[csaa-forum] Event (18 Nov): Lionel Fogarty and Jazz Money (Used)

[Benjamin Miller]

All welcome. Please RSVP by completing the Microsoft Form linked here: https://forms.office.com/r/EBWfZ4LRus


Title:                      Post Glitch: Aboriginal Poetry, Language and GenAI
Date/Time:         18 November, 3-5pm
Venue:                 Level 6 Seminar Room, FASS Building (A02), University of Sydney
Discussants:     Lionel Fogarty, Jazz Money

NOTE – This event is in-person only

Poets are among the most ethically reflective users of language in writing. Their voices are crucial as we consider new forms of language produced by Generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen AI), variously labelled as creative, transformational, vacuous, or exploitative. Since the 1980s, firebrand poet Lionel Fogarty (Yugambeh) has theorised the use of English in his poetry, once stating that his poetry “is a way of using their English against the English. The way they write and talk is ungrammatical, because it doesn’t have any meanings in their spirit.” Today, we might ask how the anti-colonial critique of English gains relevance as Large Language Models reproduce the “ungrammatical” structures and patterns of colonial language at scale.

New generations of poets are also exploring the relationship between Aboriginality and new media spaces. Recently, Jazz Money (Wiradjuri) has imagined a post-glitch world, where digital archives are yet another space in which to declare Indigenous sovereignty:

                we’re                                                     post                                                       glitch
                hear      the         true      languages         coded   on          the         tongues
                of                            the                         digital                   native                   born

Money’s poetry is striking for its assertion of sovereignty within digital spaces. Whether such reimaginings are possible in relation to GenAI is an open question. Many LLMs, after all, rely on colonial archives of stolen culture, garble and combine various Indigenous languages, mimic poetry, repeat stereotypes and biases, ignore IP rights of writers, and are less than transparent on questions of data ownership.

This event presents poets Lionel Fogarty and Jazz Money in conversation about the role of poetry in the time of GenAI. Fogarty (Harvest Lingo) and Money (mark the dawn) will present readings from their work and consider how anti-colonial poetry translates into critiques of GenAI, the ways Indigenous poetics and culture are protected from or vulnerable to the appropriative and harmful aspects of digital technologies, and the roles readers might take to support Indigenous sovereignty (including data sovereignty).


This event has been organised by Benjamin Miller, Susan Thomas and Bronwen Dyson with support from the School of Art, Communication and English.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.cdu.edu.au/pipermail/csaa-forum/attachments/20241106/53de51db/attachment.htm>