisa Blackman terms ventriloquy as a technique of voice hearing among schizoid people, an expression of the self through the other. The ventriloquy of PARRY is realized through its interpreter that exteriorizes and interiorizes affects. It thus blurs the boundary between human and machine writing, technological self and other. The ventriloquy of PARRY showcases how computational writing works with its literary device can be conceived as a creative of thinking AI through its literary lineages, therefore opening a research field of examining AI as a cognitive assemblage of technological arrangement and cultural practice.
Recommended Citation
Li, Mujie, "Computational Writing and the Literary Device" (2024). ELO (un)linked 2024. 17.
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/elo2024/hypertextsandfictions/schedule/17
Computational Writing and the Literary Device
Hypertexts & Fictions
According to Johanna Drucker, writing can be seen as an algorithmic subject that speaks a language constitutive of rules through a set of procedures. It suggests that computational writing can be a subject of writing when considering human-machine interactions. In this presentation, I argue that computational writing produces creativity through literary device. A literary device is a technique based on particular literary rules. It offers linguistic acts to computational writing. To demonstrate how computational writing works with literary device to produce something new, this presentation draws on a schizophrenic language as a rule that defines, organizes and shapes modalities of computational writing.
American poet Hannah Weiner’s writing with typewriter demonstrates a kind of computational writing in which interface speaks a schizophrenic language that is immediate and indeterminate. Schizophrenia reflects a linguistic regression of cognition. If Weiner’s case shows schizophrenic language is a material process of her mental disorder, then by examining the physiological processes within the schizophrenic brain through British psychiatrist Timothy J. Crow’s theory, we can conceive that human-machine interactions at interface identifies a linguistic act that is schizophrenic. At last, by looking at the early AI chatbot program PARRY, the presentation argues that PARRY as a kind of computational writing works with its literary device of ventriloquism.
Lisa Blackman terms ventriloquy as a technique of voice hearing among schizoid people, an expression of the self through the other. The ventriloquy of PARRY is realized through its interpreter that exteriorizes and interiorizes affects. It thus blurs the boundary between human and machine writing, technological self and other. The ventriloquy of PARRY showcases how computational writing works with its literary device can be conceived as a creative of thinking AI through its literary lineages, therefore opening a research field of examining AI as a cognitive assemblage of technological arrangement and cultural practice.
Bio
Mujie Li is a doctoral graduate of Media and Cultural Studies in the School of Media, Arts & Humanities at the University of Sussex. Recent publications are: ‘On Digital Aesthetics: Sense-Data and Atmospheric Language’ (Electronic Book Review, 2023), ‘Mapping a History of Automatic Writing I: Positional Notation of Media Language’ (The Paper, 2023).