Henrickson, L orcid.org/0000-0001-8008-2373 (2018) Butterflies, Busy Weekends, and Chicken Salad: Genetic Criticism and the Output of @Pentametron. Authorship, 7 (1). ISSN 2034-4643
Abstract
Textual analysis places great emphasis on determining the development and direction of authorial intention to illuminate a text’s layers of meaning. How, though, is one to determine the development of authorial intention in a text that appears to remove the traditional human author? This paper explores issues of authorship presented to genetic criticism (critique génétique) by algorithmically-produced texts – that is, texts produced through programmed logic in a computer rather than through direct human agency – such as those of the Twitter bot Pentametron (twitter.com/pentametron). This paper considers the perceived importance of authorship and human agency in the creation of a text. Algorithmic texts challenge contemporary notions of textual creation and development, in turn posing challenges to genetic criticism that are similar to those posed by cut-up texts in other media. This paper argues that Pentametron’s rather nonsensical algorithmic output stresses the reader’s responsibility for meaning-making, and suggests that such algorithmic texts are not so much final texts to be subjected to genetic critique themselves, but are more aptly considered to be forms of avant-texte. These avant-textes serve as inspiration for human-computer symbioses, for re-creations wherein readers make sense out of the seemingly senseless.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
---|---|
Authors/Creators: |
|
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2018 Leah Henrickson. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) |
Dates: |
|
Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures (Leeds) > School of Media & Communication (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 19 Oct 2020 14:09 |
Last Modified: | 14 Dec 2020 15:10 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Ghent University |
Identification Number: | 10.21825/aj.v7i1.8619 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:166828 |