We are meaning makers. We can’t help it. It’s second nature. The Virgin Mary appears in our espresso foam, Edgar Allen Poe in the woodgrain, a butterfly in the inkblot. No matter how abstract the noise, music slips in. No matter how unintelligible the words, poetry abides.
i went to the store to buy some groceries.
i store to buy some groceries.
i were to buy any groceries.
horses are to buy any groceries.
horses are to buy any animal.
horses the favorite any animal.
horses the favorite favorite animal.
horses are my favorite animal.
This is Google’s AI. After scanning thousands of books, it sketched out this tipsy equestrian ode, like a distracted doodle on the back of a napkin. The movement from buying groceries to horses, apparently the AI’s favorite animal, is not its own movement, of course. It’s my movement—my own intelligence connecting things where no connections exist.
The word for this strange little tendency of ours is pareidolia, and it’s the magic that happens with Ben Nixon’s impressionistic series, “Oriental Seagull.” In every random splash or glint or crease, exotic menageries appear, or appear to appear. Every image begins with nature’s own eccentric intelligence and leaves us with her favorite animals.
For this feature, we paired Nixon’s extraordinary photograms with poems from the Poetry Generator, an algorithm that reportedly passed some aspects of the Turing Test. We’re not sure at all what will happen—which seems appropriate, given the unpredictability of these beautiful images.