Digital Lab Assignment #7

JSON CODE:

{

“name”: [

“i”

],

“origin”: [

“#time#, #name# #verb2# why #noun# is #adjective# and #adjective#. #name# #verb# that #noun# is #noun2#.”,

“#noun# is #adjective#. #name# am #adjective# and #name# have #verb# that #noun# is #adjective#. #time# was different.”

],

“time”: [

“today”,

“yesterday”,

“that night”,

“a while ago”,

“last year”,

“an eternity ago”

],

“verb2”: [

“wondered”,

“questioned”,

“speculated”,

“considered”,

“contemplated”

],

“verb”: [

“concluded”,

“deduced”,

“surmised”,

“decided”

],

“adjective”: [

“cruel”,

“complex”,

“hateful”,

“tangy”,

“sour”,

“sweet”,

“confusing”,

“thoughtful”,

“tender”,

“gentle”,

“gracious”,

“anxious”,

“glorious”,

“fickle”

],

“noun2”: [

“the answer”,

“the solution”,

“fleeting”,

“temporary”,

“enduring”,

“fixed”,

“persistent”

],

“noun”: [

“life”,

“love”,

“the universe”,

“he”,

“she”

]

}

I’d like to begin this blog post by saying how much I LOVED using a bot to create tweets! When I was creating my bot, I intended for the tweets to come across as a little vague but poetic. I tried to create my bot in a way that would offer a variety of seemingly “deep,” thoughtful, and meaningful tweets. I suppose I chose to create my bot in this way because I wanted my tweets to be literarily valuable. My biggest struggle with digital literature (especially with any kind of social media like Twitter) is that it often does not seem to possess a sense of value or importance. Maybe the point of literature created through digital platforms like Twitter is to practice the creative process without the pressure of needing your literature to be important, profound, etc.

I felt that I was pretty successful! My bot definitely produced interesting, readable tweets that sounded surprisingly poetic; I actually thought some of the tweets were really beautiful and thought-provoking. Although some of the tweets did not necessarily make a whole lot of sense, I was pleasantly surprised at how well the bot worked. I think the fact that some of the tweets were vague and obscure made them more interesting. The only errors I ran into were when I was creating my bot through Tracery; they were easily solved, however, by making simple adjustments to ensure the tweets the bot was going to produce would be grammatically sound.

I wouldn’t put one type of tweet above the other. I think they are both valuable in their own way. When we started this assignment, I was convinced that the bot wouldn’t be successful and that my “Twitter novel” would prove to be much more meaningful. However, I found that my bot was very successful and I was thoroughly pleased with how the tweets came out. I like the bot because I provided the foundations for the tweets–meaning I still employed my creative abilities–but the bot created the tweets without any of the filters or self-criticisms that I had when I was writing my “Twitter novel.” I guess what I’m saying is that the bot was able to create tweets uninhibited by any of the human uncertainties that I am inherently going to have to fight against. I think that gives the bot a lot of value, especially in consideration with how successful it was.

In some ways, I think using a bot to create literature does sort of take away from the humanity of the writing process. Then again, I took the time to create the bot and I put thought into the foundation the bot would use to create the little poems, so I think it still possesses a sense of humanity. It’s certainly not the same as a fully human-produced piece of literature, but I do not think it is anti-human. In some cases, using bots could definitely result in the mass-production of literature, but I also think that using a bot could function as a springboard for writing poetry or other literature. It definitely is a little uncanny, especially when the bot produces beautiful, thought-provoking poetry. I guess it’s just a little eerie to think about the fact that with a simple code, a bot is capable of producing the same level of quality, beautiful literature.