Dataset Poetics: How does it Feel?
A free workshop led by Katy Dadacz and Matilda Hicklin
Generative AI is programmed on huge amounts of data scraped from the internet (often without consent, and with systemic bias). Rather than using Chat GPT as prompts for writing, this poetry workshop will explore our own selves as datasets. Inspired by Johanna Drucker’s diagrammatic writing and stochastic poetics, we will become each other’s AI. Through a series of writing activities, we will map our emotional responses to technology, build collaborative lexicons, and use chance operations to generate embodied poetic expression.
Matilda Hicklin:
Matilda Hicklin is a PhD Researcher and Graduate Teacher at the University of Bristol, specialising in Translation Studies with a focus on Russian. Her PhD research explores post-editing, feminist poetry, machine translation and gender studies. As a certified translator, she combines academic research with freelance translation work, with a focus on contemporary feminist writing.
Katy Dadacz:
Katy Dadacz is a PhD Researcher and Graduate Teacher at the University of Bristol, a Pervasive Media Studio resident, and co-runs queer tech collective ‘machine streams’. Their work looks at the intersection between affect and the digital in contemporary literature and film, generating ways of describing the current world through the glitch. They have an interest in the ‘ordinary’ and ‘everyday’ experience living within a world that is (dis)organised by the digital. Together, Katy and Matilda ran a Feminist Writing With(in) machines workshop series, and published a manifesto on feminist ways to write with machines.
Presented as part of Lyra’s project Page Against the Machine: AI & Poetry II, funded by Brigstow Institute. And in association with Bristol Poetry Institute.
Part of Lyra – Bristol Poetry Festival 2025
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