Negative Poetry Human Algorithm is an online performance bridging collective thinking, theatre and complexity science.

Just as we might consider the opposite of ‘black’ to be ‘white’, and the opposite of ‘cat’ to be ‘dog’, we can consider that the opposite of ‘black cat’ is... ‘white dog’.

By extending this logic, a computer made of people tackles the enourmosly complex task of transforming an entire poem into its opposite, and thereby generates a potentially infinite combinatorial polyphony of possibilities along the way, since there are potentially infinite ways of inverting a poem.

Further more, Negative Poetry centres around the entanglement of matter and meaning by focusing on the intriguing and paradoxical concept of zero - that which is simultaneously both something and nothing.  

The work is an experiment in language that focuses on the mathematical concept of approaching zero and the concept of cancellation, where -n and n result in 0. In calculus, we can approach zero from either a positive or a negative direction, and the resulting limit of each equation is infinity (∞ and -∞). The question is - can the same be applied to natural language?

For each performance, and rehearsal for that matter, the Negative Poetry Human Algorithm will take a different powm as its input. Therefore you are really seeing the HumanAlgorithm in the process of slef-organising anmd figuring it out.

Below you can see the first performance, which took place online, and streamed live at the Museum of Science and Technology, Belgrade. 

For this performance we choose to invert "FACT" by Rae  Armantrout.

"FACT" by Rae Armantrout

1. Operation Phantom Fury.
2. The full force
3. of the will to live
4. is fixed
5. on the next
6. occasion:
7. someone
8. coming with a tray,
9. someone
10. calling a number.
11. Each material
12. fact
13. is a pose,
14. an answer
15. waiting to be chosen.
16. "Just so," it says.
17. "Ask again!"

Credits

The Interactors performing Negative Poetry Human Algorithm for Museum of Science and Technology, Belgrade. are:

Orion Maxted, theatre maker/artscientist, Institute for Advanced Studies, UvA; Centre Leo Apostle, VUB
Katarina Petrović, artscientist, Centre Leo Apostel, VUB
Renske Vroomans, evolutionary biologist, Institute for Advanced Studies, UvA
Enrico Sandro Colizzi, evolutionary biologist, Leiden University and Origins Center
Izabelė Jonušaitė, Institute for Advanced Studies, UvA
Sára Iványi, poet
Thomas Dudkiewicz, theatre maker
Marie Groothof, theatre maker
Cadell Last, philosopher, Centre Leo Apostle, VUB

Programming and technical support by Keez Duyves (PIPSlab) and Jur de Vries

Negative Poetry Human Algorithm collective performance was presented as part of the exhibition Negative Poetry exploring the possibility of approaching zero through language.

The exhibition consists of two works:
Negative Poetry Human Algorithm, a live online performance made of nine people and developed in collaboration between Katarina Petrović, Orion Maxted and The Interactions group.
And Negative Poetry Machine Algorithm, created by Katarina Petrović a custom-made software that translates the Bible into its negative using the database of the Oxford English Dictionary, which can be seen here.

The exhibition was virtually hosted by the Museum of Science and Technology in Belgrade and organized within the Mangelos Award of which Katarina was the 2019 winner.

Additionally supported by:
The Institute for Advanced Study (University of Amsterdam) Center Leo Apostel (Vrije Universiteit in Brussels)
Ministry of Culture of Serbia.