Reimaging Authorship in Contemporary Chinese Poetry
Proposal Type
Individual Talk
Location
Narratives & Worlds
Start Date
July 2026
End Date
July 2026
Abstract
This research examines how the imagination and application of technological agents —ranging from imaginary robots, translation software, and AI models —challenge traditional conception of authorship through reshaping subjectivity in poetry. Focusing on contemporary Chinese poetry as example, it argues that technological agents introduce a polyphonic structure semantically and syntactically across different types of human-machine interactions, which brings the emergence of the notion of “algorithmic authorship”.
It gives textual analysis of cases in a spectrum of human-technology literature, including Lin Yao-de(林耀德) and Tang Juan’s(唐捐) imagination of “the voice of machine”, the application of translation tools in Hsia Yu’s(夏宇) poems “Pink Noise” (粉紅色噪音), and Microsoft AI “xiaobing’s” creation of a female “personality” via LSTM model. At the first stage, poets imagine “robots’ subjectivity” by the techniques of concrete poetry to imitate non-human language and behavior, which forms an intersubjective dialogue through semantic descriptions. However, when technologies are involved in poem writing, author’s intention intertwined with algorithms is presented in a hybrid text, where readers can only picture author’s “subjectivity” between text and its algorithms through the peculiarity of syntactics and semantics rather than only following the text. The change of hermeneutics in this spectrum reveals how technology as an another “unknown author” shapes subjectivity correspondingly within and outside the text.
Reimaging Authorship in Contemporary Chinese Poetry
Narratives & Worlds
This research examines how the imagination and application of technological agents —ranging from imaginary robots, translation software, and AI models —challenge traditional conception of authorship through reshaping subjectivity in poetry. Focusing on contemporary Chinese poetry as example, it argues that technological agents introduce a polyphonic structure semantically and syntactically across different types of human-machine interactions, which brings the emergence of the notion of “algorithmic authorship”.
It gives textual analysis of cases in a spectrum of human-technology literature, including Lin Yao-de(林耀德) and Tang Juan’s(唐捐) imagination of “the voice of machine”, the application of translation tools in Hsia Yu’s(夏宇) poems “Pink Noise” (粉紅色噪音), and Microsoft AI “xiaobing’s” creation of a female “personality” via LSTM model. At the first stage, poets imagine “robots’ subjectivity” by the techniques of concrete poetry to imitate non-human language and behavior, which forms an intersubjective dialogue through semantic descriptions. However, when technologies are involved in poem writing, author’s intention intertwined with algorithms is presented in a hybrid text, where readers can only picture author’s “subjectivity” between text and its algorithms through the peculiarity of syntactics and semantics rather than only following the text. The change of hermeneutics in this spectrum reveals how technology as an another “unknown author” shapes subjectivity correspondingly within and outside the text.
Bio
Wang Zhijing is a PhD candidate in the Chinese Program at the School of Humanities, NTU. Her thesis explores contemporary Chinese transmedia poetry, focusing on digital poetry, poetry slam, and the interaction between poets and the arts in mainland China and Taiwan.