Interview with Katy Gero
Today we talk with the amazing Katy Gero, artist, writer, and AI researcher. Gero is currently researching human-AI interaction, creativity support tools, and natural language generation at Columbia University. As an Australian with a mechanical engineering degree from MIT, Gero‘s works often share her love of the ocean and the beauty of understanding the hidden systems in our world.
AC: Welcome Katy to the Taper editorial collective! To begin with, congratulations on getting the latest issue, 8-bit Wonders, out. You started off as a mechanical engineer. How did you become involved in coding?
Gero: Well, I have always been a writer — stories, essays, poetry. But I did my undergrad in mechanical engineering, and my first job was in manufacturing at a startup that made baby monitors to measure infant respiration. At the time, I didn’t know how to code, but it seemed like the really interesting thing going on in the company was how they would use all this breathing data for detecting sleep cycles. So I volunteered to translate their algorithms from javascript to Python. It was a nice way to learn how to code because I just needed to ensure the code did the exact same thing it did before, but in another language.
What attracted me to coding was the rapid development cycle. In mechanical engineering, if you make mistakes like putting in the wrong part or run out of screws, it takes time to make progress. You’ve got to literally break it down, wait for parts. It’s faster to iterate with code. With coding you can quickly test, and if it fails you can try again right away.
AC: You learned how to code by translating from one language to another. On the job. That’s pretty brave. How did you go from programming to researching creativity and computation?
Gero: When I started to become interested in coding and computation, I got interested in AI research. A lot of AI research was focused on the abilities of computation to generate writing like news summaries and such. I thought creative writing might have something interesting to say, like, “What does writing have to say about computation rather than what can computation do for writing?” I think creative writing has some interesting insights on machine learning and language modeling, about tricky things like emotion and intention. At grad school, I developed interest in the practice of computational poetics, but I came to it as a writer first and a coder second. My approach to computational creativity and creative expression is humanistic, situated in the person, rather than the computer.
AC: Does having an engineering background give your art a particular spin? For example, your latest work, Precision Machine Design, in Taper#8: 8-bit Wonders looks like a radial engine. I really like how it invites the reader to explore a cyclical never-ending poem, to design the poem shape by dragging the mouse.
Gero: I definitely feel like being a mechanical engineer allowed me to see the world really differently. I see the world as made up of components all functioning together. Even if I couldn’t make a car, I understand there are separate parts like axles and engines that work together. Being able to see this transparency feels very empowering, like theoretically I could make anything.
Precision Machine Design is about the apocalypse of climate change and our inability to solve it through technological means alone. The poem is also about the intricacies of human relationships. The shape of the poem reflects on the content.
AC: Your other Taper piece also exposes the lifecycle of decay.
Gero: Whalefall is part of an ongoing obsession with the ocean and all the metaphors it takes on. I grew up by the Pacific Ocean in Australia, but now I live in cities that border the Atlantic but don’t really feel like oceanside places. I can forget the ocean is so close. Whalefall reflects on the idea of a dead whale falling to the bottom of the ocean and how the body becomes this ecosystem for new life. It’s also about the inaccessibility of these events. Probably no one has really seen a whalefall happen in its entirety. We just get glimpses of the process.
AC So far you’ve edited one issue of Taper. What has surprised you most about working as a Taper editor?
Gero: The one thing that was surprising to me as an editor was the care and rigor to make sure the pieces work well in different browsers. It’s something that as a reader you don’t notice because the pieces “just work.” With Taper, the reading experience is reminiscent of paper, at least in that you get a book and you view the content and there’s no technology that gets in the way. Taper really focuses on the web and html as a medium. Because a lot of the web does “go wrong.” Viewers seeking interesting artwork online often find that it doesn’t work in their browser.
People in the editorial collective have different things they want to see. That’s always the case when you bring a bunch of editors together. Some were interested more in the artistry of fitting a lot into the code. Authors are trying to push the medium to its limits. Some of the submissions are quite amazing in what they can do in 2kB.
Personally, I‘m more interested in the poetics of computational poetics and how the language stands on its own. Maybe because I was a writer before I was a coder, my practice is grounded in writing and computation as another way to get at the writing.
AC: How has the editing experience affected your work?
Gero: I’m now thinking about computation as a more important part of the piece. I consider the interaction between the two parts and taking them both equally seriously. Being able to see all the pieces and the editorial process made me more interested in the computational thinking. If I want the poetry to stand on its own, should I not also want the computational aspect to stand on its own? Or, at least the computation should have an equal footing.
AC: Can you suggest inspiring or surprising pieces of computational literature with Taper or elsewhere?
Gero: Instructions by Vinicius Marquet, which ‘ends’ with a pop up asking you to print the page. I love that piece so much because I was so surprised. I was like “Oh yeah — like that’s something so simple that you can do with a web page.” It stunned me and I still think about it. It’s an affordance of the technology that I would have never thought to call upon.
A non-Taper piece that inspired me is Nick Montfort’s Arf Magna, to honor his late dog Pepys. The cursor controls the poetry and music. It went outside my expectation of what’s possible and as a coder you realize its simplicity. The beauty is that the functionality is so elegant. None of those things are complicated to implement but just thinking about the possibilities, that is what is exciting to me.
AC: How has being a Taper editor affected your process?
Gero: This is probably unconscious, but I think Taper’s “constraints” have really influenced a minimalist style in my computational work. Sometimes, you load a page that takes a really long time to load because images are so big. I hate it when the Web feels clunky.
With a minimalist style, you avoid big images so it loads really fast. It’s an aesthetic that feels like a constraint. But it is not the same as constraint, as I don’t think I’m constraining myself. It’s more an aesthetic that I really identified with. There’s something about simplicity. The essence is grasped through the bare experience. Don’t do anything you don’t have to do. (LOL)
AC: What projects are you working on now?
Gero: You can see more poems at katygero.com. I’m working on a curated collection a list of publications that accept computational poetry for digital poets. I recently published Accumulation in the html.review (pictured above). I’m also working on a traditional poetry manuscript and translating pieces to the web. I share updates on Twitter and attend WordHack open projector.
AC: Thank you for sharing insights as a creative writer and reflecting on your experience as a Taper author and writer. It’s been wonderful to learn more about you and your work. We hope this inspires more digital poets to submit to Taper #9:Nine Lives!
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