Data Poetry

Book excerpt: 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.