2003 Romanticism Regeneration


A computer programmer Hendrik Schumacher and cultural studies scholar Sebastian Kaiser have developed a computer-based poetry-generating machine which is usable on the internet: www.Versquelle.de. A large number of available poems from the 18th Century were deconstructed by metrics and syntax, to be organized into a databank. The program then recombined these assets in accordance with the user’s personal demands, e.g., lyrical form, theme, rhyme structure and length. Visitors to the gallery would order a personal poem, which was then connected to visual surfaces, effectively reanimating the poets of Romanticism.