Happy World Poetry Day!
Art and technology come together for some poetic projects.
Using 40 Raspberry Pis attached to 40 Adafruit e-ink displays, New York conceptual artist Zach Gage turned Google Search’s autocomplete function into poetry. Each “Glacier” is a unique poem generated via the top three autocompleted results for a specific search query.
The installation’s screens refresh daily as the Pis check Google for changes and update accordingly. For some search phrases, however, it’s likely that they will not be altered for years or even decades.
Built by Dutch artist Gijs van Bon, these robots are capable of writing temporary text out of sand using a modified CNC milling machine. It can ‘print’ out a single word, or an entire poem, in various font sizes. The robot resembles a weird tricycle, and features a battery pack, a motor driver, a sand container, and laptop controller onboard.
Unable to withstand elements such as humans and weather, the poetry fades away over time as if it was never there. If you’ve ever been to a recent Maker Faire in New York or San Mateo, you’ve likely seen Skryf roving around.
Dmitry Morozov (aka ::vtol::) has created a set of devices that send poems by famous poets over Wi-Fi. Inside each plastic unit lies a transmitter, an ESP8266 board, and a copy of that particular poet’s work. While automatically renaming its SSID every 10 seconds to lines of a poem, these hotspots broadcast a wireless signal that smartphones and laptops can easily pick up.
Depending on what gadget you’re using, the names of networks are shown in different ways. On Android, the SSID name will continuously refresh. On iOS, new lines will appear as a new network, gradually replacing old ones. And on MacBooks, all lines of the poem will remain visible until you deselect the Wi-Fi status menu button.
The brainchild of designer Jifei Ou, DaDa Box is an interactive storytelling object. It adopts the idea of “Collage” from Dadaism — a cultural movement in 1910s — which allows a person to produce stories by a simple tangible action: shaking.
When the box is shaken, a story contained inside switches its order randomly by sentence, and starts playing to the listener. The first application is a poem generator. The poem by Kurt Schwitters is stored in the box, and with each shaking action, different orders of this poem are generated and played.
Developed by Yuxi Liu, Poet on the Shore is an AI-powered autonomous robot that roams the beach, while listening to the sounds and observing wind patterns. It then translates these perceptions into verses that it writes in the sand as it strolls and watches the waves wash them away.
Though build details are a bit slim, from the small sliver of “making process” photos, the robot is based on a solid-looking tank chassis with an anemometer on top, several sensors, and at least two servos onboard, presumably to help it scrible lines of poetic prose.