I am interested in the impacts of new technologies in relation to language and literature, subjectivity and the blurring of fact and fiction, in relation to identity and place.  Through the A-N bursary, I have been exploring the basics of natural language processing dialogue systems in my practice.

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“Every word that is spoken and sung here (the Cabaret Voltaire) represents at least this one thing: that this humiliating age has not succeeded in winning our respect.”― Hugo Ball

 

“Why can’t a tree be called Pluplusch?”― Hugo Ball

 

The bursary provided funds to work with a machine learning expert understanding how I could integrate natural language processing techniques into my practice and questioning what this meant.

As I began to understand how machine learning can recompose language and even invent non-words from the statistical patterns of the text it is trained on, I became excited by the possibilities.

I became interested in Dada poetry, particularly Hugo Ball’s performances at the Cabaret Voltaire. His sound poems comprised of nonsensical words – words that have no meaning but are purely material, reminded me of some of the words the machine learning algorithms were producing.

We trained the machine learning algorithms on thousands of UK political debates. The algorithms imagined new text within this space, which still has a political tone, but no longer points to any specific issues or events.

The Dada movement was anti- political and anti-intellectual and took place with the backdrop of World War 1.  Dada’s proponents believed the war was caused by a corrupt nationalism, a conformity in culture and thought and technological advances in weaponry, among other things.

Currently machine learning is causing huge changes (in different ways) around the world. In parallel there is an increased nationalism as demonstrated with Brexit and Trump. I believe that to use machine learning artistically and politically to create non-sense and subvert it’s ‘proper’ uses, proposes a alternative future where its hyper-rational forms of being, doing and thinking are challenged and questioned. An Algorithmic Dada.


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