To Do This Week
Read/View/Explore:
Read the short essay, an interview and review about digital artist Mark Amerika’s work with ChatGPT.
- The Hybdrid Mind
- My Life as an Artificial Creative Intelligence: an interview with Mark Amerika
- The ProvocateuringTest
Blog Prompt: Mark Amerika is a digital remix artist. What is your response to this kind of experimental writing with AI tools? How does Amerika understand the creative relationship with a GPT for creative writing or any kind of creative work?
Refine Research Statement:
The Research Statement should not be a description of the GPT you created. You should use the Research GPT you created to help you write the statement. The statement should be between 500-1000 words, and it should use “I” to reflect your interests and aims in this class. You can can get specific about the projects you want to work on, but this is not necessary. You might be interested in questions of gender and race, or you might what to learn how to use AI in video production. Maybe you are just going to explore some AI skills to help with your analog or digital art practice. For example, some may what to build a game for the final project, so your research will focus on working out game mechanics, coding, asset creation, etc. Others may be interested in the ethical and pedagogical questions of AI in education, and want to work on projects to teach students how best to learn and create with AI tools. The point is to have a sense of purpose and focus for your work in this class. Reread what you posted and see if it meets these requirements. You can just replace the post with a new statement. FYI, you should make the description for your Research GPT to be as specific as possible. GPTs are good with bullet lists, so you can use a list for the things your are interested in, rather more general statements about “creativity.”
Discuss Amerika’s AI work.
Talk:
Mark Amerika >> markamerika.com
Sasha Stiles >>sashastiles.com
David Jhave Johnston >>glia.ca
Sunspring is a 2016 experimental science fiction short film entirely written by an artificial intelligence bot using neural networks. It was conceived by AI researcher Ross Goodwin.
ChatGPT Activities
Constraint:
Small-Groups:
Exquisite Corpse
Exercise: Collaboratively create a story or poem. Each participant writes a sentence or line, folds the paper to hide part of it, and then passes it to the next person.
Purpose: To build a collectively random and unexpected narrative.
All groups star with the same first sentence.
One student creates the next sentence, and another student creates the next sentence and then it is ChatGPT’s turn. Repeat 5-10 times.
Individual:
Cut-Up Technique
Exercise: Cut up a text into words or phrases, mix them up, and rearrange them to create new sentences or poems.
Purpose: To create unexpected juxtapositions and new meanings from existing texts.
Grab several clashing texts from anywhere on the web. Ask ChatGPT to randomly rearrange the sentences into a poem.
Try a passage from Moby Dick and some contemporary text,
Rewrite the text into your own poem or story.
Three Random Words
Exercise: Generate three random words (using a random word generator or picking from a hat) and write a story or poem that includes all three.
Purpose: To challenge creative thinking by incorporating unrelated elements into a coherent narrative.
Get Cha.GPT to generate the random words. Start writing your story and get ChatGPT to help out.
N+7
Exercise: Replace every noun in a text with the noun that appears seven entries later in a dictionary.
Purpose: To create new, often surprising contexts and meanings.
Use any of the text you generated or any sample text and ask ChaGPT to perform the N+7 constraint.
Lipogram
Exercise: Write a text that excludes one or more letters of the alphabet (e.g., writing a story without the letter ‘e’).
Purpose: To challenge the writer to work within a severe constraint, fostering creativity.
Ask ChatGPT to write a story without using a specific letter.
Exercices de Style
Exercise: Write the same short narrative in various styles or according to different constraints.
Purpose: To experiment with narrative style and structure.
Start the ChatGPT prompt like this:
“Exercices de Style” by Raymond Queneau is a unique and innovative piece of literature, first published in 1947. This book stands out for its experimental approach to storytelling, as it recounts a simple, unremarkable event—a minor altercation on a bus in Paris—through 99 different stylistic variations. These variations are not just changes in perspective or mood, but radical transformations in literary style and form….”
Write a short story, a mundane incident, and ask ChatGPT to retell the story in a different style or narrative voice.
Short fiction, poem or script
(Writing Exercise #2 – 5%)
DUE by Friday February 2 in a 300-1000 word blog post.
Use some of the generative techniques to start a work of creative writing. Ask ChatGPT to contribute. Improvise. Revise. Rewrite. Remix. Repeat. Push the text beyond the blandness of the AI outputs until it meets your own creative standards for a fiction, poem or script.