* Multiverse 
  
#+BEGIN_QUOTE
By “recognizing” things and patterns that were not given, inceptionist neural networks eventually end up effectively identifying a new totality of aesthetic and social relations.

But inceptionism is not just a digital hallucination. It is a document of an era that trains smartphones to identify kittens, thus hardwiring truly terrifying jargons of cutesy into the means of production. It demonstrates a version of corporate animism in which commodities are not only fetishes but morph into franchised chimeras.
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— Hito Steyerl, /Duty Free Art/

[[./.assets/screenshot.png]]

*Multiverse is a proof-of-concept prototype of a system for cybertextual generative literature.*

** Overview
   Multiverse affords cybertextual user-readers a dialog with text generating neural networks, together exploring literary space. It is very much influenced by this Jean-Pierre Balpe’s essay [[http://dichtung-digital.de/2005/1/Balpe/][Principles and Processes of Generative Literature]]. This exploration is bidirectional is nature, and is supported by an interactive spatial map, providing direct feedback and scrubbing of the currently explored literary space. 

   The current version uses GPT-3 to provide completions for an SPA front-end. If you don't have an API-key or prefer running the models locally, see commit 32b398118ccd8e0c6807a2723dad7c7b7c44d686 for the older client-server version.

** Usage
   To build the application, run ~$ make release~. The resulting bundle is found in ~resources/public/js/~ for hosting. Alternatively, you can run ~$ make dev~ to get the self-hosted development environment.

** Limitations
   Due to licensing, this repo does not include the typefaces used in the original project. If you are so inclined, they might be found via the marvelous Future Fonts: [[https://www.futurefonts.xyz/ohno/obviously][Obviously]] and [[https://www.futurefonts.xyz/rohernandez/pigeonette][Pigeonette]].

** Research
   This prototype was part of my [[https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2:1481128][master thesis]] in interaction design at Malmö University. To cite it, use the following biblatex entry:

   #+BEGIN_SRC bibtex
   @masterthesis{lagerkvist2020multiverse,
     author = {Love Lagerkvist},
     title  = {Neural Novelty: How Machine Learning Does Interactive Generative Literature},
     school = {Malmö University},
     year   = 2020,
   }
   #+END_SRC 

That said, you probably don’t have time to read 60 pages. Instead, you can read the [[https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3423423.3423424][IoT '20 paper]] I wrote about it with [[https://malihehghajargar.com][Maliheh Ghajargar]]:

   #+BEGIN_SRC bibtex
   @inproceedings{10.1145/3423423.3423424,
     author    = {Lagerkvist, Love and Ghajargar, Maliheh},
     title     = {Multiverse: Exploring Human Machine Learning Interaction Through Cybertextual Generative Literature},
     year      = {2020},
     isbn      = {9781450388207},
     publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
     address   = {New York, NY, USA},
     url       = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3423423.3423424},
     doi       = {10.1145/3423423.3423424},
     booktitle = {10th International Conference on the Internet of Things Companion},
     articleno = {1},
     numpages  = {6},
     keywords  = {interactive machine learning, interactive literature, machine learning, generative literature, cybertext},
     location  = {Malm\"{o}, Sweden},
     series    = {IoT '20 Companion}
   }  
   #+END_SRC