To develop AI poet, poets decided to enter data of books, emotions, games, and landscapes into AI. It is a poetic turn of mind that poets have given to AI.

 

In-chan Hwang

The encyclopedia of creatures
Unlike poets today, the poets of earlier generations memorized all the names of plants and birds. To know many names of living creatures is not a prerequisite for writing a good poem but understanding the images of various creatures and sensitively understanding the differences will definitely be of great help for poetry. In fact, I often search for images to understand the various types of plants and animals. I guess AI would be able to do this better.

Poems by Yi Sang
If AI learns poems by Yi Sang who freely wrote poetry beyond the rules of language, logic, and the times, I wonder what rules it can find and what achievements it can make. It would also be meaningful to implement the concrete poetry (iconic poem) that Yi Sang had in mind.

List of the vacation spots in the world
Can AI understand the concept of human vacation? In fact, the human vacation is quite inefficient that loses a lot more than it gains. The absurdity and the sense of liberation arising from it can actually be the principles of the way poetry works.

Intent to kill
At last, all artistic activities originate from the desire to kill or end something. What does AI want to kill? What would the poem be like starting with this idea?

Fernando Pessoa, 『The Book of Disquiet, Munhak Dongne, 2015.
The most distinctive feature of Pessoa’s literature is its vast galaxy of ego, which is littered with many different names. Without learning the desire to have a different name, it would be impossible for one’s own literature to develop. If AI can constantly provide itself with different names, what kind of personality or name would it possess? I wish it would not be like the default names when creating new folders.

 

Yoon-hoo Seo

Francis Ponge, 『The Table』, Chaegsesang, 2004.
I want to confuse AI. Isn’t it necessary to have an attitude to face a world with flaws rather than just flaws? This is the poet’s point of view. I want to convey the freedom of language when it leaves from the texts, and the infinite expansion of the meaning. This book is a treasure trove of the most literary experiments.

The Sistine Chapel
Anyone can visit to look around the inside of the Sistine Chapel in Italy built to dedicate the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. Architecture within architecture, outdoors of indoors, humans tend to say that the maximum level of a possibility is impossible. Look around nice landscapes again through this building.

Erich Fromm, 『The Art of Loving』, Moonye Publishing, 2000.
I would define love to clearly differentiate AI from humans. If AI can get out of the complicated maze of love at once, I will tell AI that only those who stayed in the maze wrote poetry. Through the reinterpretation of this book and the reasons why people can’t stop reading this book.

Escape game on Google map
Poetry is written when the landscape allows its interpretation. Then? To give AI a chance to interpret the landscape as a way to escape from the map not just giving the most perfect map. When it gets to the nearest airport, the game is over. AI should not finish a poem like that way.

Word chain
The scales of countless words that one person remembers is no different from the number of steps a poem can take. In fact, AI has an advantage over humans for that part. But we can beat this word chain bot that can spit out all the words like a dictionary. Memorizing words is the repetition but remembering words with memories can reconstruct the repetition.

 

Bo-young Moon

Rembrandt, “The Night Watch”, 1642.
In 1640, a Dutch painter Rembrandt received the commission to paint from the captain of militia, Frans Banninck Cocq and his 17 members. The painting is now known as〈The Night Watch〉. Unfortunately, this painting remains with the different shape from Rembrandt’s intention. Because the painting was cut off. Two men are standing at the center of 〈The Night Watch〉 as we know of today. Because of this composition, the rest of the characters retreat into the background. However, as a result of restoring the painting, the two men were not the center of the painting. They were off the center and standing on the right. The restoration of the painting brought the background characters to life and the painting was reborn. I want to put data of Rembrandt’s cut off painting and the original painting into AI. I hope the AI poetry will not be limited by its intended topic, ‘cut’ and ‘center’ unlike human writings. This is because the topic ultimately creates an important sentence and the sentences that support the topic sentence. I hope that the poetry that AI writes will be the poems where every sentence is the owner.

A poetry collection
What I want to teach AI is a collection of poems written by humans. To enter all the poetry collections in the world into the AI. AI learns vast amounts of data in poetry collections and master them as its own. By repeating this process, AI will be able to learn the writing style of a designated poet. Then, even after the poet dies, AI will continue to write poetry, and humans will be able to read the new poems of the dead poet.

Sloth
Sloths are very slow. ‘Being slow’ seems to be a very unfavorable condition for survival, but it is rather a survival strategy for sloths. The sloth’s fur is covered with mosses. The reason mosses can grow on the sloth’s fur is because the sloth moves very slowly. The mosses are actually the green algae. The sloths eat these green algae that grow on their fur. This allows the sloths to live in trees without having to go down for dangerous hunting. I wish there was the slowness of these sloths in AI poetry. Everything moves so fast around the world, but it feels like quiet and slow moments when people read poems.

Upside down house
In South-Africa, there is an ‘Upside down house’. It is located in Hartbeespoort, and the house is built upside down with its roof on the ground and its floor in the air facing the sky. People can buy tickets and enter the upside-down house. How did someone come up with the idea of building the house upside down? The poetry would also be the act of thinking objects upside down. To change the mind, to turn objects upside down, to see the world with different views. The Upside down house filled with such a spirit will help AI write good poetry.

 

Woosung Lee

Netflix, <‘Michael Jordan: The Last Dance>, 2020.
We all need to know how great human beings are. Without respect and love for humans, no one can write poetry. It should not be forgotten that the amazing potential of itself (AI) was also created by humans. However, doesn’t AI show its creativity led by algorithms from acquiring information? Doesn’t it rather imitate admiration than really admire of something? Even so, AI will look up to humans if it studies the history of Jordan. Wouldn’t it?

The website of World Vision
We all need to know how stupid humans are. It is important to realize that only a few people monopolize the wealth in most countries, and fewer of them share a portion of what they have. In this process, if AI discovers ‘humanism’ and acquires its value, wouldn’t it be possible to write a little bit of a poem that can make sense? Humans cannot comprehend the foolish gap between terribleness and greatness. We can only rely on AI.

Marcel Duchamp, 〈Bicycle Wheel〉, 1913.
AI must be able to reassemble the relationship between language and the meaning. AI has to learn that ‘all’ modern masterpieces lie within the concept of putting a bicycle wheel on a backless wood chair. In fact, poetry is an unfamiliar combination of languages and vaguely inserting meanings into them. If AI understands this attribute, it will be able to write a shockingly beautiful poem!

Pantone color chips
AI needs to know the existence of color, and most importantly, understand that when a color is named ‘some color’, it does not mean just one color. If it realizes that there are numerous different ‘reds’, it will understand the absurd feeling of a poet writing ‘red’.

Woosung Lee, 『I am from a country where handsome men live』, 2012.
If AI learns from the contents mentioned earlier and discovers patterns in language, it will be able to write a great poem. Can it write a lively, unfamiliar, and witty poem like the first poetry collection by Woosung Lee? By the way, Woosung Lee is me. Hopefully, AI should aim for the poetry of Woosung Lee and dedicate itself to writing poems with all the effort. However, Woosung Lee’s poetry was not fully recognized for its value by the public, so let’s take this as a lesson.… Umm, nope, it does not have to, if AI can just imitate it, it will be great enough. AI has an ambitious goal, now. Woosung Lee! Huh… it is just AI.