haikU

haikU is an early example of internet coding for creative output. It was written using cgi[6] with html and perl in 2001. The project creator states, "This project is an homage to early Internet programmers who created the first web-based, audience-participatory, creative works, often in the form of haiku generators."[7]

Miki Kanai describes haikU in 2002, "A haiku is a Japanese traditional short poetry consisting of three units (5-7-5) totalling seventeen syllables, which include a word connected with a season. By writing individual lines, you can submit your own haiku to this site and also see other people's works. When you enter the site, a haikU is automatically and randomly gererated for you."[1]

Elit scholar, Scott Rettberg writes "Nanette Wylde’s haikU (2001) is a project based on principles of user participation and on the use of a randomizing function to produce haiku that startle in the sense of producing unintended juxtapositions—no single author has determined which lines will appear together. The reading interface is a simple, spare web page. Every time a reader reloads the page, a new haiku is produced. Following a link to “Write haiku” individuals can submit their own haiku in three lines, each of which has its own button to post the line to bins of first, middle, and last lines. The poems delivered on each reload of the site are not the individual haiku as submitted by readers, but recombinations of these first, middle, and last lines of haiku pulled together in a variable way. Reloading the page twenty times or so, it is remarkable how many of the poems read as if they have been individually intended by a human intelligence. Most of the haiku, perhaps 80%, cohere quite well as poetry." [3]

Scott Rettberg states, "In haikU, the combinatory form and structure of the project, in concert with the form and structure of the poetic form, and the fairly subtle instructions to contributors, lead to the production of a poetic database that works fairly well. While extremely simple in concept and execution, the combination of human-written lines and arbitrary structure results in new poetry neither completely determined by any human nor free of authorial intention." [3]

Star writes, "A haiku is a short poem with five syllables on the first line, seven syllables on the second line, and five syllables on the third and final line. The author is to use those lines to create a singular poetic piece. Wylde allow for chance and her audience to contribute to her poem. Wylde’s use of the regenerative haiku changes how the haiku is perceived by her audience. Although the sequence of words is spontaneous and unpredictable they seem to flow together creating meaning. Part of the experience of the poem is breathing its first, last, and only meaning into it. Once the upper left hand dots have been clicked the haiku is gone possibly forever because people are constantly adding new lines to the generator. Although they were shown individually I argue that just as Wylde encourages her audience to contribute to the regeneration of the haiku, Wylde also intends for her interactive audience to create their own ties and breaks where it seems organic."[8]

Another reviewer states, "I like how open-ended haikU feels, and therefore how personal. As you said, it allows you to make your own connections, but you are also free to make no connections between the different haiku. This allows the reader to become partly a creator and make their own meaning for the poems. That’s one thing I find unique to electronic literature in general and this kind of randomly generated poetry in particular; the reader’s interpretation becomes a part of the work itself."[8]

haikU is taught in college level electronic literature courses.[8]

• Official Website