Allison Parish

Artengine's ARTIFICIAL IMAGINATION

Allison Parrish, programmer, poet, and educator at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, discusses her latest project on computer-generated poetry. Her book, “Articulations,” explores poetic similarity using a corpus from Project Gutenberg and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary to model phonetic resemblances. Parrish’s work involves constructing poetry by linking lines that sound alike, creating a unique phonetic cohesion. She emphasizes that her approach to poetry involves using computational tools not just to mimic human creation but to extend artistic capabilities and explore new forms of expression. Parish critiques the notion of AI replacing human creativity, arguing instead for a view of AI as an enhancement that brings new dimensions to poetic exploration. She highlights the influence of randomness and procedural generation in art, referencing historical and contemporary examples to underline that art made with computational methods still reflects the artist’s intent and personality.

This presentation was part of the symposium ARTIFICIAL IMAGINATION which unites innovative artists engaged with emerging technologies. This focused on exploring and sharing their individual practices, experiences, and insights related to algorithms, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. It served as a platform for an enriching exchange of ideas between the artists and the audience, aiming to contribute a distinctive artistic viewpoint to the ongoing discussions about our evolving relationships with machine collaborators. Each session, including this one, highlighted how these technologies are being integrated and reflected in contemporary artistic processes, encouraging a broader understanding and appreciation of the creative potential of new digital tools.

Allison Parrish is a computer programmer, poet, and game designer whose teaching and practice address the unusual phenomena that blossom when language and computers meet. She is an Assistant Arts Professor at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program.

According to Ars Technica, Allison’s work “delight[s] everyone.” She was named “Best Maker of Poetry Bots” by the Village Voice in 2016, and her zine of computer-generated poems called “Compasses” received an honorary mention in the 2021 Prix Ars Electronica. Allison is the co-creator of the board game Rewordable (Clarkson Potter, 2017) and author of several books, including @Everyword: The Book (Instar, 2015) and Articulations (Counterpath, 2018). Her poetry has recently appeared in BOMB Magazine and Strange Horizons.

Allison is originally from West Bountiful, Utah and currently lives in Brooklyn.

It’s all based around this idea of how we can specifically create poetry that tricks people into thinking that it was written by human beings in a typical way, like even redefining the difference between human and machine authorship, which I don’t actually think exists.

The purpose of art is to impart a sensation, and part sensation to an object is something seen rather than merely recognized.

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