The “poets” in this RLE are actually computer programmers. They created software programs that contained language-based rules based on what they had seen in poetry. The computer programs created new poems based on these language rules.
Robert Gaskin’s poem “HAIKU ARE LIKE TROLLIES”:
Wandering in mist
Reaching out to soft sunlight
Blue-scaled dragons pause.
Moon low over sea
Glimpse of discarded cocoon
Small fish swimming idly.
Prehistoric Digital Poetry an Archaeology of Forms, by Chris T. Funkhouser, The University of Alabama Press, 2007, pp. 58–59.
John Morris’s poem “Haiku—At Random”:
Frogling, listen, waters
Insatiable, listen,
The still, scarecrow dusk.
Listen: I dreamed, was slain.
Up, battles! Echo these dusk
Battles! Glittering .
Fleas spring far, scarecrow,
Oh scarecrow, scarecrow: well, far,
Scarecrow, oh scarecrow.
“Prehistoric Digital Poetry an Archaeology of Forms.” Prehistoric Digital Poetry an Archaeology of Forms, by Chris T. Funkhouser, The University of Alabama Press, 2007, pp. 58–59.
The focus of May 2021 TOK essay Prescribed Title #6 is an investigation of whether bias play a negative or positive role in the pursuit of knowledge. Bias has a number of different elements in this RLE:
- How bias affects an artist’s reaction to the poem when they know it was generated by a computer program
- How bias affects a mathematician’s reaction to the poem when they know it was generated by a computer program
- Biases that affected the researchers / computer programmer during the development of the computer program
- Bias within the computer program itself which affects the open
With all of the bullet points above the essay needs to analyze whether the bias play a positive or negative role in the pursuit of knowledge.