A London Billboard Is Displaying Poetry Generated by the People

Google and Central Saint Martins' 'Poetrics' is an interactive LED wall that works like a spoken version of 'Exquisite Corpse.'

by Kevin Holmes

August 27, 2015, 4:00pm

Image: Press Association

Google has unveiled an interactive art piece in London, where any random gibberish you care to mutter into a microphone gets turned into poetry (of some description, anyway), which then appears on an LED billboard. The piece, called Poetrics, is based just outside King’s Cross station and is made up of 17 LED panels that display the words left behind by passersby. It uses Google’s voice search technology and Google Speech to figure out what the public have uttered, then places it in a freshly created random poem.

We're not yet sure if they’ve got a filter on it, otherwise those LEDs will no doubt be host to some “interesting” words and colourful language.

The piece is a result of a competition with Central Saint Martins, where the winners got to design an interactive installation for the site of Google’s new offices. Laura Ventura Ricart, one of the students involved in the project, said, “We saw Poetrics as an opportunity for people to have a collective and meaningful experience playing with language and the absurd, just as the Dada did in their surrealist game 'the Exquisite Corpse.' Poetrics' interactive wall collects and assembles words spoken by the people of Kings Cross and turns them into random poetry made by all.”