word.camera is an automatic photo narrator — a camera that instantly generates brief poems from the images it captures, dispensing textual rather than visual representations to redefine the photographic experience. When you take a picture with this camera, its integrated computer narrates your photograph autonomously using artificial neural networks, then delivers its output via thermal printout. A picture of a dead pigeon on a sidewalk might trigger a reflection on mortality; wearing a funny party hat might inspire the camera to come up with a joke. Take a selfie, and word.camera will write about you.
In this iteration, word.camera uses an artificial neural network trained on poetry from members of theVERSEverse. VERSA is an emergent, autonomous poet developed by Ross Goodwin in collaboration with theVERSEverse, and word.camera is one of the first forms VERSA has assumed. As VERSA evolves, we will continue to imagine new forms and interfaces for it.
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Image:
word.camera x VERSA photographs, AI-generated poems, 2022, Ross Goodwin in situ. © Photo : Jean-Louis Losi
A conversation between the digital and the physical and 2023 Crypto Art Award Shortlist, The Lumen Prize.
“The poem-object is a composition that aims to combine resources from poetry and the visual arts, and to contemplate their capacity for mutual exaltation.”
— André Breton
Poème Objkt is a conversation between poetry and the visual arts brought to life through the liminal play of the physical and the digital. As contemporary expressions of Breton’s poem-object, the pieces in this exhibition present works of poetry, experimental writing and literature on the blockchain that enhance, reinvent and reimagine the relationship between the text and the image, the analog and the digital, ultimately opening up a space for dialogue that blurs and challenges the lines that divide.
This co-curation with L'Avant Galerie Vossen and theVERSEverse in Paris materializes in two parts:
Part 1 opened in October 2022. L’Avant Galerie Vossen and theVERSEverse curated the works of Sasha Stiles, Ross Goodwin, Ana María Caballero, aurèce vettier, Campbell McGrath, Robness, Kalen Iwamoto, Julien Silvano, Jason Sholl, and Saul Steinberg.
This first exhibition’s curatorial framework falls along the following lines:
GENERATIVE LITERATURE
POEM = WORK OF ART
CONCRETE POETRY
CONCEPTUAL
Part 2 takes place May 2023 at Librairie Métamorphoses in Paris, with a section of the exhibition taking place at L’Avant Galerie Vossen.
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Image:
Exhibition view © Photo: Jean-Louis Losi