Data Poetry
Jörg Piringer
Purchase copies here, or write to counterpath@gmail.com.
“Jörg Piringer’s wunderkammer of computational poetics not only showcases his thrilling technical virtuosity, but also demonstrates a canny sensitivity to the material of language: how it looks, sounds, behaves and makes us feel. Piringer’s insightful introduction and commentary serve as guideposts for interpretation, making Data Poetry a collection that invites close reading, and is bound to foster discussions about the aesthetics (and implications) of computer-generated creative writing.”
— Allison Parrish, Assistant Arts Professor at NYU ITP/IMA, author of Articulations
“Since well before internet ubiquity, let alone big data, when practices of poetics in programmable media were still in their infancy, Jörg Piringer already had a coding mastery commensurate with his deep investments in lettrism, visual poetry, linguistic sound art and electronic music, all electrified by software-enhanced performance. Dazzling and dynamic visual architectures of letterforms – some dizzying ‘snapshots’ are collected here – might be sonified in the traditions of post-dada sound poetry and avant-garde music. In this brilliant collection, with word data and processes ‘translated’ from Piringer’s first actual book of poetry, originally in German, the author-artist’s coding talents are further applied to the natural-language and sometimes machine-learning processing of poems. And these are poems which – while they move and amuse – may also begin to show us how computation is changing our relationship with language itself.”
— John Cayley, Professor and Chair of Literary Arts at Brown University
“Here the edges of poetics are occupied not by our tender hearts and reflective souls, but by beautiful algorithms and skillful scripts designed to create poetry for a new readership. Piringer’s collection features the pixels, programs, codes and compilations to reveal the subtlety in any system. Breathtaking in its foresight, beautiful in its execution.”
— Derek Beaulieu, author of a, A Novel.
Data Poetry is a collection of short computer-generated texts and visual poems that explore the technologies and concepts of the digital world. Jörg Piringer uses concepts that enable smart phones to understand language, that help email programs to filter out spam messages, and that help websites to translate texts: but he tricks them all into creating playful poetry. In Data Poetry, an artificial intelligence explains how it would write a book if it were allowed to, a program learns how to write nonsense proverbs, automatic translators reveal their gender bias, and internet searches expose the secret wishes of twitter users. The book is at once an artistic and entertaining perspective on the influence of digital language technology and its consequences.
Part of the series Using Electricity.
Jörg Piringer is a performer and creator of language art that uses and abuses digital technology. He lives in Vienna (Austria) and works globally in the fields of electronic music, radio art, sound and visual electronic poetry, live performance, sound installation, computer games and video art. He is a member of the Vegetable Orchestra and the Institute for Transacoustic Research.
Data Poetry
April, 2020
Jörg Piringer
$25.00; 6″ x 8.25″
152 pgs.
ISBN 978-1-93-399674-5
Purchase copies here, or write to counterpath@gmail.com.