Seokyung Kim

Department: Man and Communication

THE TRACE OF SORROW

WHAT
A book of poetry that was completely written by a robot that educated itself as an author by processing 800 works of romantic literature — from Tolstoy to Brontë, Joyce and Kafka.

WHY
Robots may seem autonomous, but their behaviour is shaped by us. Without human authors, this book would not exist. This project explores the relationship between a machine’s performance and our own input.

HOW
The sentences in the book are made by an algorithm that finds possible patterns in word order, forming interesting new — and grammatically sound — content. What about: ‘I am not going to cry for humans?’ Each word is tagged with an endnote that traces it back to the work it came from, creating the longest reference list ever.

QUOTE
The robot has rewritten renowned works of literature.