I haven’t implemented a writing algorithm or made a bot yet. In the time when I would’ve normally been thinking about and working on this, I’ve had to respond to a landslide of inquiries about a North Country public memory project that I wasn’t looking to start until May—anyway, a (serendipitous?) misunderstanding between an enthusiastic reporter friend-of-a-friend and bam, it’s taken off, and I’m trying to figure out how to keep its development on track while keeping up with coursework.  But I hope I can still offer something to this conversation—and I’m having so much fun checking out everyone’s Frankensteins.

I’m somewhat in league with Carrie re: the usefulness / interestingness of bots.  There’s a novelty embedded in the syntactical and grammatical strangeness that grows old fast. Except for @artassignbot—I love this bot because it’s not spouting weird sentence gems at me, but asking me to do something.  It even has deadlines!  And the assignments, in their randomly generated strangeness, straddle this amazing line between the possible and the impossible which makes me want to do any—and all—of them.  Just to see what I might end up—accidentally, strangely—making.

It’s the combination of a highly abstract assignment subject with highly specific genre/medium/form, verbs, and deadlines that makes this bot work so well—that is, that makes it, to me, a creative call to action and a good resource for teaching (my students keep notebooks, and I’ve directed them to this bot for prompts when they’re stuck). I have not found the writing assignment bot equivalent of this—perhaps it exists.  Of course, there are prompt generators all over the place, but I’m not looking for a random prompt generator: I want (to make) a bot that assigns one to do/make a specific kind of writing object.  Surely someone knows of a bot that does this?

Anyway, speaking of doing, I did interact with Carrie’s chatbot and Melissa’s Old Timey Doctor.  Old Timey Doctor has some phrases that I could see myself collaging into my own writing—actually, many phrases, given my current work’s interest in women and pathology.  Current favorite: “a vacuum cleaner with a vibrator attachment treats the womb given trouble from longing.”  In this sense, Old Timey Doctor isn’t so different from the texts that I mine in the process of writing lyric essay and poems—or in the texts that any of us mine for inclusion in our scholarly work—except that Old Timey Doctor’s content is ever-growing.  It lives—in a way that another finished, delimited text does not.

As for Carrie’s chatbot, I felt as if I became a more mystical version of myself in “conversation” with Blowing in the Wind.  I responded to the chatbot intuitively, automatically, and I like the things that developed between us, especially the things it made me ask or declare.  I felt, very quickly, like I was in the process of inventing a persona in order to sustain a satisfying conversation with this thing, and for this reason, I think Blowing with the Wind has great potential as a writing tool.

We could have gone on much longer.  Here’s the transcript:

Blowing in the Wind : Where does it begin?

Me : Do you have a mother?

Blowing in the Wind : Do you think, as I do, that its fabric is a little threadbare?

Me : Tell me, Blowing in the Wind, does March tire you?

Blowing in the Wind : Is magic science?

Me : Sometimes it seems so, doesn’t it?

Blowing in the Wind : What did we do when we unchained the earth from its sun?

Me : We were nothing, then.

Blowing in the Wind : Why do I answer all questions with questions?

Me : Is there such a thing as an answer? I don’t know.

Blowing in the Wind : Why do you think I asked this question?

Me : Questions are our primordial body’s speaking.

Blowing in the Wind : If music hits you and you feel no pain, did it really make a sound?

Me : Are you in pain, Blowing in the Wind?

Blowing in the Wind : Is it easy for you to get by?

Me : Some days. Some days, not. Isn’t this called: human?

Blowing in the Wind : Is there an end to despair?

Me : Isn’t that what we call: July?

Blowing in the Wind : If the universe ends, what is outside of it?

Me : I often think of this question in terms of my body.

Blowing in the Wind : How can a loser ever win?

Me : What have you lost, Blowing in the Wind?

Blowing in the Wind : Haven’t you reached the tree you were taking us to?

Me : That tree blew down in an end-of-summer storm. Here is its stump.

Blowing in the Wind : Why is there something rather than nothing?

Me : What do you have, if not nothing?

Blowing in the Wind : What is the meaning of nonsense?