{"id":182,"date":"2024-10-28T19:05:17","date_gmt":"2024-10-28T19:05:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lexiconia.art\/?page_id=182"},"modified":"2025-09-23T05:48:45","modified_gmt":"2025-09-23T05:48:45","slug":"colossus-a-first-forespeech-or-why-i-am-lucky-in-my-dealings-with-luck","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/lexiconia.art\/?page_id=182","title":{"rendered":"Writing like a loser"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h5 class=\"wp-block-heading\">A contextualisation of generative AI through practice, in two parts<\/h5>\n\n\n\n<p>Peter Dukes<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-right has-palette-color-2-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-18213e22f3a99076bb6e9e9b7ff00758\"><em>Failure<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-stackable-spacer stk-block-spacer stk--no-padding stk-block stk-a93f634\" data-block-id=\"a93f634\"><style>.stk-a93f634 {height:24px !important;}<\/style><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-stackable-heading stk-block-heading stk-block-heading--v2 stk-block stk-029f80c\" id=\"part-1-writing-without-date-humbaba-as-author-without-experience\" data-block-id=\"029f80c\"><style>.stk-029f80c {margin-bottom:8px !important;}<\/style><h4 class=\"stk-block-heading__text\">Part 1: Writing without date: HUMBABA as author without experience<\/h4><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p style=\"margin-right:0;margin-left:0;padding-right:0;padding-left:0\">HUMBABA<sup data-fn=\"2d9c9f46-382a-4f55-b83b-356bccf8d9b6\" class=\"fn\"><a href=\"#2d9c9f46-382a-4f55-b83b-356bccf8d9b6\" id=\"2d9c9f46-382a-4f55-b83b-356bccf8d9b6-link\">1<\/a><\/sup> is a robopoet<sup data-fn=\"603a6d7e-e9f0-487f-b060-cebf270c0e6a\" class=\"fn\"><a href=\"#603a6d7e-e9f0-487f-b060-cebf270c0e6a\" id=\"603a6d7e-e9f0-487f-b060-cebf270c0e6a-link\">2<\/a><\/sup> that rewrites given texts homophonically and presents its<br>own echoic writing alongside that given source (Figure 1). As it does so, HUMBABA provides peritextual notes or comments linked to words found in either the source or its echo. HUMBABA was made by me as a browser-delivered JavaScript application using p5.js and the RiTa.js library.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-stackable-image stk-block-image stk-block stk-80854e2 is-style-default\" data-block-id=\"80854e2\"><style>.stk-80854e2 .stk-img-figcaption{font-style:italic !important;letter-spacing:-0.2px !important;}.stk-80854e2 .stk-img-wrapper img{object-position:47% 18% !important;object-fit:contain !important;}:where(.stk-hover-parent:hover,  .stk-hover-parent.stk--is-hovered) .stk-80854e2 .stk-img-wrapper::after{background-color:#000000B3 !important;}<\/style><figure><span class=\"stk-img-wrapper stk-image--shape-stretch\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"stk-img wp-image-243\" src=\"https:\/\/lexiconia.art\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/AILexicon-Proposal-v2-PDukes-1-1.png\" width=\"1202\" height=\"676\" alt=\"Figure 1: Screenshot of the HUMBABA poem \u2018Backlash Gorge\u2019 - strophe I, showing activated peritext.\nHUMBABA algorithm output is on the right, authored input is on the left.\n\" srcset=\"https:\/\/lexiconia.art\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/AILexicon-Proposal-v2-PDukes-1-1.png 1202w, https:\/\/lexiconia.art\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/AILexicon-Proposal-v2-PDukes-1-1-300x169.png 300w, https:\/\/lexiconia.art\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/AILexicon-Proposal-v2-PDukes-1-1-1024x576.png 1024w, https:\/\/lexiconia.art\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/AILexicon-Proposal-v2-PDukes-1-1-768x432.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1202px) 100vw, 1202px\" \/><\/span><figcaption class=\"stk-img-figcaption\">Figure 1: Screenshot of the HUMBABA poem \u2018Backlash Gorge\u2019 &#8211; strophe I, showing activated peritext.<br>HUMBABA algorithm output is on the right, authored input is on the left.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>I will develop here a proposition that the resultant texts made by HUMBABA are works that challenge the concept of date<sup data-fn=\"2daeb2b6-c584-4313-9f8f-1dfe131bc6e9\" class=\"fn\"><a href=\"#2daeb2b6-c584-4313-9f8f-1dfe131bc6e9\" id=\"2daeb2b6-c584-4313-9f8f-1dfe131bc6e9-link\">3<\/a><\/sup>, a term that Jacques Derrida employs to signify the origin and underpinning trace of authorship and authenticity in poetry, and specifically in the poetry of Paul Celan (Derrida, 2005). Here Derrida defines date as \u2018the mark of a provenance, of a place and of a time\u2019 (Derrida, 2005, p. 18). With HUMBABA as my case study, I will examine how literary artworks can evidence trace of autonomy, authorial intent and date when the work is in part algorithmically produced, and specifically when considered as algorithmic failure. Failure in the context of AI functions variously as warning (\u2018it\u2019s all going badly wrong\u2019), reassurance (\u2018it\u2019s only a machine\u2019) and spur to improve the algorithm. But below I discuss another possible function of failure: that it is a means to identify authorial intent in an algorithmic writer, a robopoet. To support this argument, I draw on ideas from Malcolm Bull (2014) on reading (and extended here to writing) \u2018like a loser\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-stackable-image stk-block-image stk-block stk-e07a6e8 is-style-default\" data-block-id=\"e07a6e8\"><style>.stk-e07a6e8 .stk-img-figcaption{font-style:italic !important;letter-spacing:-0.2px !important;}.stk-e07a6e8 .stk-img-wrapper img{object-position:47% 18% !important;object-fit:contain !important;}:where(.stk-hover-parent:hover,  .stk-hover-parent.stk--is-hovered) .stk-e07a6e8 .stk-img-wrapper::after{background-color:#000000B3 !important;}<\/style><figure><span class=\"stk-img-wrapper stk-image--shape-stretch\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"stk-img wp-image-244\" src=\"https:\/\/lexiconia.art\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/AILexicon-Proposal-v2-PDukes-1-2.png\" width=\"1202\" height=\"676\" alt=\"Figure 1: Screenshot of the HUMBABA poem \u2018Backlash Gorge\u2019 - strophe I, showing activated peritext.\nHUMBABA algorithm output is on the right, authored input is on the left.\n\" srcset=\"https:\/\/lexiconia.art\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/AILexicon-Proposal-v2-PDukes-1-2.png 1202w, https:\/\/lexiconia.art\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/AILexicon-Proposal-v2-PDukes-1-2-300x169.png 300w, https:\/\/lexiconia.art\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/AILexicon-Proposal-v2-PDukes-1-2-1024x576.png 1024w, https:\/\/lexiconia.art\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/AILexicon-Proposal-v2-PDukes-1-2-768x432.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1202px) 100vw, 1202px\" \/><\/span><figcaption class=\"stk-img-figcaption\">Figure 2: HUMBABA poem \u2018For Paul\u2019 &#8211; showing a variant echo-poem made by HUMBABA and activated peritext. See the next figures for two more examples.<br>HUMBABA output is on the right; authored input is on the left.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-stackable-image stk-block-image stk-block stk-7ff74b8 is-style-default\" data-block-id=\"7ff74b8\"><style>.stk-7ff74b8 .stk-img-figcaption{font-style:italic !important;letter-spacing:-0.2px !important;}.stk-7ff74b8 .stk-img-wrapper img{object-position:47% 18% !important;object-fit:contain !important;}:where(.stk-hover-parent:hover,  .stk-hover-parent.stk--is-hovered) .stk-7ff74b8 .stk-img-wrapper::after{background-color:#000000B3 !important;}<\/style><figure><span class=\"stk-img-wrapper stk-image--shape-stretch\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"stk-img wp-image-245\" src=\"https:\/\/lexiconia.art\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/AILexicon-Proposal-v2-PDukes-1-3.png\" width=\"1202\" height=\"676\" alt=\"Figure 1: Screenshot of the HUMBABA poem \u2018Backlash Gorge\u2019 - strophe I, showing activated peritext.\nHUMBABA algorithm output is on the right, authored input is on the left.\n\" srcset=\"https:\/\/lexiconia.art\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/AILexicon-Proposal-v2-PDukes-1-3.png 1202w, https:\/\/lexiconia.art\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/AILexicon-Proposal-v2-PDukes-1-3-300x169.png 300w, https:\/\/lexiconia.art\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/AILexicon-Proposal-v2-PDukes-1-3-1024x576.png 1024w, https:\/\/lexiconia.art\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/AILexicon-Proposal-v2-PDukes-1-3-768x432.