⛯ Direction | Programming | 3D Design | Concept
Machine Learning Irish Poetry is a collaborative project between Oscar Torrans and myself; founded on our shared interests in the weirder edges of Irish history, language and culture.
The telling and retelling of stories is central to Ireland’s oral and literary heritage, as well as to its sense of self. From The Táin to Heaney, we've taken hundreds of Irish poems, folk songs, plays and myths, and fed them into our machine learning model. In training a computer to ‘write’ in this tradition, the results abstract and synthesise our storytelling traditions. By imagining new narratives with new technologies, we can imply our own significance - bringing us to value what is universal and particular.
Zine available from: Exhibitions:
Passage Tomb BIAS: Science Gallery Dublin
The Library Project
Featured:
It’s Nice That
Financial Times
NTS w/ Maria Somerville
Machine Learning Irish Poetry began as a project to explore the creative and collaborative possibilities of machine learning , while investigating fractured notions of Irish cultural and national identity - past and future, post-church and post-conflict. I was interested in telling new stories from a non-human perspective, while still referencing the conventions and content of traditional storytelling.
I enjoy the weird places the technology could take me; how it could reveal surprising paths and unconventional perspectives to tell old stories in new ways. I’m drawn to the stranger outputs, and by pushing the model in that direction, it’s interesting to see the unexpected tangents it often goes on.
With the sometimes stretched and fractured nature of the poems, one of the most interesting things about the project is the context and narrative we imply for ourselves - reflecting our own experiences and identity. In printing the poems in a physical poetry book, it ties back into the literary tradition from which it draws.
At Tara I can hear
The song that woman wrote
When she married the ground [23]
That her poorest son owned.
It’s the song my father sings
I hear it in the bosom of my mother,
The voice of a mother longing
For her own son.
Crawling in sunlight
Evening, dusk,
Heavy rain and thunder,
Laughter and song, vernal shine.
To walk the same earth,
Live the same life;
With love and Truth
Try to do each other good.
By the Lagan ’s green tide shall we draw,
Weigh the cost of war with laughter,
And through the dark hush of sleep
Catch a little gleam of light.
Programming and Concept: Kristian Glenn
Graphic Design: Oscar Torrans
Cover Typeface: Foinse by Liam Morrow