Week 12 assignment

After brainstorming this past week, I decided to explore my second idea in greater detail. I am excited by the prospect of using art and poetry as dynamic tools of resistance to counter biases and protest against skewed power structures.

I want to create a blackout poetry generator- which on being “fed” text can create hopeful, optimistic poetry. Blackout poetry is a genre of poetry, where removing pieces of narrative helps craft a new story.

Using a tech crunch article about bias in algorithms

Using a 1973 advertisement by Donald Trump, advocating the death penalty 

Systems flow

Ideally, I would like to create a program that could computationally generate meaningful poetry from the snippets of text it is provided. I was imagining a setup, where the input could be either analog (piece of paper) or digital(article), the text would be analyzed and blackout poetry generated. The challenge is then to make something that is not only grammatically but syntactically correct too.

Prototype

For this prototype, I decided to experiment with thermochromic pigment, which has heat sensitive compounds that change color upon reaching a certain temperature. I was working with black thermochromic pigment, which on being heated becomes clear. I tried using it with two types of glue and paint to see what would work the best. After applying the mixture to paper, I tried creating a circuit using Copper tape to heat certain portions of the text. I am unable to reach the appropriate temperature that would activate the color change.

Challenges and future iterations 

Midway through the exercise, I realized that I want the color to change from clear to black and not the other way round. I wonder if a better alternative would be to use cooling pads instead?

Also, I wonder if there are alternatives to using thermochromic ink- could there be a motorized system instead- which on receiving the input (the hate speech, for example), dispenses/ outputs the blackout poetry?

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