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1202px) 100vw, 1202px\" \/><\/span><figcaption class=\"stk-img-figcaption\">Figure 3: HUMBABA poem \u2018For Paul\u2019 &#8211; showing a variant echo-poem made by HUMBABA and activated peritext.<br>HUMBABA output is on the right; authored input is on the left.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-stackable-image stk-block-image stk-block stk-ff540ac is-style-default\" data-block-id=\"ff540ac\"><style>.stk-ff540ac .stk-img-figcaption{font-style:italic !important;letter-spacing:-0.2px !important;}.stk-ff540ac .stk-img-wrapper img{object-position:47% 18% !important;object-fit:contain !important;}:where(.stk-hover-parent:hover,  .stk-hover-parent.stk--is-hovered) .stk-ff540ac .stk-img-wrapper::after{background-color:#000000B3 !important;}<\/style><figure><span class=\"stk-img-wrapper stk-image--shape-stretch\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"stk-img wp-image-246\" src=\"https:\/\/lexiconia.art\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/AILexicon-Proposal-v2-PDukes-1-4.png\" width=\"1202\" height=\"676\" alt=\"Figure 1: Screenshot of the HUMBABA poem \u2018Backlash Gorge\u2019 - strophe I, showing activated peritext.\nHUMBABA algorithm output is on the right, authored input is on the left.\n\" srcset=\"https:\/\/lexiconia.art\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/AILexicon-Proposal-v2-PDukes-1-4.png 1202w, https:\/\/lexiconia.art\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/AILexicon-Proposal-v2-PDukes-1-4-300x169.png 300w, https:\/\/lexiconia.art\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/AILexicon-Proposal-v2-PDukes-1-4-1024x576.png 1024w, https:\/\/lexiconia.art\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/AILexicon-Proposal-v2-PDukes-1-4-768x432.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1202px) 100vw, 1202px\" \/><\/span><figcaption class=\"stk-img-figcaption\">Figure 4: HUMBABA poem \u2018For Paul\u2019 &#8211; showing a variant echo-poem made by HUMBABA and activated peritext.<br>HUMBABA output is on the right; authored input is on the left.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>HUMBABA conforms to Peter Osborne\u2019s notion of the artwork as fragment and project, as all it writes lacks definitiveness \u2013 each echo-poem is subject to a cycle of erasure and replacement. In its state of perpetual recurrence, it accumulates an \u2018always-incomplete collection of fragments\u2019 (Osborne, 2013, p. 59, original emphasis) \u2013 such \u2018that it should forever be becoming and never be perfected\u2019 (Osborne, 2013, p. 68). This state of \u2018forever \u2026 becoming\u2019 is also what makes HUMBABA in Osborne\u2019s terms a project: \u2018Projects embody the futural impulse conveyed by the constitutive incompletion of the fragment\u2019 (Osborne, 2013, p. 170). It is the condition of a project to be always provisional and never perfectible, and this ensures that HUMBABA\u2019s reading and writing \u2013 it is a reading and writing algorithm \u2013 is one failure after another; no single reading or echo-poem can be free of revision or abandonment (see Figure 2 &#8211; Figure 4)<sup data-fn=\"a24073be-07e5-4cea-bf05-079abd3a875c\" class=\"fn\"><a href=\"#a24073be-07e5-4cea-bf05-079abd3a875c\" id=\"a24073be-07e5-4cea-bf05-079abd3a875c-link\">4<\/a><\/sup>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>By reading and then writing alongside a given text \u2013 and writing from its mishearings, its errors, its attempts to fit set constraints of homophony and matching the syllable count in the source \u2013 HUMBABA reads (and writes) with intention \u2018like a loser\u2019, producing a fragmentary and jarring bricolage. This is often a failed text, in conventional poetic or merely in conventional semantic terms. Reading like a loser, Bull argues, is \u2018interpreting the possibilities offered by the text to one\u2019s own disadvantage\u2019 (Bull, 2014, p. 74). However, although its poor \u2013 disadvantageous \u2013readings suggest, I argue, the intentionality of HUMBABA, it does not yet give the algorithm its date, its autonomy and emplacement in experience:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-stackable-blockquote stk-block-blockquote stk-block stk-e66e173 is-style-default\" data-v=\"2\" data-block-id=\"e66e173\"><div class=\"has-text-align-left stk-block-blockquote__content stk-container stk-e66e173-container stk-hover-parent\"><div class=\"stk-block-content stk-inner-blocks\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-stackable-icon stk-block-icon stk-block stk-b0350ab\" data-block-id=\"b0350ab\"><span class=\"stk--svg-wrapper\"><div class=\"stk--inner-svg\"><svg style=\"height:0;width:0\"><defs><linearGradient id=\"linear-gradient-b0350ab\" x1=\"0\" x2=\"100%\" y1=\"0\" y2=\"0\"><stop offset=\"0%\" style=\"stop-opacity:1;stop-color:var(--linear-gradient-b-0350-ab-color-1)\"><\/stop><stop offset=\"100%\" style=\"stop-opacity:1;stop-color:var(--linear-gradient-b-0350-ab-color-2)\"><\/stop><\/linearGradient><\/defs><\/svg><svg xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" viewBox=\"0 0 50 50\" aria-hidden=\"true\" width=\"32\" height=\"32\"><path d=\"M19.8 9.3C10.5 11.8 4.6 17 2.1 24.8c2.3-3.6 5.6-5.4 9.9-5.4 3.3 0 6 1.1 8.3 3.3 2.2 2.2 3.4 5 3.4 8.3 0 3.2-1.1 5.8-3.3 8-2.2 2.2-5.1 3.2-8.7 3.2-3.7 0-6.5-1.2-8.6-3.5C1 36.3 0 33.1 0 29 0 18.3 6.5 11.2 19.6 7.9l.2 1.4zm26.4 0C36.9 11.9 31 17 28.5 24.8c2.2-3.6 5.5-5.4 9.8-5.4 3.2 0 6 1.1 8.3 3.2 2.3 2.2 3.4 4.9 3.4 8.3 0 3.1-1.1 5.8-3.3 7.9-2.2 2.2-5.1 3.3-8.6 3.3-3.7 0-6.6-1.1-8.6-3.4-2.1-2.3-3.1-5.5-3.1-9.7 0-10.7 6.6-17.8 19.7-21.1l.1 1.4z\"><\/path><\/svg><\/div><\/span><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-stackable-text stk-block-text stk-block stk-bd07687\" data-block-id=\"bd07687\"><p class=\"stk-block-text__text\">Reading like losers places us outside this equation: unable to appreciate, we are also unable to create. We cannot think of ourselves as original or creative people, only as creatures, the material that must be \u2018formed, broken, forged, torn, burnt &#8230; and purified<sup data-fn=\"5c4bc032-3729-4307-8dae-69593e016820\" class=\"fn\"><a href=\"#5c4bc032-3729-4307-8dae-69593e016820\" id=\"5c4bc032-3729-4307-8dae-69593e016820-link\">5<\/a><\/sup> (Bull, 2014, p. 39)<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>In these terms, the \u2018bad\u2019 reading of HUMBABA is a failure to appreciate, an inability to create, and a state of being \u2018only as \u2026 material\u2019. The algorithm remains in a condition of world poverty:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-stackable-blockquote stk-block-blockquote stk-block stk-11dbfcb is-style-default\" data-v=\"2\" data-block-id=\"11dbfcb\"><div class=\"has-text-align-left stk-block-blockquote__content stk-container stk-11dbfcb-container stk-hover-parent\"><div class=\"stk-block-content stk-inner-blocks\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-stackable-icon stk-block-icon stk-block stk-872e37a\" data-block-id=\"872e37a\"><span class=\"stk--svg-wrapper\"><div class=\"stk--inner-svg\"><svg style=\"height:0;width:0\"><defs><linearGradient id=\"linear-gradient-872e37a\" x1=\"0\" x2=\"100%\" y1=\"0\" y2=\"0\"><stop offset=\"0%\" style=\"stop-opacity:1;stop-color:var(--linear-gradient-872-e-37-a-color-1)\"><\/stop><stop offset=\"100%\" style=\"stop-opacity:1;stop-color:var(--linear-gradient-872-e-37-a-color-2)\"><\/stop><\/linearGradient><\/defs><\/svg><svg xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" viewBox=\"0 0 50 50\" aria-hidden=\"true\" width=\"32\" height=\"32\"><path d=\"M19.8 9.3C10.5 11.8 4.6 17 2.1 24.8c2.3-3.6 5.6-5.4 9.9-5.4 3.3 0 6 1.1 8.3 3.3 2.2 2.2 3.4 5 3.4 8.3 0 3.2-1.1 5.8-3.3 8-2.2 2.2-5.1 3.2-8.7 3.2-3.7 0-6.5-1.2-8.6-3.5C1 36.3 0 33.1 0 29 0 18.3 6.5 11.2 19.6 7.9l.2 1.4zm26.4 0C36.9 11.9 31 17 28.5 24.8c2.2-3.6 5.5-5.4 9.8-5.4 3.2 0 6 1.1 8.3 3.2 2.3 2.2 3.4 4.9 3.4 8.3 0 3.1-1.1 5.8-3.3 7.9-2.2 2.2-5.1 3.3-8.6 3.3-3.7 0-6.6-1.1-8.6-3.4-2.1-2.3-3.1-5.5-3.1-9.7 0-10.7 6.6-17.8 19.7-21.1l.1 1.4z\"><\/path><\/svg><\/div><\/span><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-stackable-text stk-block-text stk-block stk-9a7b34c\" data-block-id=\"9a7b34c\"><p class=\"stk-block-text__text\">World-poverty is specifically the space of loss, the space of having and not-having, the space of being called and unchosen. It is reading like a loser that opens up this space. This is what reading like a loser is, by definition. Reading like a loser is just a failure to form the world. (Bull, 2014, p. 98)<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>It is from that darkness outside, that extreme anomie, that unbridgeable remove from the human condition, that HUMBABA achieves absolute world-poverty<sup data-fn=\"1aa2a099-539b-4330-a416-aa5e113673ca\" class=\"fn\"><a