Biometric Poetics: The Case of Eververse

Abstract

Eververse was a yearlong conceptual poetry project which used a poet’s biometric data as the basis for generating verse. This article describes the project’s conceptual contributions to the field of electronic literature and its technical development. Eververse operated by collecting biometric data from the poet with a commercial fitness tracking device; this data was sent to a custom-built poetry generator which deployed a number of processes from the domains of Natural Language Generation and Sentiment Analysis to generate poetry; the form and content of this poetry was designed to vary according to specific changes in the biometric data, resulting in a poetry that conspicuously correlated with the poet’s daily activities; this poetry was published in real-time on the project website and the full poem and associated data have now been archived. In addition to providing details on the technical implementation of Eververse, this article includes discussion that situates the work within the tradition of electronic literature and analyses its unique inscription of biometric data. The article examines that feature in the contemporary context of the quantified self, but also in its engagement with historic poetic theories of composition, creativity, and the textualisation of the body.