Haiku Timeline


Haiku Timeline is an experiment in crowd-sourcing and ambient intelligence using information from Twitter posts to generate haiku poems. Haiku are generated from the set of unique words found in the Twitter posts concerning a random trending topic. The haiku is then posted back to Twitter using the topic it was generated from. The result is usually a cryptic overview of the most recent posts concerning a particular topic. Though the algorithm to generate the poems only understands syllable count, we interpret hidden meaning and depth into the final haiku due to the baggage that the traditional art form carries with it. We are conditioned to read haiku actively and creatively. This raises the question of whether algorithmically reconstructed media contains any new information of its own or if the information is created only when processed by our minds.

Haiku Timeline is taking a break from writing haiku, but may start again someday.