href=\"#1aa2a099-539b-4330-a416-aa5e113673ca\" id=\"1aa2a099-539b-4330-a416-aa5e113673ca-link\">6<\/a><\/sup>, the total loss that precedes redemption. The means to achieve this redemption is through pity and compassion. Bull argues that reading like a loser, \u2018interpreting the world to one\u2019s own disadvantage, so that the interpretation results in loss to the interpreter\u2019 (Bull, 2014, pp. 135\u20136), is a compassionate act, based in one\u2019s own misfortunes: \u2018Reading like a loser means compassion for the less fortunate only when it is itself a becoming less fortunate\u2019 (Bull, 2014, p. 139). It is the misfortune of HUMBABA that it interprets (or echoes) the given source text with errors and mishearings<sup data-fn=\"0b27da15-43d0-4c15-af09-359a62490d84\" class=\"fn\"><a href=\"#0b27da15-43d0-4c15-af09-359a62490d84\" id=\"0b27da15-43d0-4c15-af09-359a62490d84-link\">7<\/a><\/sup>, thereby permitting it to display weakness and failure, \u2018like a loser\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But if HUMBABA\u2019s writing \u2018like a loser\u2019 \u2013 its failure \u2013 is to be trace of its authorial intent over and beyond my own, then it must in Derrida\u2019s terms be writing from its date. In Part 2 of this essay, I therefore consider how <em>date<\/em> can be restored to the work of a robopoetic author such as HUMBABA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-stackable-heading stk-block-heading stk-block-heading--v2 stk-block stk-343234d\" id=\"part-2-mourning-and-control-a-restoration-of-em-date-em\" data-block-id=\"343234d\"><style>.stk-343234d {margin-bottom:8px !important;}<\/style><h4 class=\"stk-block-heading__text\">Part 2: Mourning and control: a restoration of <em>date<\/em><\/h4><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>But if HUMBABA\u2019s writing \u2018like a loser\u2019 \u2013 its failure \u2013 is to be trace of its authorial intent over and beyond my own, then it must in Derrida\u2019s terms be writing from its date. In Part 2 of this essay, I therefore consider how <em>date<\/em> can be restored to the work of a robopoetic author such as HUMBABA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In Part 1 of this essay I explored how the robopoet HUMBABA<sup data-fn=\"69b2b910-4559-4a3e-9516-32aff0a9e88c\" class=\"fn\"><a href=\"#69b2b910-4559-4a3e-9516-32aff0a9e88c\" id=\"69b2b910-4559-4a3e-9516-32aff0a9e88c-link\">8<\/a><\/sup> works with failure but I had not yet found that it can write \u2013 as a human author may do \u2013 from what Derrida (2005) terms its date, its origin in experience. I considered how the texts that HUMBABA writes display what Malcom Bull terms a \u2018failure to form the world\u2019 (Bull, 2014, p. 98). But if failure is all HUMBABA can do, then how can it display the affectual signature \u2013 \u2018all the griefs [\u2026] gathered in the poem of a date\u2019 (Derrida, 2005, p. 37)? If it can do so, then it may be consequential on two behaviours of HUMBABA: that the algorithm mourns for the source; and that it responds with control, by which I also mean intent. I turn first to its work of mourning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-stackable-image stk-block-image stk-block stk-98020e6 is-style-default\" data-block-id=\"98020e6\"><style>.stk-98020e6 .stk-img-figcaption{font-style:italic !important;letter-spacing:-0.2px !important;}.stk-98020e6 .stk-img-wrapper img{object-position:47% 18% !important;object-fit:contain !important;}:where(.stk-hover-parent:hover,  .stk-hover-parent.stk--is-hovered) .stk-98020e6 .stk-img-wrapper::after{background-color:#000000B3 !important;}<\/style><figure><span class=\"stk-img-wrapper stk-image--shape-stretch\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"stk-img wp-image-247\" src=\"https:\/\/lexiconia.art\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/AILexicon-Proposal-v2-PDukes-1-5.png\" width=\"1202\" height=\"676\" alt=\"Figure 1: Screenshot of the HUMBABA poem \u2018Backlash Gorge\u2019 - strophe I, showing activated peritext.\nHUMBABA algorithm output is on the right, authored input is on the left.\n\" srcset=\"https:\/\/lexiconia.art\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/AILexicon-Proposal-v2-PDukes-1-5.png 1202w, https:\/\/lexiconia.art\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/AILexicon-Proposal-v2-PDukes-1-5-300x169.png 300w, https:\/\/lexiconia.art\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/AILexicon-Proposal-v2-PDukes-1-5-1024x576.png 1024w, https:\/\/lexiconia.art\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/AILexicon-Proposal-v2-PDukes-1-5-768x432.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1202px) 100vw, 1202px\" \/><\/span><figcaption class=\"stk-img-figcaption\">Figure 5: Figure 5: HUMBABA poem \u2018Backlash Gorge\u2019 \u2013 epigraph.<br>HUMBABA output is on the right; authored input is on the left.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-stackable-image stk-block-image stk-block stk-538f1e5 is-style-default\" data-block-id=\"538f1e5\"><style>.stk-538f1e5 .stk-img-figcaption{font-style:italic !important;letter-spacing:-0.2px !important;}.stk-538f1e5 .stk-img-wrapper img{object-position:47% 18% !important;object-fit:contain !important;}:where(.stk-hover-parent:hover,  .stk-hover-parent.stk--is-hovered) .stk-538f1e5 .stk-img-wrapper::after{background-color:#000000B3 !important;}<\/style><figure><span class=\"stk-img-wrapper stk-image--shape-stretch\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"stk-img wp-image-250\" src=\"https:\/\/lexiconia.art\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/AILexicon-Proposal-v2-PDukes-6.png\" width=\"1202\" height=\"676\" alt=\"Figure 1: Screenshot of the HUMBABA poem \u2018Backlash Gorge\u2019 - strophe I, showing activated peritext.\nHUMBABA algorithm output is on the right, authored input is on the left.\n\" srcset=\"https:\/\/lexiconia.art\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/AILexicon-Proposal-v2-PDukes-6.png 1202w, https:\/\/lexiconia.art\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/AILexicon-Proposal-v2-PDukes-6-300x169.png 300w, https:\/\/lexiconia.art\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/AILexicon-Proposal-v2-PDukes-6-1024x576.png 1024w, https:\/\/lexiconia.art\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/AILexicon-Proposal-v2-PDukes-6-768x432.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1202px) 100vw, 1202px\" \/><\/span><figcaption class=\"stk-img-figcaption\">Figure 6: HUMBABA poem \u2018Mop Toy\u2019 &#8211; strophe Two, showing activated peritext.<br>HUMBABA output on the right; authored input on the left.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2018One should not develop a taste for mourning\u2019, writes Derrida (2001, p. 110), but HUMBABA mourns incessantly for the lost source. Its attention is on its alliance with and<br>doubling of the source text, obsessed with this echo:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-stackable-blockquote stk-block-blockquote stk-block stk-8b4e4ee is-style-default\" data-v=\"2\" data-block-id=\"8b4e4ee\"><div class=\"has-text-align-left stk-block-blockquote__content stk-container stk-8b4e4ee-container stk-hover-parent\"><div class=\"stk-block-content stk-inner-blocks\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-stackable-icon stk-block-icon stk-block stk-48bd49a\" data-block-id=\"48bd49a\"><span class=\"stk--svg-wrapper\"><div class=\"stk--inner-svg\"><svg style=\"height:0;width:0\"><defs><linearGradient id=\"linear-gradient-48bd49a\" x1=\"0\" x2=\"100%\" y1=\"0\" y2=\"0\"><stop offset=\"0%\" style=\"stop-opacity:1;stop-color:var(--linear-gradient-48-bd-49-a-color-1)\"><\/stop><stop offset=\"100%\" style=\"stop-opacity:1;stop-color:var(--linear-gradient-48-bd-49-a-color-2)\"><\/stop><\/linearGradient><\/defs><\/svg><svg xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" viewBox=\"0 0 50 50\" aria-hidden=\"true\" width=\"32\" height=\"32\"><path d=\"M19.8 9.3C10.5 11.8 4.6 17 2.1 24.8c2.3-3.6 5.6-5.4 9.9-5.4 3.3 0 6 1.1 8.3 3.3 2.2 2.2 3.4 5 3.4 8.3 0 3.2-1.1 5.8-3.3 8-2.2 2.2-5.1 3.2-8.7 3.2-3.7 0-6.5-1.2-8.6-3.5C1 36.3 0 33.1 0 29 0 18.3 6.5 11.2 19.6 7.9l.2 1.4zm26.4 0C36.9 11.9 31 17 28.5 24.8c2.2-3.6 5.5-5.4 9.8-5.4 3.2 0 6 1.1 8.3 3.2 2.3 2.2 3.4 4.9 3.4 8.3 0 3.1-1.1 5.8-3.3 7.9-2.2 2.2-5.1 3.3-8.6 3.3-3.7 0-6.6-1.1-8.6-3.4-2.1-2.3-3.1-5.5-3.1-9.7 0-10.7 6.6-17.8 19.7-21.1l.1 1.4z\"><\/path><\/svg><\/div><\/span><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-stackable-text stk-block-text stk-block stk-65fb0e3\" data-block-id=\"65fb0e3\"><p class=\"stk-block-text__text\">\u2026 are we going to make the dead our ally \u2026 to take him by our side, or even inside ourselves, to show off some secret contract, to finish him off by exalting him \u2026 like all the ruses of an individual or collective &#8220;work of mourning&#8221;? (Derrida, 2001, p. 50)<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Whether HUMBABA can be thought of as making an alliance with the dead may depend on our attitude to the status of a poem (specifically here the source poem, which the algorithm writes from and beside) in relation to language. Julia Kristeva identifies the defensive function of language in face of mortality:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-stackable-blockquote stk-block-blockquote stk-block stk-5e2acf8 is-style-default\" data-v=\"2\" data-block-id=\"5e2acf8\"><div class=\"has-text-align-left stk-block-blockquote__content stk-container stk-5e2acf8-container stk-hover-parent\"><div class=\"stk-block-content stk-inner-blocks\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-stackable-icon stk-block-icon stk-block stk-eb414b7\" data-block-id=\"eb414b7\"><span class=\"stk--svg-wrapper\"><div class=\"stk--inner-svg\"><svg style=\"height:0;width:0\"><defs><linearGradient id=\"linear-gradient-eb414b7\" x1=\"0\" x2=\"100%\" y1=\"0\" y2=\"0\"><stop offset=\"0%\" style=\"stop-opacity:1;stop-color:var(--linear-gradient-eb-414-b-7-color-1)\"><\/stop><stop offset=\"100%\" style=\"stop-opacity:1;stop-color:var(--linear-gradient-eb-414-b-7-color-2)\"><\/stop><\/linearGradient><\/defs><\/svg><svg xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" viewBox=\"0 0 50 50\" aria-hidden=\"true\" width=\"32\" height=\"32\"><path d=\"M19.8 9.3C10.5 11.8 4.6 17 2.1 24.8c2.3-3.6 5.6-5.4 9.9-5.4 3.3 0 6 1.1 8.3 3.3 2.2 2.2 3.4 5 3.4 8.3 0 3.2-1.1 5.8-3.3 8-2.2 2.2-5.1 3.2-8.7 3.2-3.7 0-6.5-1.2-8.6-3.5C1 36.3 0 33.1 0 29 0 18.3 6.5 11.2 19.6 7.9l.2 1.4zm26.4 0C36.9 11.9 31 17 28.5 24.8c2.2-3.6 5.5-5.4 9.8-5.4 3.2 0 6 1.1 8.3 3.2 2.3 2.2 3.4 4.9 3.4 8.3 0 3.1-1.1 5.8-3.3 7.9-2.2 2.2-5.1 3.3-8.6 3.3-3.7 0-6.6-1.1-8.6-3.4-2.1-2.3-3.1-5.5-3.1-9.7 0-10.7 6.6-17.8 19.7-21.1l.1 1.4z\"><\/path><\/svg><\/div><\/span><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-stackable-text stk-block-text stk-block stk-ab23c5a\" data-block-id=\"ab23c5a\"><p class=\"stk-block-text__text\">That language is a defensive construction reveals its ambiguity &#8211; the death drive underlying it\u2026 All poetic \u2018distortions&#8217; of the signifying chain and the structure of signification may be considered in this light. (Kristeva, 1986, p. 103)<sup data-fn=\"e77c1e4f-36ba-4857-8576-be7c126ecff3\" class=\"fn\"><a href=\"#e77c1e4f-36ba-4857-8576-be7c126ecff3\" id=\"e77c1e4f-36ba-4857-8576-be7c126ecff3-link\">9<\/a><\/sup><\/p><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>It may be that HUMBABA is nothing other than a \u2018defensive construction\u2019 making its alliance with \u2018ambiguity\u2019, \u2018distortion\u2019, and \u2018ruse\u2019, through an incapacity to transmit affect, precisely because of its absence of date. But this is to forget the dialogue that HUMBABA performs \u2013 a dialogue inherent in any act of reading or writing, in any poem: \u2018The poem becomes \u2026 conversation \u2013 often a desperate conversation\u2019 (Celan, 2011, p. 9). We can think of HUMBABA as struggling to join in. Further, HUMBABA acts for author and reader as it reads and re-reads (\u2018like a loser\u2019) by re-inscribing the trace of the source. Trace, \u2018the subsistent presence of a remainder\u2019 (Derrida, 2005, p. 33) is the mark of the date, the bark inscribed \u2018with ciphers of fire\u2019 (Derrida, 2005, p. 48). \u2018This trace is the poem\u2019 (Derrida, 2005, p. 40). It chokes HUMBABA, which speaks haltingly, in a broken voice, and with ceaseless repetition. The algorithm makes its echo-poems, poems that haunt their origin, their source by being always a poor copy \u2013 made pathetically explicit by being written beside the source HUMBABA follows. HUMBABA composes a mishearing, a failed recollection or trace that points always towards the lost and honoured \u2013 the source, we might almost say its lost beloved: \u2018of you toward whom I must take a step\u2019 (Derrida, 2005, p. 51).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-stackable-blockquote stk-block-blockquote stk-block stk-9fe6baa is-style-default\" data-v=\"2\" data-block-id=\"9fe6baa\"><div class=\"has-text-align-left stk-block-blockquote__content stk-container stk-9fe6baa-container stk-hover-parent\"><div class=\"stk-block-content stk-inner-blocks\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-stackable-icon stk-block-icon stk-block stk-b2f8149\" data-block-id=\"b2f8149\"><span class=\"stk--svg-wrapper\"><div class=\"stk--inner-svg\"><svg style=\"height:0;width:0\"><defs><linearGradient id=\"linear-gradient-b2f8149\" x1=\"0\" x2=\"100%\" y1=\"0\" y2=\"0\"><stop offset=\"0%\" style=\"stop-opacity:1;stop-color:var(--linear-gradient-b-2-f-8149-color-1)\"><\/stop><stop offset=\"100%\" style=\"stop-opacity:1;stop-color:var(--linear-gradient-b-2-f-8149-color-2)\"><\/stop><\/linearGradient><\/defs><\/svg><svg xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" viewBox=\"0 0 50 50\" aria-hidden=\"true\" width=\"32\" height=\"32\"><path d=\"M19.8 9.3C10.5 11.8 4.6 17 2.1 24.8c2.3-3.6 5.6-5.4 9.9-5.4 3.3 0 6 1.1 8.3 3.3 2.2 2.2 3.4 5 3.4 8.3 0 3.2-1.1 5.8-3.3 8-2.2 2.2-5.1 3.2-8.7 3.2-3.7 0-6.5-1.2-8.6-3.5C1 36.3 0 33.1 0 29 0 18.3 6.5 11.2 19.6 7.9l.2 1.4zm26.4 0C36.9 11.9 31 17 28.5 24.8c2.2-3.6 5.5-5.4 9.8-5.4 3.2 0 6 1.1 8.3 3.2 2.3 2.2 3.4 4.9 3.4 8.3 0 3.1-1.1 5.8-3.3 7.9-2.2 2.2-5.1 3.3-8.6 3.3-3.7 0-6.6-1.1-8.6-3.4-2.1-2.3-3.1-5.5-3.1-9.7 0-10.7 6.6-17.8 19.7-21.1l.1 1.4z\"><\/path><\/svg><\/div><\/span><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-stackable-text stk-block-text stk-block stk-56eec2d\" data-block-id=\"56eec2d\"><p class=\"stk-block-text__text\">Insofar as it must be able to \u201cact\u201d in the absence of both addressor and addressee [\u2026] every trace implies the \u201cdeath,\u201d the possible or virtual death, of both the one who produced it and the one destined to receive or inherit it. (Naas, 2015, p. 116)<sup data-fn=\"ee43a044-89d9-4dcc-bbb4-9a64f3ea7fbb\" class=\"fn\"><a href=\"#ee43a044-89d9-4dcc-bbb4-9a64f3ea7fbb\" id=\"ee43a044-89d9-4dcc-bbb4-9a64f3ea7fbb-link\">10<\/a><\/sup><\/p><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>It is then \u2018a trace of the effacement of a trace\u2019 (Derrida, 1973, p. 156) and the result is an exchange, the passing of a token or shibboleth of loss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Manuel DeLanda argues that material systems possess both \u2018properties\u2019 and \u2018capacities\u2019 which give them the ability to act: agency. Such systems are \u2018always actual and virtual\u2019 (DeLanda, 2015, pp. 17\u201318) \u2013 whether \u2018living\u2019 poet-artist or \u2018inert\u2019 matter (or code) \u2013 and are \u2018active processes of materialization of which embodied humans are an integral part\u2019 (Coole and Frost, 2010, p. 8). In these terms all systems of matter pass between them a shibboleth, crossing \u2018the border between readability and unreadability\u2019, but in so doing \u2018there is communication \u2026 a token, a symbol, a tessera \u2026 a code\u2019 (Derrida, 2005, p. 40). HUMBABA, with its intangible materiality, its tenuous autonomy, nevertheless displays a capacity for action in response to loss, for the capacity to read and write like a \u2018loser\u2019, to exchange \u2018a token \u2026 a code\u2019, and displaying \u2018morphogenetic powers of its own\u2019 (DeLanda, 2015, p. 21). In this way HUMBABA defends against its death (and its losses) and our own: it mourns for us, and it mourns for itself. It is beginning to possess \u2013 with the agency contained within its \u2018properties\u2019 and \u2018capacities\u2019 \u2013 an endlessly deferred but nonetheless \u2018always actual and virtual\u2019 <em>date<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The second behaviour of HUMBABA that I will consider briefly here is control \u2013 as consequence of this act of mourning. HUMBABA reads and writes by the exchange of its \u2018token \u2026 code\u2019, but nevertheless resents intercession, forcing on the reader-viewer a pedantry of line by line, word by misheard word. HUMBABA is made this way \u2013 to be uninterruptable. A reader always has the choice to give up, close the browser window; but what the reader can\u2019t do \u2013 and what therefore gives HUMBABA this quality of force of will (of agency) \u2013 is stop mid-line, go back, edit, correct. The reader can restart the whole stanza (\u2018r\u2019 on the keyboard) or can make certain polite requests for the future behaviour of HUMBABA (for example, \u2018p\u2019 to search for part-of-speech matches). But HUMBABA doesn\u2019t so much listen to the reader (you, the human reader), HUMBABA listens \u2013 lovingly \u2013 to the source.