Coaxing the Ripples: thoughts on distant writing of interactive works

Ripples is an experiment in what Floridi and Bajohr have characterized as distant writing using generative AI models. Distant writing occurs at n degrees of remove: the human author writes the prompt which in turn generates the text. We explore distant writing for interactive works: the human author writes the prompt which in turn generates the artifact, which may consist of a multimodal combination of media or an interactive interface. In creating Ripples, the prompting is heterogeneous (consisting of text and code) and multilayered - sometimes known as metaprompting. A master prompt was used to produce prompts that were refined through further prompts to generate a set of three final artifacts. All of the artifacts explore the notion of a ripple - a pattern of impacts that spreads from one narrative entity in a closed system to other entities in that system. The Ripples experiment begins with a “worldtext,” a master system prompt that produces a mutli-paned interface on analogy with a DJ’s deck. The user of this deck is figured as a performer who can control the relationships among the various entities (human, nonhuman or posthuman). Each of the three of us then further prompted this deck in particular aesthetic directions. The process resulted in three very different artistic expressions that diverge from the same starting point. The multiplicity and heterogeneity of these artifacts illustrates the abundance that distant writing makes possible. This talk reflects on our shared experiences in coaxing out the ripples by unpacking the genealogy of a distant writing process through the collective learning that has unfolded over a period of several months. We reflect on the difficulty of getting closer to our aesthetic intent through distant writing; the evocative moments that inspire us to keep pursuing the approach; the disillusionment of unimaginative machine language; and so forth.