Darwinian Poetry: Code as Art?

Darwinian Poetry: Home

What is Darwinian Poetry, you ask?

Probably the antithesis of the kind of poetry I plan to post on this site, so of course it is perfect for it.

After all, Whitman said, "Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes."

Playing on the site, I am reminded of how I once bastardized a computer game my mom used to let her third graders play on the Apple IIe (when they weren't programming turtles in Logos).

It was called "Animal" and I loved the branching structure game for its simplicity, for the fact that users built the database for the game by playing it. It began as a simple command, "Think of an animal," and the computer would ask yes or no questions to try to determine what the animal was. When you stumped the computer, it asked you to write a question to distinguish between its guess and the animal you were thinking of, and it then incorporated your new question into the branching structure.

Oh what fun! I turned it into a guestbook at my home. Anyone who came to visit had to add at least 3 silly questions to the game. But my game wasn't just about animals. I decided it could be any noun or noun clause. Hell, I wouldn't have drawn the line at a verb, but then it would have to be a Gerund, eh? I also encouraged people to think of naughty or gross subjects, or anything related to current events or what was in their mind at that moment. Computer Twenty Questions with answers ranging from blue balls to a runny nose to the Atlantic Ocean, celebrities and so on. Wordplay and puns. I wish I could play that game again. I think I still have it on my old Classic Mac. Maybe Google will find a new version for me.

Anyway, here's how they describe survival of the most democratically poetic:

Welcome to Darwinian Poetry! The goal of this project is to see if non-negotiated collaboration can evolve interesting poetry using (un)natural selection.

Huh?

Ok, here's the idea: starting with a whole bunch (specifically 1,000) randomly generated groups of words (our "poems"), we are going to subject them to a form of natural selection, killing off the "bad" ones and breeding the "good" ones with each other. If enough generations go by, and if the gene pool is rich enough, we should eventually start to see interesting poems emerge.

The cool part is that YOU are the arbiter of what constitutes "good" and "bad" poetry. Once you start, you will be presented with two poems. In all likelihood they will both be abysmal pieces of nonsensical garbage. That's ok. All you have to do is read them both and pick the one you find more appealing, for whatever reason. Your decision might be based on a single word that you happen to like. It doesn't matter. Just pick whichever one strikes your fancy.

See what I mean? Evolution. Fish with feet. Jimmy Buffet. Whatever.

Which is why I'm filing this, of course, under religion.

Chris