I Create Like the Word:
Poetry in the age of Machine Intelligence
Curated by Jesse Damiani, promptcraft by Alexander Reben
Forthcoming April 9, 2024
ISBN 978-1-939568-97-7
A new title from Black Ocean’s Undercurrents series.
As AI grows in utility and cultural presence, so do questions surrounding the human role in how our art is made.
What does the rise of artificial intelligence mean for creative industries?
As digital technologies in language modeling and generative visualization become increasingly sophisticated, questions about originality and the role these emerging tools play in art and culture take crucial positions in not just today’s discourse, but for generations to come.
In a collection of essays and interviews from Jesse Damiani, I Create Like the Word explores these topics through expert panels of AI developers, poets, artists, researchers, and curators — as well as through an ekphrastic process where original art and poetry weaves an exchange between human and machine, emphasizing the relationship between prompt and craft.
This places us at an emerging trailhead of poetics that asks us to face the role computers have within our own very ancient, very human traditions: the role of the poet and sublime expression.
This title has received a grant from OpenAI, who also provided the underlying generative technology used in the creation of the book.
Jesse Damiani
is a writer, curator, and advisor in new media art and emerging technologies. He is Senior Curator and Director of Simulation Literacies at Nxt Museum; Arts and Culture Advisor for Protocol Labs; and the Host of Adobe’s Taking Shape, a hub for 3D art and design. An Affiliate of the metaLAB at Harvard and Institute for the Future, his essays and interviews appear in Architectural Design, Big Think, Billboard, Flash Art, Forbes, NBC News, Quartz, Right Click Save, The Verge, and WIRED. He was Founder and served for many years as Series Editor of Best American Experimental Writing (Weselayan University Press), and his poetry appears in numerous publications. He formerly served as Editor-at-Large of VRScout, XR Curator at the Games for Change Festival, and Director of Emerging Technology and Insight at Southern New Hampshire University, where he led the Future of Work initiative. He is the founder of Postreality Labs, a strategic sensemaking studio and consultancy based in Los Angeles, CA.
Alexander Reben
is an artist whose work probes the inherently human nature of the artificial through a conceptual and process-driven approach. He investigates our relationships with algorithms, automation, and amplification using experimentation, prototyping, absurdity, humor, mischief, and play. The artwork aims to engage the public with complex ideas in technology in an approachable way.
Alexander studied social robotics at MIT where he researched human-machine symbiosis. For over a decade, he has been an artist working closely with cutting-edge technology and companies developing artwork spanning multiple mediums. His work is included in permanent collection of the MIT Museum. He currently serves as Director of Technology and Research at Stochastic Labs, a Berkley, California-based nonprofit incubator for artists, scientists and engineers. He has exhibited internationally at cultural institutions, galleries, and museums, and is regularly invited to speak at conferences and universities worldwide.