Visual Poetry Exhibition : Museum of Futures

Recently I've been interested in experimenting with Algorithmic Poetry. Last month I had my first poem published on the Poetry WTF?! website. It was based on Rudyard Kipling's If and used a set of simple rules to reconstruct a new poem using Google.

Algorithmic approach: Type line of original poem to seed search engine.
Stop typing before predictive line reverts to original.
Use the predicted line.
Do this for each line in original poem.

I'm really pleased that I will be exhibiting a new version of this work as a visual poem at the Museum of Futures in February 2017. I have once again taken If as my starting point and interestingly the algorithmic system has already created another variation despite only a month passing between Google searches. The new poem is called Goggle If and depicts all the search boxes that helped create it.

detail, Goggle If

Museum of Futures: Visual Poetry Exhibition
February 23rd to March 12th 2017
117 Brighton Rd, Surbiton KT6 5NJ
www.museumoffutures.org

Over two dozen poets and artists local or connected to the Surbiton or Kingston area, present brand new works especially made for this group exhibition. Exploring the visual and material properties of language through concrete poems, abstract painting, asemic writing and many other avant-garde techniques, this exhibition aims to bring together generations, and methodologies, through a shared engagement with the participants localism.

With new works from Imogen Abed / Ed Arantus / Tim Atkins / Adam Baron / Molly Bergin / Susie Campbell / Sarah Dawson / Thomas Duggan / SJ Fowler / Lucy Furlong / Penny Goring / Mark Harris / Megan Haycock / Imo Jeffes / Dean Kenning / Yessica Klein / Olga Kolesnikova / Julia Lewis / Dacy Lim / Hannah Lowe / Cleary Mallard / Raif Mansell / Matthew Navey / Albert Pellicer / Zoe Radford / Virna Teixeira / Simon Tyrrell with more to be announced.

Partnering with the Museum of Futures - a dynamic community arts space that has engaged Surbiton residents, families and businesses since 2015 and curated by The Community Brain CIC, the exhibition aims to showcase early career poets and artists alongside more experienced practitioners and build on the community, beginning new relationships and collaborations, that already surround this wonderful venue. The engagement with themes of suburbia, the Seething mythos and the humour so prevalent in the Museum of Futures enterprise will undoubtedly also influence the exhibition's aesthetic.

There will be an event to launch the exhibition: A night of collaborative poetry readings on February Thursday 23rd, full of newly commissioned collaborations readings
Curated by SJ Fowler with assistant curators Megan Haycock, Molly Bergin, Olga Kolesnikova, Dacy Lim and Matt Navey.