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Topic: Literary Generators. Shuen-shing Lee.
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Topic:Literary Generators Shuen-shing Lee
What is a “random text generator” (文本生產機)? A computer program that produces texts “through the random selection and combination of words from a database” or other text sources in accordance with a set of specifications (or grammar).Put another way, a random text generator usually comprises the following three parts: a set of specifications or grammar, codes that execute random text selection, and a database. (ex., Random Verse Lab) 一個電腦程式,內部主要包含1、文法規定(specification or grammar),2、隨機選文功能,3、文字資料庫(例:Random Verse Lab) Literary generators
文本生產機範例(續)電腦作詩機(稻香老農;大陸)文本生產機範例(續)電腦作詩機(稻香老農;大陸)
Notes • For more information of the Chinese vowels, see Ministry of Education, “基本文獻聲調、韻部一覽表”http://dict.variants.moe.edu.tw/bian/fanli/f10_1.htm
Literary Generators • Argument:The artistic achievement of literary generators does not so much rely on increased AI (artificial intelligence) musculature as on the innovative uses of AI. • 主要內容:討論數位作品中隨機概念的應用(the uses of randomness)以及表現形式,並論證AI文學作品的藝術成就,在於AI的妙用,而非AI之高低。
A Quote from Italio Calvino • Based on his confidence in future developments of AI, Italio Calvino envisions “a literature machine that at a certain point feels unsatisfied with its own traditionalism and starts to propose new ways of writing, turning its own codes completely upside down” and “ that would bring to the page all those things that we are accustomed to consider as the most jealously guarded attributes of our psychological life, of our daily experience, our unpredictable changes of mood and inner elations, despairs and moments of illumination” (“Cybernetics and Ghosts,” 1986: 12-13).
文本生產機:Chomsky • (1) Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.無顏的 綠色的 想法 沉睡 憤怒地(2) Furiously sleep ideas green colorless.憤怒地 沉睡 想法 綠色的 無顏色的 --Noam Chomsky --(1) is “grammatically correct but semantically nonsensical.” • for Noam Chomsky • Curiously deep, the slumber of crimson thoughts:While breathless, in stodgy viridianColorless green ideas sleep furiously. -- John Hollander, “Coiled Alizarine” • 致瓊斯基 猩紅的觀點沉睡著,其深邃引人好奇同時間,無顏的綠色想法,睡眠中帶者憤怒,無聲息,身著笨拙的鉻綠--何蘭德,〈捲繞的莤草色素〉 *The Concept of Defimilarization *Seeking serendipitous gems like (1) [including cutup machines].
文本生產機:Williams S. Burroughs and Douglas Hofstadter • Williams S. Burroughs, Brion Gysin, and Cutup • Drugs, sex, and power control the body, but “word and image locks” control the mind, that is, “lock” us into conventional patterns of perceiving, thinking, and speaking that determine our interactions with environment and society. The cutup is a way of exposing word and image controls and thus freeing oneself from them, an alteration of consciousness that occurs in both the writer and the reader of the text (Jennie Skirl 1985: 49) • Hofstadter and computer-generated critical passages • (1) Blurting may be considered as the reciprocal substitution of semiotic material (dubbing) for a semiotic dialogical product in a dynamic reflexion. • (6) Supposedly, refined liberty caused the attitudes insofar as peace is distilled by the consequences which will not eventually be caused by the command irrevocably insofar as peace of it is sometimes causing the intransigency infinitesimally surprisingly. (1979: 621-2)
Hofstadter and computer-generated koans • Hofstadter and computer-generated koans • A SMALL YOUNG MASTER WANTED A SMALL WHITE GNARLED BOWL. “HOW CAN WE LEARN AND UNDERSTAND WITHOUT STUDY?” THE YOUNG MASTER ASKED A LARGE CONFUSED MASTER. THE CONFUSED MASTER WALKED FROM A BROWN HARD MOUNTAIN TO A WHITE SOFT MOUNTAIN WITH A SMALL RED STONY BOWL. THE CONFUSED MASTER SAW A RED SOFT HUT. THE CONFUSED MASTER WANTED THE HUT. “WHY DID BODHIDHARMA COME INTO CHINA?” THE CONFUSED MASTER ASKED A LARGE ENLIGHTENED STUDENT. ‘THE PEACHES ARE LARGE”, THE STUDENT ANSWERED THE CONFUSED MASTER. “HOW CAN WE LEARN AND UNDERSTAND WITHOUT STUDY?” THE CONFUSED MASTER ASKED A LARGE OLD MASTER. THE OLD MASTER WALKED FROM A WHITE STONY G0025. THE OLD MASTER GOT LOST. (1979:625-6)
故事生產機(story generator):“MINSTREL,” “Tale-Spin,” “Brutus” • “Tale-Spin”: “Joe Bear was hungry. He asked Irving Bird where some honey was. Irving refused to tell him, so Joe offered to bring him a worm if he’d tell him where some honey was. Irving agreed. But Joe didn’t know where any worms were, so he asked Irving, who refused to say. So Joe offered to bring him a worm if he’d tell him where a worm was. Irving agreed. But Joe didn’t know where any worms were, so he asked Irving, who refused to say. So Joe offered to bring him a worm if he’d tell him where a worm was . . . .” (Meehan 1976: 85; quoted in Aarseth 1997:131)*Failure as success • “MINSTREL”:“cases of awe-inspiring creativity are at bottom based on standard, computable problem-solving techniques” (Scott Turner 2000: 149). • “Brutus”: “computers will never be genuinely conscious, but computers can be cleverly programmed to ‘appear’ to be, in this case, literarily creative” (Bringsjord and Ferrucci)*Technology-oriented attitudes
A Parodic Twist〈後現代論文生產機〉(“Postmodernism Generator”); Hofstadter *Alan Sokal: “Reality as a social construction?”
The Social Text Affair • Alan Sokal: “I’m a stodgy old scientist who believes, naively, that there exists an external world, that there exist objective truths about that world, and that my job is to discover some of them. (If science were merely a negotiation of social conventions about what is agreed to be “true”, why would I bother devoting a large fraction of my all-too-short life to it?)” (1996) .
Play and Chatterbots • Generators: • Chatterbots • “Eliza” (Joseph Weizenbaum 1966)http://jerz.setonhill.edu/if/canon/eliza.htm (jva)http://www.manifestation.com/neurotoys/eliza.php3 (js)( *dd; *js) • “Façade,” one-act interactive drama (Mateas and Stern, 2005) (emotional characters/NPCs/chatterbots) (*dd)
Conclusion (to be edited) • 取向:更精緻的寫實模擬Emotional CharacterEvil Character • cyborganic 讀者的誕生