{"id":357,"date":"2021-07-28T07:37:21","date_gmt":"2021-07-28T07:37:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sam.maynoothuniversity.ie\/?p=357"},"modified":"2021-10-01T16:48:54","modified_gmt":"2021-10-01T16:48:54","slug":"the-river-poem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sam.maynoothuniversity.ie\/index.php\/2021\/07\/28\/the-river-poem\/","title":{"rendered":"The River Poem"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"xmsonormal\"><i>The River Poem<\/i>\u00a0is a\u00a0digital poem made by Maynooth University Lecturer\u00a0Jeneen Naji, Independent Interactive Developer Pauric Freeman and\u00a0Digital Exhibition Developer\u00a0Mark Linnane in collaboration with\u00a0Maynooth University\u2019s Building\u00a0City Dashboards research project, this poem projects snippets of text generated by the Generative Pretrained Transformer 2 machine learning algorithm onto a 3D model of Dublin City. The words themselves were generated by a GPT-2 machine learning algorithm that was trained on James Joyce\u2019s\u00a0<i>Finnegan\u2019s Wake<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"xmsonormal\"><i>Finnegan\u2019s Wake<\/i>\u00a0is a narrative that is ideally suited to transposition to the digital medium because of its multilinear stream of consciousness style and its neologistic\u00a0language. The 3D model of Dublin city was made by the Building City Dashboards research project that seeks to determine how to build more extensive and effective city dashboards by extending data visualisation tools and investigating novel forms of multimedia interaction, including the projection of data onto architectural models, and converting data into audio-textual forms.\u00a0<i>The River Poem<\/i>\u00a0intends to offer audiences an alternative approach to viewing the city by projecting words onto the Building City Dashboard\u2019s 3D model. Snippets of phrases were removed from the algorithm\u2019s output by the human authors and then placed in a spreadsheet. Python code in TouchDesigner software then randomly selects a new quote from the\u00a0spreadsheet at specific intervals and places it into a queue. This queue forms a long string of text which is animated along a path that follows the route of Dublin\u2019s River Liffey. When a quote reaches the end of the path, it is automatically swapped out for a new random quote. Using texture instancing in TouchDesigner kept processing power to a minimum and each letter is generated only once and instanced each time it is used in the long string of text. The path is also dynamic, as it can be edited in realtime\u00a0to fit into different scenarios.<\/p>\n<p class=\"xmsonormal\">The final output creates a dynamic unique literary experience for each instance of play and explores notions of human versus machine agency and multimodal data communication within contemporary cityscapes. The original inspiration for\u00a0<i>The River Poem<\/i>\u00a0was Cento poetry which is a kind of patchwork poetry that is composed of lines from other poems, however the addition of the machine learning aspect has produced a contemporary literary artefact that calls into question the boundary between human literary expression and algorithmic agency.<\/p>\n<p><em>We gratefully acknowledge funding from Science Foundation Ireland under the Investigator\u2019s Award Program. Award number: 15\/IA\/3090<\/em><\/p>\n<p><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-325\" src=\"https:\/\/sam.maynoothuniversity.ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/Screenshot-2020-11-12-at-15.14.19-768x105-1-300x41.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1135\" height=\"155\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sam.maynoothuniversity.ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/Screenshot-2020-11-12-at-15.14.19-768x105-1-300x41.png 300w, https:\/\/sam.maynoothuniversity.ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/Screenshot-2020-11-12-at-15.14.19-768x105-1.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1135px) 100vw, 1135px\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The River Poem\u00a0is a\u00a0digital poem made by Maynooth University Lecturer\u00a0Jeneen Naji, Independent Interactive Developer Pauric Freeman and\u00a0Digital Exhibition Developer\u00a0Mark Linnane in collaboration with\u00a0Maynooth University\u2019s Building\u00a0City Dashboards research project, this poem projects snippets of text generated by the Generative Pretrained Transformer 2 machine learning algorithm onto a 3D model of Dublin City. The words themselves were [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"sam-single-post-1.php","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sam.maynoothuniversity.ie\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sam.maynoothuniversity.ie\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sam.maynoothuniversity.ie\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sam.maynoothuniversity.ie\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sam.maynoothuniversity.ie\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=357"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sam.maynoothuniversity.ie\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":382,"href":"https:\/\/sam.maynoothuniversity.ie\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357\/revisions\/382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sam.maynoothuniversity.ie\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sam.maynoothuniversity.ie\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sam.maynoothuniversity.ie\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}