Fragments of fragments : exploração de possibilidades combinatórias na criação de um gerador de texto

Abstract

This study approaches the concept of Potential Literature focusing on the exploration of combinatorial possibilities and seeking to put these principles into practice through their technological implementation. It aims to creatively explore literary potentiality through the recombination of literary units such as phrases or words. Based on the ideas of the OuLiPo group, a computer-assisted form of rewriting and reading is developed in order to generate combinations that are potentially unexpected or not completely predictable, both by the author and the reader. The study begins by identifying terms and concepts associated with potential literature. Subsequently, and in order to more fully understand the procedures inherent to this type of literary creation and their computational implementation, it proceeds to an analysis of works that can inform the development of the practical project. By adopting the model for digital media analysis model proposed by Noah Wardrip-Fruin, which highlights the concept of expressive processing (2006), and by articulating it with other frameworks suitable for the analysis of computational works, we establish a basis for the understand¬ing of the interactions among the constituent elements of a work, evidencing the expres¬sive role of the processes that it operates. Finally, the project Fragments of Fragments is developed, which explores the implemen-tation of sentence recombination processes by selecting relevant words in the text, thus creating new meanings and readings. The textual data are based on the work of Roland Barthes, A lover’s Discourse: Fragments, given its fragmentary content that potentiates recombination as well as its evocative theme of one of the first text generators imple-mented in computational terms, the Love Letter Generator by Christopher Strachey. This practical exploration of combinatorial possibilities seeks to reveal how the expres¬sion and meaning of the literary work lies not only in the final textual result, but in the processes inherent to its construction, or in the potential semantic and expressive vari¬ability that they originate