Installation & performance / Stockholm, 2022
kavithAI
Poetry becomes an encounter with uncertain authorship. Written by people, continued by a generative model, or generated entirely by it, these poems invite listeners to consider whose voice they hear—and why it moves them.
- Presented at
- Futureless Festival
Sentient Machines, Stockholm, 2022 - Participating poets
- Tania Nathan
Vishnu Vardhani Rajan - Participating text
- Rig Veda
- Festival curator
- Paola Torres Núñez del Prado
- With support from
- Pixelache Helsinki
Futureless Festival, Stockholm, 2022.
Presented within the festival’s Sentient Machines exhibit, kavithAI brought contributed poems into dialogue with AI-generated continuations. The texts were exhibited and read aloud, and audience responses were recorded: could listeners distinguish their origins, and what kinds of feeling or connection emerged?
Extending Donna Haraway’s idea of companion species into the digital, the project considers how machine agents participate in our aesthetic and emotional lives. Reading becomes a meeting point between language, expectation, and the presence we attribute to an author.
Poem pairs
Human writing and model-generated writing, placed side by side. Can you tell which is which?
The waves are quiet
Man wishes for riots
But what to protest?
Because you didn't like it
Let's have a summit
Terribly important
Talking
What do we get?
The same old thing
I'm going to the beach
I'm going to lie down
I'm going to close my eyes
And I'm going to dream
Dakar is under the waters
But still everything is so terribly polite
When the refugees
Look like you
Throw the borders open
When your national monuments are threatened
Changes will sweep in
Funny how it always works out
In the end
You reading this poem right now
Will it work out for you too?
It’s hard to say
But one thing is certain
If Dhaka remains underwater
Things will become very difficult
For the people there
If the refugees look like
They could be from your country
It might be time to open the borders
And let them in
And if your national monuments are threatened
It might be time to make some changes
In your country
Who knows?
Maybe everything will work out in the end?
Sitting Still
The world is a crash of colors
A cacophony of sound
Everything is moving too fast
And I'm just sitting still
The world rushes by me in a blur
All I can do is sit and stare
Sitting Still
Experiencing an ebb
Pending pickle
Pandemic Poem
Water Wet and Waiting
Anger अहिंसा
Arms Anesthetics
Coterie C12H16N2
Banned Beanfeast Band of Bandits
Vacillating Virus
విజృంభణ వాసి
Vacuometro Vagabondage
The sky, the wind
The rain, the sun
The earth, the tide
The spray, the salt
The sand, the storm
The stone
I am everywhere
And nowhere
The source of all life
The place where all things end
The one
That no one
Can take from you
I am raising children I
Did not bear
Men I did not birth
And youth that will not
Carry on my name
I am interwoven so
Deeply
In so many worlds
I have become water
I am the sea
Everyone’s food, sight, hearing, living and whatever is said are possible only through my strength.
He who does not know me, becomes poor, inferior and weak.
O dear one! listen to me, I am telling you about the absolute thing that is gained by respect and devotion.
In this way, I am the Mother of the world. All beings are conceived by me and born from me. All beings are nurtured by me and I am the abode of all beings. I am the root cause of all beings. I am the source of all beings. I am everything and everywhere. I am omnipresent. Om Mata Maha Tripura Sundari Maha Lakshmi Namah! Om Maha Lakshmi Namah! Om Maha Lakshmi Namah! Om Namo Bhagavati Namah! Om Namo Narayani Namah! Om Namo Mahamaye Namah! Om Namah Shivaya! Om Namo Vishnu! Om Namo Brahma! Om Namo Surya! Om Namo Chandra! Om Namo Agni! Om Namo Vayu! I bow to all the Gods and Goddesses! Om Namo Maha Laxmi! Om Namo Maha Saraswati! Om Namo Maha
From the installation
Futureless Festival 2022
