A team of designers have come up with a way to make automated poetry about places in the world.
Using OpenStreetMap (OSM) data, Satellite Studio has created a haiku map that creates haikus using randomly assembled data from a specific location on the map.
“One can rather think about OSM as a gigantic database of all the things in the world,” a website post from Satellite Studio says. “In OpenStreetMap Haiku, we use that crazy amount of data by matching OSM tags with random verses.”
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For example, when using the Black Press Media office location on Broughton Street in downtown Victoria, the map comes up with “What would the Royal Theatre Think?/ Coming hot/ The same pot of coffee.”
Another option from the same location yields “The warm belly of the bus/ What would Royal Theatre think?/ Quite chilly.”
The map takes into account weather, local time of day, transportation and even businesses and buildings nearby.
The original inspiration of the project comes from a different project called Every Thing Every Time by Naho Matsuda. In it, her work creates “impractical poetry” from data streams and sensors across a city with the result displayed in real-time in the city streets.
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“We thought that creating a global version of the same idea would be interesting, not the least because it would allow us to get our hands dirty with OpenStreetMap data,” Satellite Studio says.
To check out OpenStreetMap Haiku, head to satellitestud.io/osm-haiku/app/#14/40.7236/-73.9819.
To find your location, hit “locate me!” at the bottom left corner of the webpage.