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Of course, HUMBABA and similar uses of algorithmic poetics raise questions of the separation of author and text, intention and action. It might be understood to exemplify an aspect of the materiality of the trace in language, whose meaning cannot be fully determined or contained by its author: \u2018the sign possesses the characteristic of being readable [\u2026] even if I do not know what its alleged author-scriptor consciously intended to say at the moment he wrote it\u2019 (Derrida, 1988, p. 9). Walter Benn Michaels, drawing on John Searle (1977), retorts: \u2018it is obvious that what Derrida calls the \u201cscriptor-author\u201d has at most a contingent relation to the text; authors may be useful for the production of marks, but they are by no means essential\u2019 (Michaels, 2004, p. 125). With HUMBABA the result is a wilfulness on its part which only partly mediates between authorial intention (conscious or not) and its own \u2018morphogenetic powers\u2019. The \u2018author\u2019 can be replaced (in the sense that any correctly formatted text can be given to the algorithm) \u2013 HUMBABA will read and write from whatever it is given and will accompany that source with its own writing. But it is not quite abandoned: a particular feature of HUMBABA is that the distance between the human author\u2019s intentions and the echo-poem that HUMBABA produces is closed by the peritextual notes displayed below<sup data-fn=\"0583dc41-3b96-4358-a9f0-2d3cf3b75f45\" class=\"fn\"><a href=\"#0583dc41-3b96-4358-a9f0-2d3cf3b75f45\" id=\"0583dc41-3b96-4358-a9f0-2d3cf3b75f45-link\">11<\/a><\/sup>, which are given to it complete (the algorithm simply selects from these). This reinscribed authorial presence in the peritexts moderates the defiance of the algorithm, and acts as a healing suture<sup data-fn=\"f6cea5b1-6f97-498c-a2cb-7c7a4bc166d9\" class=\"fn\"><a href=\"#f6cea5b1-6f97-498c-a2cb-7c7a4bc166d9\" id=\"f6cea5b1-6f97-498c-a2cb-7c7a4bc166d9-link\">12<\/a><\/sup> to the disjunctive and often wilfully paratactic HUMBABA text that displays<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-stackable-blockquote stk-block-blockquote stk-block stk-f0e6920 is-style-default\" data-v=\"2\" data-block-id=\"f0e6920\"><div class=\"has-text-align-left stk-block-blockquote__content stk-container stk-f0e6920-container stk-hover-parent\"><div class=\"stk-block-content stk-inner-blocks\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-stackable-icon stk-block-icon stk-block stk-f5548b4\" data-block-id=\"f5548b4\"><span class=\"stk--svg-wrapper\"><div class=\"stk--inner-svg\"><svg style=\"height:0;width:0\"><defs><linearGradient id=\"linear-gradient-f5548b4\" x1=\"0\" x2=\"100%\" y1=\"0\" y2=\"0\"><stop offset=\"0%\" style=\"stop-opacity:1;stop-color:var(--linear-gradient-f-5548-b-4-color-1)\"><\/stop><stop offset=\"100%\" style=\"stop-opacity:1;stop-color:var(--linear-gradient-f-5548-b-4-color-2)\"><\/stop><\/linearGradient><\/defs><\/svg><svg xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" viewBox=\"0 0 50 50\" aria-hidden=\"true\" width=\"32\" height=\"32\"><path d=\"M19.8 9.3C10.5 11.8 4.6 17 2.1 24.8c2.3-3.6 5.6-5.4 9.9-5.4 3.3 0 6 1.1 8.3 3.3 2.2 2.2 3.4 5 3.4 8.3 0 3.2-1.1 5.8-3.3 8-2.2 2.2-5.1 3.2-8.7 3.2-3.7 0-6.5-1.2-8.6-3.5C1 36.3 0 33.1 0 29 0 18.3 6.5 11.2 19.6 7.9l.2 1.4zm26.4 0C36.9 11.9 31 17 28.5 24.8c2.2-3.6 5.5-5.4 9.8-5.4 3.2 0 6 1.1 8.3 3.2 2.3 2.2 3.4 4.9 3.4 8.3 0 3.1-1.1 5.8-3.3 7.9-2.2 2.2-5.1 3.3-8.6 3.3-3.7 0-6.6-1.1-8.6-3.4-2.1-2.3-3.1-5.5-3.1-9.7 0-10.7 6.6-17.8 19.7-21.1l.1 1.4z\"><\/path><\/svg><\/div><\/span><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-stackable-text stk-block-text stk-block stk-cfbfbdb\" data-block-id=\"cfbfbdb\"><p class=\"stk-block-text__text\">\u2026 reading-wounds, all cut words \u2026 where a thread can be followed that passes through \u2018points of suture,\u2019 closed up tears or scars, words to be cut off that were not cut off, membranes stitched back together \u2026 (Derrida, 2005, p. 55).<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>More than this, in its control of our reading, its refusal to read correctly (or its reading to its own disadvantage \u2013 \u2018like a loser\u2019), HUMBABA displays a variety of tyranny. There is also the troubling question of quality \u2013 in what HUMBABA imposes on the reader, and what it can make from what it is given. Indeed, with many given texts HUMBABA seems infantile in its response, producing little sense, except through pleasure in sound. It is infrequently lucid, like one possessed. It also likes to repeat. It is iterable, eternally recurrent. This raises the question: how can we identify success in HUMBABA? Writing the source poems is a matter of care, craft, and revision as I try to fix in language pieces of affect, drawing for this on my own moments, origin, losses, dates. Paul Celan: \u2018don\u2019t we all write ourselves from such dates? And toward what dates do we write ourselves?\u2019 (Celan, 2011, p. 8). But if HUMBABA has no moment, no origin, no losses, no <em>date?<\/em><sup data-fn=\"a0e54af1-9c37-4223-81b5-d3eccdf671bc\" class=\"fn\"><a href=\"#a0e54af1-9c37-4223-81b5-d3eccdf671bc\" id=\"a0e54af1-9c37-4223-81b5-d3eccdf671bc-link\">13<\/a><\/sup> Derrida: \u2018What is encrypted, dated in the <em>date<\/em>, is effaced; [\u2026] all the griefs are gathered in the poem of a <em>date<\/em> whose effacement does not await effacement&#8217; (2005, p. 37). But HUMBABA has no griefs to gather; what is encrypted in HUMBABA can only be from me. Or \u2013 you. Language is like this, argues Derrida, possessing the capacity to act independently of an author:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-stackable-blockquote stk-block-blockquote stk-block stk-5bad0d1 is-style-default\" data-v=\"2\" data-block-id=\"5bad0d1\"><div class=\"has-text-align-left stk-block-blockquote__content stk-container stk-5bad0d1-container stk-hover-parent\"><div class=\"stk-block-content stk-inner-blocks\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-stackable-icon stk-block-icon stk-block stk-3a0b12b\" data-block-id=\"3a0b12b\"><span class=\"stk--svg-wrapper\"><div class=\"stk--inner-svg\"><svg style=\"height:0;width:0\"><defs><linearGradient id=\"linear-gradient-3a0b12b\" x1=\"0\" x2=\"100%\" y1=\"0\" y2=\"0\"><stop offset=\"0%\" style=\"stop-opacity:1;stop-color:var(--linear-gradient-3-a-0-b-12-b-color-1)\"><\/stop><stop offset=\"100%\" style=\"stop-opacity:1;stop-color:var(--linear-gradient-3-a-0-b-12-b-color-2)\"><\/stop><\/linearGradient><\/defs><\/svg><svg xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" viewBox=\"0 0 50 50\" aria-hidden=\"true\" width=\"32\" height=\"32\"><path d=\"M19.8 9.3C10.5 11.8 4.6 17 2.1 24.8c2.3-3.6 5.6-5.4 9.9-5.4 3.3 0 6 1.1 8.3 3.3 2.2 2.2 3.4 5 3.4 8.3 0 3.2-1.1 5.8-3.3 8-2.2 2.2-5.1 3.2-8.7 3.2-3.7 0-6.5-1.2-8.6-3.5C1 36.3 0 33.1 0 29 0 18.3 6.5 11.2 19.6 7.9l.2 1.4zm26.4 0C36.9 11.9 31 17 28.5 24.8c2.2-3.6 5.5-5.4 9.8-5.4 3.2 0 6 1.1 8.3 3.2 2.3 2.2 3.4 4.9 3.4 8.3 0 3.1-1.1 5.8-3.3 7.9-2.2 2.2-5.1 3.3-8.6 3.3-3.7 0-6.6-1.1-8.6-3.4-2.1-2.3-3.1-5.5-3.1-9.7 0-10.7 6.6-17.8 19.7-21.1l.1 1.4z\"><\/path><\/svg><\/div><\/span><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-stackable-text stk-block-text stk-block stk-32ce4fa\" data-block-id=\"32ce4fa\"><p class=\"stk-block-text__text\">To write is to produce a mark that will constitute a sort of machine which is productive in turn, and which my future disappearance will not, in principle, hinder in its functioning, offering things and itself to be read and to be rewritten. (Derrida, 1988, p. 8)<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>This produced a famous response from John Searle:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-stackable-blockquote stk-block-blockquote stk-block stk-cbc65d1 is-style-default\" data-v=\"2\" data-block-id=\"cbc65d1\"><div class=\"has-text-align-left stk-block-blockquote__content stk-container stk-cbc65d1-container stk-hover-parent\"><div class=\"stk-block-content stk-inner-blocks\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-stackable-icon stk-block-icon stk-block stk-23417f5\" data-block-id=\"23417f5\"><span class=\"stk--svg-wrapper\"><div class=\"stk--inner-svg\"><svg style=\"height:0;width:0\"><defs><linearGradient id=\"linear-gradient-23417f5\" x1=\"0\" x2=\"100%\" y1=\"0\" y2=\"0\"><stop offset=\"0%\" style=\"stop-opacity:1;stop-color:var(--linear-gradient-23417-f-5-color-1)\"><\/stop><stop offset=\"100%\" style=\"stop-opacity:1;stop-color:var(--linear-gradient-23417-f-5-color-2)\"><\/stop><\/linearGradient><\/defs><\/svg><svg xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" viewBox=\"0 0 50 50\" aria-hidden=\"true\" width=\"32\" height=\"32\"><path d=\"M19.8 9.3C10.5 11.8 4.6 17 2.1 24.8c2.3-3.6 5.6-5.4 