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Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture

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Robot artist to perform Al generated poetry in response to Dante

January 20, 2022 By Harrison Betz, FSU '25

robot_aida_performing_dante_inspired_poetry

“Dante’s Divine Comedy has inspired countless artists, from William Blake to Franz Liszt, and from Auguste Rodin to CS Lewis. But an exhibition marking the 700th anniversary of the Italian poet’s death will be showcasing the work of a rather more modern devotee: Ai-Da the robot, which will make history by becoming the first robot to publicly perform poetry written by its AI algorithms.

“The ultra-realistic Ai-Da, who was devised in Oxford by Aidan Meller and named after computing pioneer Ada Lovelace, was given the whole of Dante’s epic three-part narrative poem, the Divine Comedy, to read, in JG Nichols’ English translation. She then used her algorithms, drawing on her data bank of words and speech pattern analysis, to produce her own reactive work to Dante’s.

“‘We looked up from our verses like blindfolded captives, / Sent out to seek the light; but it never came,’ runs one of her poems. ‘A needle and thread would be necessary / For the completion of the picture. / To view the poor creatures, who were in misery, / That of a hawk, eyes sewn shut.’

“In another, Ai-Da writes: ‘There are some things, that are so difficult – so incalculable. / The words are not intelligible to the human ear; / She can only speculate what they mean.'” [. . .]    –Alison Flood, The Guardian, November 26, 2021 (retrieved January 19, 2022)

Categories: Digital Media, Performing Arts, Written Word
Tagged with: AI, British Poetry, Computers, Oxford, Poems, Poetry, Programing, Robots, Technology, United Kingdom

“IT Inferno: The nine circles of IT hell”

February 7, 2021 By Jasmine George, FSU '24

“Spend enough time in the tech industry, and you’ll eventually find yourself in IT hell — one not unlike the underworld described by Dante in his Divine Comedy.

“But here, in the data centers, conference rooms, and cubicles, the IT version of this inferno is no allegory. It is a very real test of every IT pro’s sanity and soul.”   –Dan Tynan, Info World, 2011

Read the full article here.

Categories: Written Word
Tagged with: 2011, Circles of Hell, Hell, Inferno, Information, Lists, Technology

Kat Mustatea, Voidopolis (2020)

January 31, 2021 By Professor Elizabeth Coggeshall

@kmustatea on Instagram (January 30, 2021)

“Voidopolis is a digital performance about loss and memory that is currently unfolding over 45 posts on my Instagram feed (@kmustatea). Started July 1, 2020, it is a loose retelling of Dante’s Inferno, informed by the grim experience of wandering through NYC during a pandemic. Instead of the poet Virgil, my guide is a caustic hobo named Nikita.”   –Kat Mustatea

Featuring a Dantesque cast of characters ranging from the Virgilian Nikita to a mohawked Minos, a gruff ferryman named Kim and a withdrawn George Perec, Mustatea’s Voidopolis weaves through the pandemic-deserted streets of Manhattan, a posthuman landscape of absence and loss, bearing witness to its vanishings. Voidopolis won the 2020 Arts & Letters “Unclassifiable” Prize for Literature, and received a Literature grant from the Cafe Royal Cultural Foundation.

To read more about both the process of the piece and its influences, including Dante, see the interview with Mustatea featured in Dovetail Magazine (2020).

 

Mustatea’s project at Ars Electronica 2021
The project’s website

Categories: Digital Media, Performing Arts, Visual Art & Architecture, Written Word
Tagged with: 2020, Austria, Charon, Cities, Coronavirus, Covid-19, Digital Art, Inferno, Instagram, Linz, Literature, Minos, New York City, Performance Art, Poetry, Social Media, Technology, Virgil

La Porta dell’Inferno – Beyond the Gate

October 6, 2020 By lsanchez

“After Beyond the Castle’s success, we embarked in a new project that celebrates Italian culture. Together with the most prestigious school of Milan, the Collegio San Carlo, we created a new virtual reality experience that focuses on Dante’s Divine Comedy. In The Hell’s Gate students can embody Dante and walk through the dark forest. This will allow them to approach this masterpiece in an innovative and engaging way.”    —Beyond the Gate, 2019

Categories: Digital Media
Tagged with: 2019, Abandon All Hope, Dark Wood, Gates of Hell, Inferno, Italian, Italy, Lasciate ogne speranza, Milan, Technology, Virgil, Virtual Reality

“Dante’s Inferno” at Kirkstall Forge

October 5, 2020 By lsanchez

“This was the large shed to the south of the water and my position is a best guess, especially as this area is now flat. This shed contained several hammers but these two were hard at work and quite spectacular. I think they were of eastern European construction (possibly Polish). Although working on compressed air these were essentially the same as steam hammers.”    –Chris Allen, Geograph, February 17, 2010

Categories: Places
Tagged with: 2010, England, Inferno, Leeds, Technology, United Kingdom

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How to Cite

Coggeshall, Elizabeth, and Arielle Saiber, eds. Dante Today: Citings and Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture. Website. Access date.

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