Sonnetizing the Singularity

"Sonnetizing the Singularity" is a trio of computer-generated poems written in collaboration with the Python tool "Sonnetizer." The open-source program developed by Ross Goodwin allows users to transform any given text into a 14-line Shakespearan sonnet.

Holeton used futurist Ray Kurzwell's nonfiction book on artificial intelligence "The Singularity is Near" (2005) as his source text. The poems were not entirely automated, and Holeton intervened at various stages in the process to create the finished work. From the multitudes of poems generated by the program, he selected only the "most promising" to work with. He changed the composition of the text by mixing and matching lines from different poems. He also made "minor" edits to improve the grammatical construction and logical flow, in some cases substituting different words, though he stressed that the diction was always taken from the Kurzwell's text.