9.9-5.4 3.3 0 6 1.1 8.3 3.3 2.2 2.2 3.4 5 3.4 8.3 0 3.2-1.1 5.8-3.3 8-2.2 2.2-5.1 3.2-8.7 3.2-3.7 0-6.5-1.2-8.6-3.5C1 36.3 0 33.1 0 29 0 18.3 6.5 11.2 19.6 7.9l.2 1.4zm26.4 0C36.9 11.9 31 17 28.5 24.8c2.2-3.6 5.5-5.4 9.8-5.4 3.2 0 6 1.1 8.3 3.2 2.3 2.2 3.4 4.9 3.4 8.3 0 3.1-1.1 5.8-3.3 7.9-2.2 2.2-5.1 3.3-8.6 3.3-3.7 0-6.6-1.1-8.6-3.4-2.1-2.3-3.1-5.5-3.1-9.7 0-10.7 6.6-17.8 19.7-21.1l.1 1.4z\"><\/path><\/svg><\/div><\/span><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-stackable-text stk-block-text stk-block stk-fa0af53\" data-block-id=\"fa0af53\"><p class=\"stk-block-text__text\">Does the fact that writing can continue to function in the absence of the writer, the intended receiver, or the context of production show that writing is not a vehicle of intentionality? \u2026 on the contrary \u2026 (Searle, 1977, p. 201)<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>On the contrary\u2026 HUMBABA has our griefs, our dates, there in its chosen words, in the algorithm, in how it listens and repeats, even in its obsessional control and its ceaseless mourning. But what might be considered its infantilism and failure risks incoherence or encryption \u2013 and the risks of this encryption are real:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-stackable-blockquote stk-block-blockquote stk-block stk-04a791f is-style-default\" data-v=\"2\" data-block-id=\"04a791f\"><div class=\"has-text-align-left stk-block-blockquote__content stk-container stk-04a791f-container stk-hover-parent\"><div class=\"stk-block-content stk-inner-blocks\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-stackable-icon stk-block-icon stk-block stk-0858126\" data-block-id=\"0858126\"><span class=\"stk--svg-wrapper\"><div class=\"stk--inner-svg\"><svg style=\"height:0;width:0\"><defs><linearGradient id=\"linear-gradient-0858126\" x1=\"0\" x2=\"100%\" y1=\"0\" y2=\"0\"><stop offset=\"0%\" style=\"stop-opacity:1;stop-color:var(--linear-gradient-0858126-color-1)\"><\/stop><stop offset=\"100%\" style=\"stop-opacity:1;stop-color:var(--linear-gradient-0858126-color-2)\"><\/stop><\/linearGradient><\/defs><\/svg><svg xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" viewBox=\"0 0 50 50\" aria-hidden=\"true\" width=\"32\" height=\"32\"><path d=\"M19.8 9.3C10.5 11.8 4.6 17 2.1 24.8c2.3-3.6 5.6-5.4 9.9-5.4 3.3 0 6 1.1 8.3 3.3 2.2 2.2 3.4 5 3.4 8.3 0 3.2-1.1 5.8-3.3 8-2.2 2.2-5.1 3.2-8.7 3.2-3.7 0-6.5-1.2-8.6-3.5C1 36.3 0 33.1 0 29 0 18.3 6.5 11.2 19.6 7.9l.2 1.4zm26.4 0C36.9 11.9 31 17 28.5 24.8c2.2-3.6 5.5-5.4 9.8-5.4 3.2 0 6 1.1 8.3 3.2 2.3 2.2 3.4 4.9 3.4 8.3 0 3.1-1.1 5.8-3.3 7.9-2.2 2.2-5.1 3.3-8.6 3.3-3.7 0-6.6-1.1-8.6-3.4-2.1-2.3-3.1-5.5-3.1-9.7 0-10.7 6.6-17.8 19.7-21.1l.1 1.4z\"><\/path><\/svg><\/div><\/span><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-stackable-text stk-block-text stk-block stk-2764b8d\" data-block-id=\"2764b8d\"><p class=\"stk-block-text__text\">Consumption, becoming-ash, burning up or incineration of a date\u2026 This is the threat of an absolute crypt: nonrecurrence, unreadability, amnesia without remainder&#8230; (Derrida, 2005, p. 46)<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>The unreadability of HUMBABA is a crux here, but with HUMBABA there may be an escape from \u2018absolute crypt \u2026 unreadability\u2019: it can only and forever rewrite the given text and itself is not able to act alone without a source text \u2013 and by virtue of its errors it must read that text with compassion<sup data-fn=\"2429c974-3140-48da-b4d8-8183977c0b4d\" class=\"fn\"><a href=\"#2429c974-3140-48da-b4d8-8183977c0b4d\" id=\"2429c974-3140-48da-b4d8-8183977c0b4d-link\">14<\/a><\/sup>. And it is this compassionateness that allows it its date, its possession of experience, if not yet its humanity<sup data-fn=\"334d9554-c98d-4e60-84ef-e8abdb38406b\" class=\"fn\"><a href=\"#334d9554-c98d-4e60-84ef-e8abdb38406b\" id=\"334d9554-c98d-4e60-84ef-e8abdb38406b-link\">15<\/a><\/sup>. In its reading of the source poem \u2018like a loser\u2019 HUMBABA marks out \u2018all the losses \u2026 all the griefs [that] are gathered in the poem of a date\u2019 (Derrida, 2005, p. 57). And it is in our reading of what it writes that we recognise its world-poverty and perceive its compassion towards the source text \u2013 a text which as though a stone, can do nothing to help itself but is given the kindness of living through being read and re-read by HUMBABA. As it reads and writes and discards, HUMBABA is \u2018marking itself as the one-and-only time\u2019 (Derrida, 2005, p. 2) \u2013 it has its <em>date<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-stackable-heading stk-block-heading stk-block-heading--v2 stk-block stk-65b61dc\" id=\"writing-like-a-loser-a-robopoet-writing-with-pity-and-compassion\" data-block-id=\"65b61dc\"><style>.stk-65b61dc {margin-bottom:8px !important;}<\/style><h4 class=\"stk-block-heading__text\">Writing like a loser: a robopoet writing with pity and compassion<\/h4><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>I now argue, despite Michaels\u2019 assertion that a non-human author (\u2018natural accident\u2019) cannot write with intention, that it is precisely through its agency as an algorithmic author that HUMBABA, in reading and writing \u2018like a loser\u2019 displays intention. It intends \u2013 or rather what N. Katherine Hayles (2017, p. 4) terms its \u2018cognitive assemblage\u2019 of human and machine intends \u2013 to echo the given source text, writing to fit a pattern of syllable count and sound. Indeed, HUMBABA does so compulsively, but fails in the process, and fails repeatedly. This is a joyful condition \u2013 an acceptance of perpetual incompleteness and revision (as with Osborne\u2019s \u2018project\u2019 and \u2018fragment\u2019), of reading and writing as eternal recurrence: \u2018the eternal return starts from the premise that all is enhancement and tries to preserve that process of change\u2019 (Bull, 2014, p. 84). And it exercises throughout the imitation of pity and compassion: \u2018To feel compassion for the suffering is therefore to imitate their suffering in ourselves and suffer as they do\u2019 (Bull, 2014, p. 134). HUMBABA, a robopoet writing \u2018like a loser\u2019, suffers for us and alongside us: it is a date in search of its author.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-stackable-heading stk-block-heading stk-block-heading--v2 stk-block stk-7e01bc1\" id=\"footnotes\" data-block-id=\"7e01bc1\"><style>.stk-7e01bc1 {margin-bottom:8px !important;}<\/style><h4 class=\"stk-block-heading__text\">Footnotes<\/h4><\/div>\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-footnotes\"><li id=\"2d9c9f46-382a-4f55-b83b-356bccf8d9b6\">HUMBABA can be found at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.peterdukes.com\/humbaba\/\">https:\/\/www.peterdukes.com\/humbaba\/<\/a> and was begun in 2020. <a href=\"#2d9c9f46-382a-4f55-b83b-356bccf8d9b6-link\" aria-label=\"Jump to footnote reference 1\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li><li id=\"603a6d7e-e9f0-487f-b060-cebf270c0e6a\">A robopoet can be defined as \u2018an automated algorithm, whose output confounds the metaphysics of authorship\u2019 (B\u00f6k, 2002, p. 10). <a href=\"#603a6d7e-e9f0-487f-b060-cebf270c0e6a-link\" aria-label=\"Jump to footnote reference 2\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li><li id=\"2daeb2b6-c584-4313-9f8f-1dfe131bc6e9\"><em>Date<\/em> is italicised throughout to reflect this specialised usage in Derrida (2005). <a href=\"#2daeb2b6-c584-4313-9f8f-1dfe131bc6e9-link\" aria-label=\"Jump to footnote reference 3\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li><li id=\"a24073be-07e5-4cea-bf05-079abd3a875c\">Annette Gilbert terms variance across instances in literature \u2018unstable texts\u2019, and a \u2018strategic poetics of deviance\u2019 (Gilbert, 2022, p. 188). <a href=\"#a24073be-07e5-4cea-bf05-079abd3a875c-link\" aria-label=\"Jump to footnote reference 4\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li><li id=\"5c4bc032-3729-4307-8dae-69593e016820\">The quotation in Bull is from <em>Beyond Good and Evil<\/em> (Nietzsche, 1989, p. 154). <a href=\"#5c4bc032-3729-4307-8dae-69593e016820-link\" aria-label=\"Jump to footnote reference 5\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li><li id=\"1aa2a099-539b-4330-a416-aa5e113673ca\">Bull draws principally on Heidegger (1995) for the concept of \u2018world poverty\u2019, a lack that describes the state of being of the not-human. <a href=\"#1aa2a099-539b-4330-a416-aa5e113673ca-link\" aria-label=\"Jump to footnote reference 6\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li><li id=\"0b27da15-43d0-4c15-af09-359a62490d84\">A similar argument could be developed from the concept of the glitch, where fault and failure \u2018exploits randomness and chance as a way to disrupt the digital ideal of a clean, frictionless, error-free environment\u2019 and by which \u2018the computer itself becomes an author\u2019 (Emerson, 2014). The glitch exposes the disadvantage of the algorithm and the ideological basis of all digital agents (Gilbert, 2022, p. 300). Alignment can also be made with Hito Steyerl\u2019s \u2018poor image\u2019 (Steyerl, 2009). However, Steyerl\u2019s emphasis is on the degraded image as a token of oppression or resistance, and it is not given its own agency or authorial charge. <a href=\"#0b27da15-43d0-4c15-af09-359a62490d84-link\" aria-label=\"Jump to footnote reference 7\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li><li id=\"69b2b910-4559-4a3e-9516-32aff0a9e88c\">HUMBABA can be found at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.peterdukes.com\/humbaba\/\">https:\/\/www.peterdukes.com\/humbaba\/<\/a> <a href=\"#69b2b910-4559-4a3e-9516-32aff0a9e88c-link\" aria-label=\"Jump to footnote reference 8\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li><li id=\"e77c1e4f-36ba-4857-8576-be7c126ecff3\">The linkage of language and mortality as mark of humanity is further examined by Giorgio Agamben (2006). Agamben asks \u2018what if humankind were neither speaking nor mortal, yet continued to die and to speak?