Interacting by reciting or writing poetry has been a very spirited practice from the ancient times. People of different cultural traditions appreciated poetry as both a literary source, and a direct and indirect communication medium. People in digital age is finding more familiar grounds with modern communication methods such as instant messaging, short messaging, twitter, blogs and similar applications.

With the intention of promoting aesthetic sensibilities generated in poetry, we introduce a poetry generating system called ``Poetry Mix-up'', which encourages users to experience the creation of a `remixed' variety of poetry by sending a simple short message (SMS).

The user sends a short message to the system, which contains a pre-configured mobile number. Then the extracted text from the SMS will be transferred to the processing unit. Based on the topics and the content of the input message, the system creates a new poem by mixing existing poem lines and the end result will be displayed.

The poetry generation process in the Poetry Mix-up system consists of three main steps; word sense disambiguating (WSD) layer, topic modeling layer, and a genetic algorithm based selection process. Furthermore, input message is pre-processed by message filter using the SMS slang to English converter and swear word blocker. The slang to English converter filters the messages and gets the most out of the input message while the swear word blocker blocks the respective phone number for a constant time if any inappropriate word is sent to the system.

Videos

Team: Nimesha Ranasinghe, Kening Zhu, Chamari Edirisinghe, O. N. N. Fernando, Adrian David Cheok

Publications

Kening Zhu, Nimesha Ranasinghe, Chamari Edirisinghe, O. N. N. Fernando, and Adrian David Cheok, "Poetry mix-up", In Computers in Entertainment, 9(2), Article 8 (July 2011), 15 pages, ACM

Chamari Edirisinghe, Kening Zhu, Nimesha Ranasinghe, Eng Tat Khoo, Vidyarth Eluppai Srivatsan, Janaka Prasad Wijesena, O. N. N. Fernando, Adrian David Cheok, Modeling literary culture through interactive digital media. In Virtual Reality, 2009

Nimesha Ranasinghe, Adrian David Cheok (2010) Poetry Mash-up: Poetry communication for digital youth, pp:41-49. In proceedings of the Young Investigator’s Forum on Culture Technology 2009.

O. N. N. Fernando, Adrian David Cheok, Nimesha Ranasinghe, Kening Zhu, Chamari Edirisinghe, and Yan Yan Cao. 2009. "Poetry mix-up: a poetry generating system for cultural communication". In Proceedings of the International Conference on Advances in Computer Enterntainment Technology (ACE '09), pp:396-399. DOI=10.1145/1690388.1690470 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1690388.1690470

Nimesha Ranasinghe, Zhu Kening, Chamari Priyange Edirisinghe et al. (2010) Culture Computing: Interactive Technology to Explore Culture, 195-220. In Art and Technology of Entertainment Computing and Communication. 2010. [LINK]

Cheok, Adrian David, O. N. N. Fernando, Nimesha Ranasinghe, Kening Zhu and Chamari Edirisinghe. "BlogWall: Promoting Social Communication through Mobile Technology in Sri Lanka." Mobile Information Communication Technologies Adoption in Developing Countries: Effects and Implications. IGI Global, 2011. 205-217. doi:10.4018/978-1-61692-818-6.ch014 [LINK]

Awards & Achievement

        * YoungCT award 2009 at the Young Investigators’ Forum in Korea, Jan 2010 (Invited Talk)

        * Permanent Installation of Poetry Mix-up in Kent Ridge MRT Station, Singapore, 2011

        * One-month Exhibition of Poetry Mix-up (invited) in Art Center nabi, SK Telecom, Seoul, South Korea, (01st – 31st July 2011) [LINK]

        * Poetry mix-up: The 10th Muse, nominated for the LAVAL VIRTUAL AWARDS 2009, in the Art, Culture, and Interfaces Category, 2009

Media

        * "Set poetry in motion, just send a text message", The Straits Times, Singapore, Saturday September 17, 2011, Page B7.