Kone ja automaatti

kirjallisia (takaisin)kytkentöjä

• Juri Joensuu Jyväskylän yliopisto

DOI: https://doi.org/10.30665/av.74851

Abstract

Literary Machines and Automata: Feedbacking Poetics

The article discusses the concepts of “machine”, “automatic”, and “feedback loop” as literary and poetic ideas from the terminological, historical, and contemporary perspectives. All of them can be seen as somewhat paradoxical terms, carrying human and organic connotations with them.

The key phenomenon of this article is the generator, a machine or system that produces – generates – text. The history of poetic automata extends well beyond the Internet, computer, or even electricity. The article illustrates its claims with examples of poetry generators, from a combinatory poem of the Baroque era to a few Finnish contemporary digital works. Beside generators, more metaphoric ideas of a machine have also been important in literary movements, the most evident one being the automatic writing (écriture automatique) of the Surrealists.

Non-digital generators are usually based on readerly action. Such ergodic texts, to use the well established term of Espen Aarseth, make feedback loop a strategic and structural part of the work. Feedback, which is both a technological and organic term, makes ergodic works open, active, and essentially unfinalized.

The article aims to clarify the resemblances of generative poetics in different historical textual media, and considers some tentative typologies. It seems that even if the poetic ideals of generators have remained unchanged throughout history, the digital medium offers contemporary poets a subtext to design more dynamic and complex literary machines.