Autocanon
Autocanon uses artificial intelligence to print poetry by Emily Dickinson. Installed several feet off the ground, this JavaScript-coded machine allows Dickinson's words to spill to the ground, pooling in a mess of curled ribbons at the floor. The machine operates unaware of the meaning and impact of its words, even as it renews their savor and substance. It has no access to their definitions, let alone their connotations. It lacks any sonic knowledge of phonetics. By taking Emily Dickinson’s corpus as dataset, however, Autocanon accesses her vivid intensity, her painfully efficient phrasing. It animates a mechanical ghost of her voice for an audience who, unlike Autocanon itself, can know and feel the words. Because of the source material’s unique strength, this ghost possesses an uncommon vitality, even amid nonsensical sputtering. Some phrases are both vivid and senseless: “robins sing a shame of the knife baffle.” This duality characterizes Autocanon’s general flow, at turns lucid and meaningless.