At the culmination of the source.txt interactive poetry installation, see The Algorithm (AKA poet Kelly Mullins) in action as they demonstrate algorithmic poetry generation in real time and perform some of the work that has been created throughout the day.

Audience members will be encouraged to use their phones to generate source text, crawl our collective digital snippets, exert our algorithmic bias, and create ‘output’…also known as poems. You may even want to jump on the mic to perform the work you’ve created or initiate an algorithmic poetry battle!

Visitors to ILFD are invited to participate in the source.txt installation by dropping by the source.txt station from Friday 24th until Sunday 26th of May or by participating in the source.txt Collaborative Poetry Workshop on Sunday 26th of May – click here.

About source.txt
Everything we put on the internet today is now source material for writing and art that OpenAI’s like ChatGPT and DALL-E 2 will create (and profit off of). So, what happens when we do the opposite of what these algorithms do, and consent to sharing our most private, digital moments in a public space? What if these digital snippets become the “source material” for an algorithm that does not exist on the internet, but in the intimacy of one room? The source.txt station will be set up on the festival grounds from Friday 24th of May in the Byzantium Marquee for guests to visit on a casual basis.

For those who are interested in the inner workings of the project and the craft of poetry, check out the source.txt Collaborative Poetry Workshop which offers a deeper insight into the inspiration behind the installation, how it works, and how to continue generating ‘output’ long after you’ve left the festival. Poems created as part of the installation will be shared regularly with the public via an email newsletter that participants can sign up for when they visit the installation.

Kelly Mullins is a queer, American poet (and recovering girlboss) who lives in Amsterdam. They run the weekly poetry newsletter, Poetry Trapper Keeper, with their BFF, Larissa Fantini.