Artificial eloquence: the weird science of computer-generated poetry – The Verge The Verge is about technology and how it makes us feel. Founded in 2011, we offer our audience everything from breaking news to reviews to award-winning features and investigations, on our site, in video, and in podcasts. 2013-04-29T00:01:06+00:00 https://www.theverge.com/rss/stream/4043407 https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/01/verge-rss-large_80b47e.png?w=150&h=150&crop=1 Chris Welch <![CDATA[Tapping Project Gutenberg to create computer-generated ‘snowball’ poems]]> https://www.theverge.com/2013/4/28/4279470/tapping-project-gutenberg-create-cpu-generated-snowball-poetry 2013-04-28T20:01:06-04:00 2013-04-28T20:01:06-04:00
Poetry Shutterstock

In yet another example of computers churning out art, Paul Thompson has built a C++ script that produces snowballs - poems where every line is a single word, with each successive word one letter longer than its predecessor. "I thought that someone must have created a program to generate these, and I was surprised that I couldn't find one even after some pretty thorough Googling," Thompson writes on his blog. That led the part-time programmer to develop his own solution. Thompson's code scans through a massive text file of numerous combined works from Project Gutenberg. All character names are ignored as the poem is crafted, as are any foreig …

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]]> Chris Welch <![CDATA[New York Times launches ‘Times Haiku’ Tumblr, makes poetry out of front page articles]]> https://www.theverge.com/2013/4/1/4170266/new-york-times-times-haiku-makes-poetry-with-front-page-articles 2013-04-01T11:43:05-04:00 2013-04-01T11:43:05-04:00
Times Haiku

The newspaper of record is venturing into poetry. Today may be April Fools Day, but Times Haiku - a new side project from The New York Times - is a wholly serious endeavor launching just in time for National Poetry Month. Nieman Journalism Lab has the full rundown on the Tumblr-based project, which spits out haikus generated from sentences on the NYT's homepage. It accomplishes this by matching words up against a dictionary that helpfully includes syllable count. Selections published to the blog are curated by humans, a necessary step since its creators admit Times Haiku "can't distinguish between an elegant verse and a plodding one."

To bu …

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]]> Jacob Kastrenakes <![CDATA[Using public tweets / a developer finds art / in hidden haikus]]> https://www.theverge.com/culture/2013/3/18/4118916/finding-hidden-haikus-in-public-tweets 2013-03-18T12:10:12-04:00 2013-03-18T12:10:12-04:00
Twitter for Windows Phone

One developer has found the perfect way to take advantage of Twitter's new support for line breaks: haikus. Using the public Twitter stream and a Python tool that can determine the number of syllables in most English words, Brandon at h6o6 has found a way to collect the haikus hidden in plain sight on Twitter. You probably won't see the poems collected at Tweet Haikus in the next great found poetry anthology, but that doesn't mean there isn't some accidental beauty in the results - after all, the charm of @Horse_ebooks has nothing to do with well-prepared prose.

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]]> Amar Toor <![CDATA[Spotify app turns song titles into Valentine’s Day poetry]]> https://www.theverge.com/2013/2/8/3966892/playlist-poetry-spotify-app-for-valentines-day 2013-02-08T05:52:01-05:00 2013-02-08T05:52:01-05:00
spotify playlist poetry

Valentine's Day is fast approaching, which means it's time to start writing poetry and compiling mixtapes. Fortunately, Spotify's Playlist Poetry lets you kill both lovebirds with one stone. The app, announced yesterday, invites users to create poems entirely from song titles, and share the resulting playlist with their Special Someone. You can search Spotify's database for a specific word or phrase in a given title, and arrange the results into verse using a word magnet-like interface.

The emphasis here is on words, rather than music. You can't search by artist, album, or any field other than song title, which can result in some unintentio …

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]]> Laura June <![CDATA[Twitter’s favorite spambot, @Horse_ebooks, hits 100k followers]]> https://www.theverge.com/2012/8/29/3276661/twitters-favorite-spambot-horse-ebooks-hits-100k-followers 2012-08-29T11:58:02-04:00 2012-08-29T11:58:02-04:00
Horse

If you're a Twitter user, you've likely come in contact with the spam account @Horse_ebooks at least once or twice, probably when someone you follow discovers him and loses all self control, retweeting every one of his many gems. If, however, you're unfamiliar with the Twittering world's most beloved equine chatterbox, here's a quick summary: @Horse_ebooks is a spambot, created to promote and presumably sell ebooks (Gawker investigated his origins and creator in depth earlier this year). Sometime yesterday or the day before, @Horse_ebooks passed the 100,000 follower mark: a remarkable achievement for a human, but a somewhat stunning one for …

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]]> Janus Kopfstein <![CDATA[Plinko poetry, a burrito printer, and more at NYU ITP’s tech-art showcase]]> https://www.theverge.com/2012/5/16/3023599/nyu-itp-spring-show-burrito-printer 2012-05-16T15:19:03-04:00 2012-05-16T15:19:03-04:00
ITP Spring Show

Outside of the seasonal showcases for NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program, you'd be hard-pressed to find an event in New York that packs so many novel art and technology experiments under one roof. This year's Spring Show, which ran Monday and Tuesday at the Tisch School in Manhattan's lower east side, was no exception: ITP students continue to play in the backyard of a bizarre and exciting new media fringe, creating all manner of contraptions, software, and ideas that drive fresh conversations about our rapidly-evolving tech landscape.

One of the show's most unusual projects opens such a dialogue without actually utilizing the tec …

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