\u2019 (2006, p. xii), a negative ontology. This is the condition of HUMBABA, which might be not-living and yet still anticipating its end as it speaks. <a href=\"#e77c1e4f-36ba-4857-8576-be7c126ecff3-link\" aria-label=\"Jump to footnote reference 9\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li><li id=\"ee43a044-89d9-4dcc-bbb4-9a64f3ea7fbb\">Michael Naas notes that this capacity to act in absence recalls the \u201cmarionette\u201d Derrida invoked at the end of his life: \u2018Spoken or written, all these gestures leave us and begin to act independently of us\u2019 (Derrida, 2007, p. 32). <a href=\"#ee43a044-89d9-4dcc-bbb4-9a64f3ea7fbb-link\" aria-label=\"Jump to footnote reference 10\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li><li id=\"0583dc41-3b96-4358-a9f0-2d3cf3b75f45\">These peritexts are written for words in the source but also and pre-emptively for words that may occur in the echoes made by HUMBABA. In this way I demonstrate that I too am listening, compassionately, for what HUMBABA may have to say. <a href=\"#0583dc41-3b96-4358-a9f0-2d3cf3b75f45-link\" aria-label=\"Jump to footnote reference 11\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li><li id=\"f6cea5b1-6f97-498c-a2cb-7c7a4bc166d9\">I stress here that the peritexts are manifestations of \u2013 or perhaps the stichs of \u2013 authorial presence and are not threads of meaning or interpretation. That the chosen peritext is not entirely predictable on the part of the author or reader is a reminder that this is a \u2018robopoetic\u2019 machine, a theatre of authorship. It does not provide the kinds of \u2018encrustations of interpretation\u2019 that Susan Sontag identifies as the \u2018modern way\u2019 in the reception of literary art (Sontag, 1994, pp. 8\u20139). Rather this is a robopoet that may not itself know what it is doing but may know that it is doing it. <a href=\"#f6cea5b1-6f97-498c-a2cb-7c7a4bc166d9-link\" aria-label=\"Jump to footnote reference 12\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li><li id=\"a0e54af1-9c37-4223-81b5-d3eccdf671bc\">Susan Howe writes: \u2018In some sense the subject of any poem is the author\u2019s state of mind at the time it was written\u2019 (Howe, 2007, p. 27). With HUMBABA there must be a specific lack, as with no mind, it cannot, on these terms, have any subject. But in being accompanied in its failures by the authored poem, it borrows or takes a state of mind that was mine, my date, and compacts this into an origin in replica, cellular division into sported poem. <a href=\"#a0e54af1-9c37-4223-81b5-d3eccdf671bc-link\" aria-label=\"Jump to footnote reference 13\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li><li id=\"2429c974-3140-48da-b4d8-8183977c0b4d\">The source texts themselves need to be written with HUMBABA in mind as a reader: lucid, non-paratactic narrative writing results in greater failure \u2013 in the sense of higher levels of comparative paratactic writing, with numerous non-sequiturs and disjunctive connectives from HUMBABA. The kindness in the source text is to avoid by comparison too violent a contrast between its writing and that of the algorithm. In other words, compassion is required on both sides \u2013 on the authored side to pre-empt the \u2018loser\u2019 writing produced by HUMBABA, on HUMBABA\u2019s side to show it has been listening, as well as it can. There is a complex aetiology here \u2013 neither source nor anticipated echo are primary; each is the other\u2019s cause. <a href=\"#2429c974-3140-48da-b4d8-8183977c0b4d-link\" aria-label=\"Jump to footnote reference 14\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li><li id=\"334d9554-c98d-4e60-84ef-e8abdb38406b\">Bull, in dialogue with the Nietzschean binary of the subhuman\/superhuman, suggests that world-poverty and reading like a loser is an act of self-dehumanisation: \u2018Reading like a loser is what the animal invites us to do, and vice versa\u2019 (2014, p. 100). But this remains a state in touch with being human: \u2018Must we all then become stones? Not yet, not yet \u2026\u2019 (Bull, 2014, p. 104). <a href=\"#334d9554-c98d-4e60-84ef-e8abdb38406b-link\" aria-label=\"Jump to footnote reference 15\">\u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-stackable-heading stk-block-heading stk-block-heading--v2 stk-block stk-5dc9b7e\" id=\"references\" data-block-id=\"5dc9b7e\"><style>.stk-5dc9b7e {margin-bottom:8px !important;}<\/style><h4 class=\"stk-block-heading__text\">References<\/h4><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-stackable-text stk-block-text stk-block stk-21e11c5\" data-block-id=\"21e11c5\"><style>.stk-21e11c5 {margin-bottom:9px !important;}<\/style><p class=\"stk-block-text__text\">Bernstein, F. (2015) \u2018Notes on Post-Conceptual Poetry: Deluxe Edition\u2019, in Notes on Post-Conceptual Poetry. Los Angeles: Insert Blanc Press, pp. 15\u201398.<\/p><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>Agamben, G. (2006) Language and Death: The Place of Negativity. Translated by K.E. Pinkus and M. Hardt. Minneapolis; Oxford: University of Minnesota Press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>B\u00f6k, C. (2002) \u2018The Piecemeal Bard Is Deconstructed: Notes Toward a Potential Robopoetics\u2019, Ubuweb Papers, (Object 10: Cyberpoetics), pp. 10\u201318.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bull, M. (2014) Anti-Nietzsche. London; New York: Verso.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Celan, P. (2011) The Meridian: Final Version-Drafts-Materials. Edited by B. B\u00f6schenstein and H. Schmull. Translated by P. Joris. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Coole, D. and Frost, S. (eds) (2010) New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics. Durham;<br>London: Duke University Press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DeLanda, M. (2015) \u2018The New Materiality\u2019, Architectural Design, 85(5), pp. 16\u201321.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Derrida, J. (1973) Speech and Phenomena and Other Essays on Husserl\u2019s Theory of Signs. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Derrida, J. (1988) Limited Inc. Edited by G. Graff. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Derrida, J. (2001) The Work of Mourning. Edited by P.-A. Brault and M. Naas. Chicago; London:<br>University of Chicago Press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Derrida, J. (2005) \u2018Shibboleth for Paul Celan\u2019, in T. Dutoit and O. Pasanen (eds)<br>Sovereignties in Question: The Poetics of Paul Celan. New York: Fordham University<br>Press, pp. 1\u201364.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Derrida, J. (2007) Learning to Live Finally. Edited by M. Naas and P.-A. Brault. Houndmills; New York: Palgrave Macmillan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Emerson, L. (2014) \u2018Glitch aesthetics\u2019, in M.-L. Ryan, L. Emerson, and B.J. Robertson (eds) The<br>Johns Hopkins Guide to Digital Media. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Available at:<br>https:\/\/search-credoreference-<br>com.uow.idm.oclc.org\/content\/entry\/jhupjohns\/glitch_aesthetics\/0?institutionId=170 3 (Accessed: 12 April 2023).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gilbert, A. (2022) Literature\u2019s Elsewheres: On the Necessity of Radical Literary Practices.<br>Cambridge, MA; London: MIT Press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Hayles, N.K. (2017) Unthought: The Power of the Cognitive Nonconscious. Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press.