A concert is playing far away on the other side of the valley. It's hard to hear it though because I can just barely detect the sound of a plane approaching from the west. It's so quiet that I can hear it coming from far away. It's getting louder, and it's coming right towards me. It's so loud that it's like it's right on top of me, but there's no sign of it. It's like it's a ghost plane.
I hear it circling overhead, and then it's gone as quickly as it came. I can still hear the concert in the distance, but it's getting harder to hear with the plane gone.
[...]
The plane is gone. It is almost silent. But I can just barely hear the concert in the background. In the foreground is a growing din of cicadas. It is no longer silent. In fact it is very loud. I am sitting in the middle of a cicada concert.
[...]
The large, black eyes on the sides of her head can still see where she is going. She has to be careful not to fall off the mountain. The cicada is one-half of an inch long. She has begun the steep hike up the mountain.
She has a hard exoskeleton, or outer shell, that is yellow and black. The cicada is a winged insect. She has a clear, pair of wings. When the cicada stops, she rests her wings over her body. The cicada has three pairs of long legs.
She has this to say about herself,
Quote "My name is J.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R.R." Unquote
Currently she uses her legs to climb up a tree trunk, a wall, or a mountain. The cicada eats sap from the roots of trees. The cicada is a herbivore. The cicada climbs up the mountain. She climbs up the mountain. She climbs up the mountain. She climbs up the mountain, She climbs up the mountain and, She climbs up the mountain.
She has this to say about herself:
I am not an insect, I am a goddess.I am a sacred creature of the night.
I am not a pest, I am a blessing.
I am not a noise-maker, I am a singer.
I am not a nuisance, I am a miracle.
[...]
In a world painted with poetic absurdity, a cicada takes center stage, an avid audience to nature's concert. Amidst the symphony of rustling leaves and melodious birdsong, a distant plane's hum catches its attention, a fleeting reminder of human haste. As the narrative unfolds, you become an active participant, with the triggering sound effects that seamlessly blend with the words. Through this beautifully woven tapestry of words and sounds, the cicada's tale transcends its insect existence, touching upon universal themes of aspiration and self-discovery.
Directions: press play and pause as you are reading
Collaborative Process: To create these pieces, I started by writing fragments of text about the animal/plant in each section. I used these fragments as prompts for the GPT-3 engine, which produced AI-generated text in response. I then went through an editorial process, in which I edited the generated text and experimented with using some of this generated material as new prompts for the GPT-3 system. In the end, each piece is a combination of fragments of text that I wrote and edited fragments of text generated by the AI.
Origin: The idea of AI-generated text accompanied by sound came from a radio play performance during the AI Radio Play workshop with Ash Eliza Smith, Jinku Kim and Robert Twomey at the Society for Language, Science and Art Conference, Purdue University, 2022
Plans: To continue as the first of 4-5 episodes of absurdist animal/insect focussed stories created in collaboration with the GPT-3 AI text generation engine.
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