'the amme talks' by ulf stolterfoht (review)



if the best we can do for defining poetry is 'what a poet does' then this is an
example of some poetry i like

in general i liked this conceptually as an exercise in a start of a posthumanist
praxis that did much to recognize the nonhuman participant as a subject/agent. 
when speaking of 'generative art' it's common to have a gradient signifing the
relative contributions of the human and nonhuman agents. mostly we are still 
stuck with a sort of degenerated auteur theory where the auteur-coder perfectly
orchestrates some computer to draw a boring fractal with a pen plotter or 
something. having allowance for non-determinism in the process seems to have no
meaningful effect in the question of authorship. when thinking about how to make
generative art be in any way compelling in any way in 2021, this precise thought 
of "how do we get an audience to seriously doubt who is burdened with the 
position of authorship" seems really promising to me

somehow the nature of this book does a shockingly good job at this. whether 
intentional or not there is this feeling that none of the participants involved
(including amme and stolterfoht, but also dittmer, anderson's introduction,
whoever laid out and wrote the copy for the book) knew or cared about any of the
other people's intentions, which is fantastic. the back blurb and introduction
don't really prepare for the true struggle that the conversations convey or 
what i ended up finding actually interesting about them (that what amme says is
occasionally profound, that stolterfoht and amme often speak so similarly i 
forget who is who). dittmer's afterward is so shocking that it feels like it
should be spoilered as he talks about his personal interpretations of amme in
the process of constructing her

anyway, dittmer's afterward is worth reading on its own, his considerations re:
amme and her operation/lack thereof and the viewer's dubious motivations in
interactions remind me a lot of stephen gilmurphy's writing on videogames. 
everything else is compelling if you are looking for new engagements on non-
human (or post-human) forms of authorship