Kurt Schwitters wrote about MERZ, his Gesamtkunstwerk:

Es ist im Kunstwerk nur wichtig, daß sich alle Teile aufeinander beziehen, gegeneinander gewertet sind.
(In the work of art, it is only important that all parts relate to each other, are evaluated against each other.) (1923, “Meaning of the MERZ-idea”)

GPT-2 and GPT-3, are based on the Transformer Network, which is working with self-attention, i.e. it creates texts with inner coherence and logic.

So why not?

Why not training GPT-2 on MERZ Journals and creating new texts by Schwitters, with inner logic — and dadaistic (or better: MERZ’esque).

I did it, and created KI-MERZ-AI, which…

Artificiale Commedia

On this day 700 years ago Dante Alighieri died.
Here is an Artificial Homage written by AI.

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,
ché la diritta via era smarrita. (Dante)

====================
# #

# In the winter of my youth I found myself in a band.

# I sought an inspiring base from which I could work.

# I wanted to grow and to go on.

# I came to the conclusion that one thing should do it all.

# I had to make a decision.

# It was all going…

So they exist. Trained on my memories. The faces you see here are created in a harmonical orchestration by me and Artificial Intelligence. I trained AI on my photographs — and so the imagery you see here is a merge between humanity (pre-trained FFHQ-Datasets) and my own life.

But they are not just faces — they have names. And not only names — they have their stories to tell. Stories, also co-created by AI. Funny and frightening, melancholic and absurd. Everyone has their own fate. And you can read it below.

They remember odd moments in their lives — and…

Dear friends!

My name is Richard Hoagland and I’m writing to you today as I think you’ll find this letter interesting.

A lot of what I write is due to my being the youngest editor ever to have worked at The New York Times. I have been fortunate to work with a number of amazing people, all of whom I would not be able to thank adequately were it not for the gifts they have given me.

They’ve all been my best friends for over twenty long years. And yet I still love them, even if I am not able to fully…

WILLIAM SHERMAN: The Senses of Silence is a book of poems set in the future -and is therefore a future work outside the realm of our present existence. The poems are set in a future where people have no need to work, are free to travel, and are not bound to a place by the need to prove themselves to anyone.

Here is what William Sherman wrote to his lover:

“I write with my fingers on the keyboard, my fingers on the keys of knowledge. My fingers are my eyes, my ears, my hands, my arms, my ears and hands…

“I am not a man of letters but a man of words”

(Heinrich Heinegger, The Works of Heinrich H. Heinegger)

“I’m not a man of words but a man of words”

(Richard Wagner, The Little Book of Words, translated by John Palmer)

“I use words to describe my world”

(Heinrich Heinegger, The Works of Heinrich H. Heinegger)

“I’m not a man of words but a man of words. It is by means of a word that we can reach the end of the passage”

(Severo Dargio, translated by Jerome Rothenberg)