Explanation of some algorithms used to generate surreal poems, gibberish and anti-songs, performed by NAO robot.

1. @CelineBoudier
Nonsense and
Gibberish:
Computer Generated
Writing
Celine Boudier and NAO, Algorithmic Art,
London, July 2017

2. @CelineBoudier
Who we are
Celine Boudier
Code For Life Team Lead at Ocado
Previously at Aldebaran, now SBRE
Likes reading, writing, languages
NAO
Humanoid robot, Softbank Robotics
Huge thanks to
@EmotionRobotics

3. @CelineBoudier
Language Detection
- Awesome news from lunar floccer
championship!
- Le dernier roman de Monsieur
Stégosaure est un succès...
??

4. @CelineBoudier
Trigram Method
It was the last day of
July. The long hot
summer was drawing
to a close; and we, the
weary pilgrims of the
London pavement,
were beginning to think
of the cloud-shadows
on the corn-fields, and
the autumn breezes on
the sea-shore.
it, was, the, las,
ast, day, of, jul,
uly, the, lon, ong,
hot, sum, umm,
mme, mer, was...
the: 2
was: 2
it: 1
las: 1
ast: 1
day: 1
of: 1
jul: 1
uly: 1
lon: 1
ong: 1
hot: 1
sum: 1
umm: 1
mme: 1
mer: 1
...
sentence to
analyse

5. @CelineBoudier
Language Detection
- Awesome news from lunar floccer
championship!
- Le dernier roman de Monsieur
Stégosaure est un succès...

6. @CelineBoudier
Jabberwocky??
Lewis Carroll
Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe
"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"
He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.
…

7. @CelineBoudier
Gibberish that sounds like...
The IT Crowd - The Italian Interpreter Sqwerl by Brian & Karl:
http://www.brianandkarl.com

8. @CelineBoudier
Gibberish Generation - Markov Chains
The doors of the overground carriage
shut loudly, isolating me from the still
slightly crowded platform at
Whitechapel station.
...
At last, I managed to switch a lamp on
while the acrid smell of the cooling
hearth was slowly filling my lungs. The
butterfly landed on top of the
lampshade.
ouzepo.wordpress.com
The doors => of
Doors of => the
Of the => overground
Of the => cooling
Of the => lampshade
The doors=> of: 80%, leading:10%, to:10%
Of the => overground:33%, cooling:33%,
lampshade:33%
...

9. @CelineBoudier
Gibberish Generation - Markov Chains
The doors=> of: 80%, leading:10%, to:10%
Of the => overground:33%, cooling:33%,
lampshade:33%
...
The butterfly landed on top of the… overground

10. @CelineBoudier
Gibberish Generation - Markov Chains
Peacockney hoping wide call thought
All though of the fall fright have hundred proton
stayed by my ghost still here our spectangular
painfull on the deeply.
Trigrams
Words
The particle storing ring should also have been
and will be Rembrandt. But on the dried
burgundy roses I had also brought from the
dead insects, and I groped around for the
morning train, hoping that this time I'm going to
bathe.

11. @CelineBoudier
Oulipo
France, 1960+: OUvroir de LIttérature POtentielle (Workshop
of potential literature). Constrained writing
Queneau, Perec, Monk, Garreta, Calvino…
Lipograms, ex: A Void by G.Perec
N+7, ex: http://www.spoonbill.org/n+7/

12. @CelineBoudier
Anti-Songs
Recursively "antonimize" the words of a text
The fun robot loves the night stars
hates dayboring

13. @CelineBoudier
Anti-Songs
The boring non-robot?? hates the day non-stars??
Depth 2: get definitions and invert each word as possible
Depth N: repeat
a machine capable of carrying
out a complex series of actions
automatically
A large, remote incandescent
body

14. @CelineBoudier
Anti-Songs
The boring non-robot?? hates the day non-stars??
Depth 2: get definitions and invert each word as possible
Depth N: repeat
a living being unable to taking
out a simple series of reactions
manually
A small, near extinguished
body

15. @CelineBoudier
Tools - Go Farther
Python: Numpy, Natural Language Processing Libraries (NLTK,
spacy...), Markov Chains, Machine Learning (scikit-learn),
pandas…
https://github.com/CelineBoudier/jabberwocky
Corpus: Project Gutenberg, your own writing...
Other tools: online generators, micro:bit, robots…
Ideas: Oulipo

16. @CelineBoudier
THANK YOU!