Slovo.ru: Baltic accent

2024 Vol. 15 №2

Back to the list Download the article

Neural Poetry as a Battle of Poetic Languages

DOI
10.5922/2225-5346-2024-2-7
Pages
112-123

Abstract

The article develops a view of neural networks as a tool for formulating and verifying philological hypotheses related to various aspects of the generation and reception of a literary text. The principles of aesthetic communication are analyzed, in which, thanks to the development of the modern technological environment, an anthropic author, a neural network and a recipient can participate equally. Neuropoetry is interpreted through the metaphor of a “battle of poetic languages” (in accordance with the conventions of the rap battle genre) — as a communicative field in which anthropic and digital authors interact as equal participants in the creative act, jointly forming new prerequisites for the reader’s perception of a literary text. The ‘co-creation’ of anthropic and digital authors is considered in terms of the actor-network theory of Latour. In interactions between a person and a neural network, the latter transcends its purely instrumental function and assumes features of subjectivity. It becomes an equal agent in generating a collective aesthetic statement. Neuropoetry, as a result of co-creation of this kind, is characterized by a double semiotic nature: one part of it is the result of the creation of an anthropic author, while the second demonstrates ‘secondary poetry’, in which the digital author imitates the procedures of natural speech generation. As a result, a new, complicated model of aesthetic communication is formed, complementing the standard positions of the communicative act (author — text — reader) with the level of communicative interaction of anthropic and digital co-authors. The recipient, in the situation of perceiving a text co-written by a person and a neural network, is involved in a complex interpretative game that activates the mechanisms of aesthetic reception, and the act of ‘neuro-creativity’ itself creates new forms of mimesis, which ceases to be ‘imitation of the world’ and becomes ‘imitation of imitation’.

Reference

Fadeeva, T., 2023. “Union” of an artist with a non-human agent: Utopia or a working model of artistic production? Izvestiya of the Samara Science Centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Social, Humanitarian, Biomedical Sciences, 25 (1), рp. 108—115, https://doi.org/10.37313/2413-9645-2023-25-88-108-115 (in Russ.).

Orekhov, B. and Uspensky, P., 2018. Galvanization of the author, or experiment with neural poetry. Novyi mir [New World], 6. Available at: http://www.nm1925. ru/Archive/Journal6_2018_6/Content/Publication6_6935/Default.aspx [Accessed 10 August 2022] (in Russ.).

Pepperstein, P. and Pepperstein Neuro, 2022. Pytayas' prosnut'sya [Trying to wake up]. Moscow (in Russ.).

Skorinkin, D., 2023. How to write literary texts with neural networks and not screw it up. In: Pisateli vs. neiroseti — spetsproekt o sovremennykh tekhnologiyakh v literature [Writers vs. neural networks — a special project about modern technologies in literature]. Available at: https://podtext.media/guide-for-writers [Accessed 18 December 2023] (in Russ.).

Tsvigun, T. and Chernyakov, A., 2023a. The Neural Poetry of Grammar and the Neural Grammar of Poetry. Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie [New Literary Review], 181, pp. 188—199, https://doi.org/10.53953/08696365_2023_181_3_188 (in Russ.).

Tsvigun, T. and Chernyakov, A., 2023b. Kharms vs. Neurokharms: neural network as a narrative laboratory. The New Philological Bulletin, 4 (67), pp. 80—92, https://doi. org/10.54770/20729316-2023-4-76 (in Russ.).