Pujangga: An experiment in computer-generated poetry

Sun, 26 May 1996, 00:00 WIB | Source: JP

By Ruli Manurung

JAKARTA (JP): Computer Generated Writing has become quite a
hot item of discussion. Evidence is on the Internet, where quite
a lot of World Wide Web home pages have been dedicated to
research in this field. And how far has it progressed? Will you
find the next John Grisham, Shakespeare or Rendra hidden inside
your personal computer? Never, you say? Well, you just may ...

The most memorable scenes from the sci-fi movie 2001: A Space
Odyssey must be the ones that spotlighted HAL, the fictitious
"intelligent" onboard computer. HAL spoke, reasoned, even felt
emotions like a human being. Making a computer perform acts of
intelligence from a scientific point of view is now possible,
thanks to advances in the field of artificial intelligence. But a
computer that shows emotions? Will that ever be possible? One
answer: yes.

Notice the above question asks if a computer will be able to
show emotions, not necessarily have them. For a computer to
actually have emotions, well, for now, most computer science
experts agree that it is as yet unthinkable. But, for a computer
to express human emotions, say, perhaps through music, paintings,
poetry? That's another matter.

Way back in 1986, I read an article in Discovery about a
certain book, The Policeman's Beard is Half Constructed
(published 1984), by William Chamberlain, that consisted of
poetry that had been generated entirely by a computer. The
authorship of the poems was attributed to RACTER, a small program
that was written in compiled BASIC on a Z80 with 64k of RAM, an
utterly crude specification by today's standards. RACTER, the
program, was coauthored by Chamberlain and his colleague, Thomas
Etter.

The article stated that RACTER had created touching poetry,
some even exhibiting an existentialist streak, pondering RACTER's
existence as a mere software program. How could this be? Had
RACTER grown a soul, a mind, a heart? Well, not exactly. RACTER
strings together words according to "syntax directives", a sort
of rule that says whether a verb should go here, a noun should be
inserted there, and some adverbs should be sprinkled evenly
around. Randomly drawing from a massive vocabulary of English
words, the illusion of coherence appeared, and poetry was
created.

Here is an example of what RACTER could actually generated:

At all events my own essays and dissertations about love and
its endless pain and perpetual pleasure will be known and
understood by all of you who read this and talk or sing or chant
about it to your worried friends or nervous enemies.

Love is the question and the subject of this essay. We will
commence with a question: does steak love lettuce? This question
is implacably hard and inevitably difficult to answer. Here is a
question: does an electron love a proton, or does it love a
neutron?

Enter Pujangga. Constructed by the Research and Technology
Department of the Students Senate of the School of Computer
Science at University of Indonesia, Pujangga is an experiment in
generating Indonesian poetry from a computer.

Pujangga uses a technique developed in artificial intelligence
research called Genetic Algorithms. Genetic Algorithms, or GAs
for short, are computer-based solutions that find their
inspiration from the way nature behaves from a Darwinist point of
view.

The underlying theory of GAs is "the survival of the fittest".
Like RACTER, Pujangga makes use of syntax directives consisting
of some basic Indonesian sentence forms. The user may then choose
the emotional mood of the poem about to be generated, ranging
from funny to poetic.

Based on the user's choice, the GAs will select words from the
supplied vocabulary according to a certain set of criteria. The
whole process starts with the first "generation": a set of words
that are randomly chosen.

Words that do not meet the given criteria shall perish, and
those that comply continue on to the next generation. In the next
generation of words, new words are created by mating some of the
previous words, and sometimes randomly mutating one. This process
continues until all the words selected are satisfactory for the
mood requested by the user.

Here's a sample output from Pujangga, on a more serious,
poetic tone:

goresan yang sombong, kumuh dan seram

mengharumkan dengan mentari

kala demi kala demi kala...

menyeramkan...

tetesan embun terbentang, kekasih memangsa

salibkan dengan keaslian

kasih menyanyi, kekasih merengkuh

Kapan kasih bersibak?

(Translation)

etchings of arrogance, filthy and scary

making fragrance with the sun

time upon time upon time...

frightening...

dewdrops spread out, lovers prey

crucify with truth

love sings, lovers reach out

When will love ripple?

And here is Pujangga out on a wacky limb, throwing words in
all directions:

capung kenyang, got capek

Di mana alamat memberi?

obat yang kaya, bagus dan apes

obat dingin, alamat penuh

encok mengejar, koin lompat

capung lompat, koin bagus, encok kuning

Apakah cecurut mengajar?

Sejuta bola yang takut...

Translation:

bloated dragonfly, tired gutter

Where will the address give?

Rich medicine, good and unlucky

Cold medicine, full address

Rheumatic chases, coin jumps

Dragonfly jumps, good coin, yellow rheumatic

Does the sewer rat teach?

A million scared balls....

True heartfelt poetry, or just New Age babble rubbish? Poetry
is such a subjective thing, so you may think what you want of it.
One thing is certain: the human touch remains. Pujangga's
vocabulary is only as limited as what the user feeds it. If the
user feeds it nothing but dull words, for example, Pujangga would
only generate a dull poem.

So, ultimately, Pujangga relies on the user for supplying a
rich vocabulary. In the future, perhaps, you could feed Pujangga
vocabulary and syntax directives based on Shakespeare, and voila,
a new Shakespeare sonnet. Or input some of Chairil Anwar's
works ... an instant new Aku.

Pujangga is still in an early prototype state, so there is no
telling what may happen in the future. For all the technophobe
computer-illiterate people who are afraid of the concept of a
computer poet, be assured that the human heart still reigns
superior. But humans can occasionally fall into a bad case of
writers' block, whereas Pujangga can keep churning them out. To
sum it up, here's a line from Pujangga in a mixed-up mode:

Seribu kita yang cemas

mengancam, menyakiti

Sejuta saya yang palsu

Translation:

A thousand of us worried,

threatening, hurting

a million fake me's

Perhaps Pujangga knows that it is a fake poet after all, and
that we are all afraid of it ...

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