Kimchi Poetry Machine
As a response to “bookless” libraries, The Kimchi Poetry Machine is an new media art installation that reimagines how tangible computing can be utilized for feminist participatory engagement with poetry. Evoking a poetry reading from the future, the machine summons impressions of feminism, technology, and poetry in the age of #metoo.
Instead of kimchi, there are small paper pieces of poetry. When the jar is opened, instead of the pungent smells of fermented cabbage filling your nostrils, your eardrums are lulled by the luminous readings of poetry written by a variety of invited feminist poets. The small “kimchi twitter” paper poems housed inside the jar each have an invitation to tweet a poem back to the machine handle. Eight original feminist “kimchi twitter” poems were written for the machine by invited women and transgender poets. The machine is powered by open-source electronic prototyping platforms and reimagines how poetry can be written, listened to, and interacted with in the near future. The Kimchi Poetry Machine aims to move the tangible computing conversation into a literary and political one, and redesign reading practices as interactive.
The Kimchi Poetry machine contributes to and expand social dialogue by amplifying women, non-binary, and transgender voices in the age of #BLM and #metoo. The project speaks to the haunting qualities of these experiences, and what Tara McPherson writes as “... a dream to intervene in technological legacy systems that often route our machines away from our feminist desires.” Drawing from McPherson, the Kimchi Poetry Machine explores how machines can be feminist, poetic, and participatory for impactful change.
Poetry Machine Video
Poetry Machine Website at Electronic Literature Collection Volume 3
Contact Margaret Rhee for more information: mrhee@buffalo.edu
Tools:
Adafruit
Arduino
Platform:
Electronic Literature Organization
https://eliterature.org/
Dr. Margaret Rhee
Margaret Rhee is a poet, scholar, and new media artist. Her debut poetry collection Love, Robot, named a 2017 Best Book of Poetry by Entropy Magazine and awarded a 2018 Elgin Award by the Science Fiction Poetry Association and the 2019 Best Book Award in Poetry by the Asian American Studies Association. Her poetry chapbooks include Yellow and Radio Heart; or, How Robots Fall Out of Love, and forthcoming collection Poetry Machines: A Letter to a Future Reader (Spring 2020).
Contact Margaret Rhee for more information: mrhee@buffalo.edu