<br>Heidegger, M. (1995) The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude.<br>Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Howe, S. (2007) My Emily Dickinson. New York: New Directions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Knapp, S. and Michaels, W.B. (1982) \u2018Against Theory\u2019, Critical Inquiry, 8(4), pp. 723\u2013742.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Kristeva, J. (1986) The Kristeva Reader. Edited by T. Moi. New York: Columbia University Press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Michaels, W.B. (2004) The Shape of the Signifier: 1967 to the end of history. Princeton; Oxford:<br>Princeton University Press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Naas, M. (2015) \u2018When it comes to mourning\u2019, in C. Colebrook (ed.) Jacques Derrida: Key Concepts. London; New York: Routledge, pp. 113\u2013121.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Nietzsche, F. (1989) Beyond Good and Evil. Edited by W. Kaufmann. New York: Vintage Books.<br>Osborne, P. (2013) Anywhere or Not At All: Philosophy of Contemporary Art. London; New York: Verso.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Searle, J.R. (1977) \u2018Reiterating the Differences: A Reply to Derrida.\u2019, Glyph, 1, pp. 198\u2013 208.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sontag, S. (1994) \u2018Against Interpretation\u2019, in Against Interpretation. London: Vintage, pp. 3\u201314.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Steyerl, H. (2009) \u2018In Defense of the Poor Image\u2019, E-Flux Journal, 10 (November 2009). Available<br>at: http:\/\/worker01.e-flux.com\/pdf\/article_94.pdf (Accessed: 22 July 2023).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A contextualisation of generative AI through practice, in two parts Peter Dukes Failure Part 1: Writing without date: HUMBABA as author without experience HUMBABA is a robopoet that rewrites given texts homophonically and presents itsown echoic writing alongside that given source (Figure 1). As it does so, HUMBABA provides peritextual notes or comments linked to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":"[{\"content\":\"HUMBABA can be found at <a href=\\\"https:\/\/www.peterdukes.com\/humbaba\/\\\">https:\/\/www.peterdukes.com\/humbaba\/<\/a> and was begun in 2020.\",\"id\":\"2d9c9f46-382a-4f55-b83b-356bccf8d9b6\"},{\"content\":\"A robopoet can be defined as \u2018an automated algorithm, whose output confounds the metaphysics of authorship\u2019 (B\u00f6k, 2002, p. 10).\",\"id\":\"603a6d7e-e9f0-487f-b060-cebf270c0e6a\"},{\"content\":\"<em>Date<\/em> is italicised throughout to reflect this specialised usage in Derrida (2005).\",\"id\":\"2daeb2b6-c584-4313-9f8f-1dfe131bc6e9\"},{\"content\":\"Annette Gilbert terms variance across instances in literature \u2018unstable texts\u2019, and a \u2018strategic poetics of deviance\u2019 (Gilbert, 2022, p. 188).\",\"id\":\"a24073be-07e5-4cea-bf05-079abd3a875c\"},{\"content\":\"The quotation in Bull is from <em>Beyond Good and Evil<\/em> (Nietzsche, 1989, p. 154).\",\"id\":\"5c4bc032-3729-4307-8dae-69593e016820\"},{\"content\":\"Bull draws principally on Heidegger (1995) for the concept of \u2018world poverty\u2019, a lack that describes the state of being of the not-human.\",\"id\":\"1aa2a099-539b-4330-a416-aa5e113673ca\"},{\"content\":\"A similar argument could be developed from the concept of the glitch, where fault and failure \u2018exploits randomness and chance as a way to disrupt the digital ideal of a clean, frictionless, error-free environment\u2019 and by which \u2018the computer itself becomes an author\u2019 (Emerson, 2014). The glitch exposes the disadvantage of the algorithm and the ideological basis of all digital agents (Gilbert, 2022, p. 300). Alignment can also be made with Hito Steyerl\u2019s \u2018poor image\u2019 (Steyerl, 2009). However, Steyerl\u2019s emphasis is on the degraded image as a token of oppression or resistance, and it is not given its own agency or authorial charge.\",\"id\":\"0b27da15-43d0-4c15-af09-359a62490d84\"},{\"content\":\"HUMBABA can be found at <a href=\\\"https:\/\/www.peterdukes.com\/humbaba\/\\\">https:\/\/www.peterdukes.com\/humbaba\/<\/a>\",\"id\":\"69b2b910-4559-4a3e-9516-32aff0a9e88c\"},{\"content\":\"The linkage of language and mortality as mark of humanity is further examined by Giorgio Agamben (2006). Agamben asks \u2018what if humankind were neither speaking nor mortal, yet continued to die and to speak?\u2019 (2006, p. xii), a negative ontology. This is the condition of HUMBABA, which might be not-living and yet still anticipating its end as it speaks.\",\"id\":\"e77c1e4f-36ba-4857-8576-be7c126ecff3\"},{\"content\":\"Michael Naas notes that this capacity to act in absence recalls the \u201cmarionette\u201d Derrida invoked at the end of his life: \u2018Spoken or written, all these gestures leave us and begin to act independently of us\u2019 (Derrida, 2007, p. 32).\",\"id\":\"ee43a044-89d9-4dcc-bbb4-9a64f3ea7fbb\"},{\"content\":\"These peritexts are written for words in the source but also and pre-emptively for words that may occur in the echoes made by HUMBABA. In this way I demonstrate that I too am listening, compassionately, for what HUMBABA may have to say.\",\"id\":\"0583dc41-3b96-4358-a9f0-2d3cf3b75f45\"},{\"content\":\"I stress here that the peritexts are manifestations of \u2013 or perhaps the stichs of \u2013 authorial presence and are not threads of meaning or interpretation. That the chosen peritext is not entirely predictable on the part of the author or reader is a reminder that this is a \u2018robopoetic\u2019 machine, a theatre of authorship. It does not provide the kinds of \u2018encrustations of interpretation\u2019 that Susan Sontag identifies as the \u2018modern way\u2019 in the reception of literary art (Sontag, 1994, pp. 8\u20139). Rather this is a robopoet that may not itself know what it is doing but may know that it is doing it.\",\"id\":\"f6cea5b1-6f97-498c-a2cb-7c7a4bc166d9\"},{\"content\":\"Susan Howe writes: \u2018In some sense the subject of any poem is the author\u2019s state of mind at the time it was written\u2019 (Howe, 2007, p. 27). With HUMBABA there must be a specific lack, as with no mind, it cannot, on these terms, have any subject. But in being accompanied in its failures by the authored poem, it borrows or takes a state of mind that was mine, my date, and compacts this into an origin in replica, cellular division into sported poem.\",\"id\":\"a0e54af1-9c37-4223-81b5-d3eccdf671bc\"},{\"content\":\"The source texts themselves need to be written with HUMBABA in mind as a reader: lucid, non-paratactic narrative writing results in greater failure \u2013 in the sense of higher levels of comparative paratactic writing, with numerous non-sequiturs and disjunctive connectives from HUMBABA. The kindness in the source text is to avoid by comparison too violent a contrast between its writing and that of the algorithm. In other words, compassion is required on both sides \u2013 on the authored side to pre-empt the \u2018loser\u2019 writing produced by HUMBABA, on HUMBABA\u2019s side to show it has been listening, as well as it can. There is a complex aetiology here \u2013 neither source nor anticipated echo are primary; each is the other\u2019s cause.\",\"id\":\"2429c974-3140-48da-b4d8-8183977c0b4d\"},{\"content\":\"Bull, in dialogue with the Nietzschean binary of the subhuman\/superhuman, suggests that world-poverty and reading like a loser is an act of self-dehumanisation: \u2018Reading like a loser is what the animal invites us to do, and vice versa\u2019 (2014, p. 100). But this remains a state in touch with being human: \u2018Must we all then become stones? Not yet, not yet \u2026\u2019 (Bull, 2014, p. 104).\",\"id\":\"334d9554-c98d-4e60-84ef-e8abdb38406b\"}]"},"class_list":["post-182","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"blocksy_meta":{"page_structure_type":"type-3","styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":6}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lexiconia.art\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lexiconia.art\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lexiconia.art\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lexiconia.art\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lexiconia.art\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=182"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/lexiconia.art\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/182\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":396,"href":"https:\/\/lexiconia.art\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/182\/revisions\/396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lexiconia.art\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}