Vibe Coding: AI, Digital Text Recycling, and the Remediation of Digital Poetry
Proposal Type
Individual Talk
Location
Algorithms & Imaginaries
Start Date
July 2026
End Date
July 2026
Abstract
This paper theorises Vibe Coding as a novel method of AI-assisted creative practice within electronic literature. Vibe Coding describes an affective mode of communication with AI that enables coding via natural-language prompts, in which the author collaborates with generative AI systems to recycle, remediate, and reconfigure existing digital texts into new poetic forms, including interactive animations. Rather than treating code as a fixed procedural logic, Vibe Coding focuses on rhythm, intuition, and affect as central compositional forces shaping both textual production and computational interaction. Relying on theories of remediation, digital recycling, and posthuman authorship, the paper examines how AI functions simultaneously as archive, co-author, and transformative engine for digital poetry. Through a practice-based analysis of AI-generated and AI-remediated poetic works—including bot poetry and platform-based digital texts such as Leonardo Flores’ TinyProtests (2017), Nick Montfort’s Taroko Gorge (2009), and Yohanna Joseph Waliya’s Gamaikus (2025), which are examined in this study—the paper demonstrates how Vibe Coding enables continuous textual afterlives, in which poems circulate, mutate, and re-emerge across interfaces, datasets, and algorithmic systems. The paper argues that Vibe Coding constitutes a distinctive poetics of electronic literature in which authorship is distributed across human affect, algorithmic inference, and inherited digital materials. It also explicitly discloses the AI tools and platforms involved in the creative process and interrogates their aesthetic, cultural, and ethical implications. By situating Vibe Coding within the broader history of generative and procedural writing while emphasising its turn toward affective and intuitive coding practices, the paper introduces a new conceptual term for understanding AI-mediated digital poetry.
Keywords: Generative AI; Electronic Literature; Posthuman Authorship; Algorithmic Creativity; Textual Reuse
Vibe Coding: AI, Digital Text Recycling, and the Remediation of Digital Poetry
Algorithms & Imaginaries
This paper theorises Vibe Coding as a novel method of AI-assisted creative practice within electronic literature. Vibe Coding describes an affective mode of communication with AI that enables coding via natural-language prompts, in which the author collaborates with generative AI systems to recycle, remediate, and reconfigure existing digital texts into new poetic forms, including interactive animations. Rather than treating code as a fixed procedural logic, Vibe Coding focuses on rhythm, intuition, and affect as central compositional forces shaping both textual production and computational interaction. Relying on theories of remediation, digital recycling, and posthuman authorship, the paper examines how AI functions simultaneously as archive, co-author, and transformative engine for digital poetry. Through a practice-based analysis of AI-generated and AI-remediated poetic works—including bot poetry and platform-based digital texts such as Leonardo Flores’ TinyProtests (2017), Nick Montfort’s Taroko Gorge (2009), and Yohanna Joseph Waliya’s Gamaikus (2025), which are examined in this study—the paper demonstrates how Vibe Coding enables continuous textual afterlives, in which poems circulate, mutate, and re-emerge across interfaces, datasets, and algorithmic systems. The paper argues that Vibe Coding constitutes a distinctive poetics of electronic literature in which authorship is distributed across human affect, algorithmic inference, and inherited digital materials. It also explicitly discloses the AI tools and platforms involved in the creative process and interrogates their aesthetic, cultural, and ethical implications. By situating Vibe Coding within the broader history of generative and procedural writing while emphasising its turn toward affective and intuitive coding practices, the paper introduces a new conceptual term for understanding AI-mediated digital poetry.
Keywords: Generative AI; Electronic Literature; Posthuman Authorship; Algorithmic Creativity; Textual Reuse
Bio
Yohanna Joseph Waliya is a PhD Scholar at the University of Lagos. He obtained M.A. French Literature (Twitterature;Twitterbot poetry) at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria. He is a Nigerian digital poet, distant writer, ludokinetic writer, novelist, playwright, winner of the Janusz Korczak Prize for Global South 2020, Electronic Literature Organization Research Fellow, UNESCO Janusz Korczak Fellow, Creator & Curator of MAELD and ADELD [2022 Emerging Open Scholarship Award: Honourable mention by The Canadian Social Knowledge Institute (C-SKI)], Executive Director of AELA& ADELI (https://african-elit.org ), and HASTAC Scholar 2021-2023. He writes in English and French. Among his works are : La récolte de vie (play), Monde 2.0 (play), Hégémonie Disparue (novel), Quand l’Afrique se lèvera (novel), Homosalus (digital poetry), Momenta (digital poetry), @TinyKorczak (Twitterbot-poetry), Climatophosis (digital poetry: The best use of DH for Fun 2020), Inferno 2.0 (ludokinetic poetry) , Fading World (digital poetry) Ekang (novel) etc. He is also a lecturer at the Nigeria French Language Village, Ajara-Badagry, Lagos. His research interests cover distant writing, distant reading, digital poetry, Metaversal literature, Twitterbot-poetry, Twitterature, Digital Humanities and language discourse, training Artificial Intelligence to speak Nigerian Pidgin English.