Art and Design / October 20, 2021

Passage Tomb is the AI generated poetry book reimagining Irish art

Passage Tomb
Art and Design / October 20, 2021

Passage Tomb is the AI generated poetry book reimagining Irish art

Words: Dylan Murphy

Graphic designer and art director Oscar Torrans has teamed up with artist Kristian Glenn on an innovative new project that explores consciousness in pre Christian Ireland through machine learning.

Art, poetry and music have always been key mediums through which to explore and reimagine our own history. Whether it’s Irish drill artists using bodhran samples in their instrumentals or designers evoking nostalgia of eras gone by in Instagram imagery, Ireland’s creative community has never hesitated to dive headfirst into modern mediums to examine our cultural history.

In a new collaboration, artist Kristian Glenn and Irish graphic designer and art director Oscar Torrans have put together a poetry book of fully AI generated Irish Poetry and images. Understanding the necessity to maintain and extend the island’s history of telling and retelling stories they’ve taken hundreds of Irish poems, folk songs, plays and myths and fed them into their machine learning model. As a result, the pair have created a 24 page poetry book made up of completely machine generated poems, with the subsequent imagery and objects also being visible across pieces of clothing.

Clothing with imagery created through machine learning.
Passage Tomb poetry book.

Speaking on Instagram the pair said, “The telling and retelling of stories is central to Ireland’s oral and literary heritage, as well as to its sense of self… By imagining new narratives with new technologies, we can imply our own significance – bringing us to value what is universal and particular.”

The poetry book and clothing are available via Oscar’s website with 15 per cent of profits gets split between MASI and Focus Ireland.

There will be a live version of the poems at the Science Gallery Bias exhibition launching Friday with books for sale.

Elsewhere on District: Top Ten Tracks: Ego Ella May, Bekah CC, Aby Coulibaly and more 15/10/21.