poetry.DNA explores the relationship between the organic and the mechanical, between evolution and the static loops found within code. It is an exploration of recursion and feedback within systems, in this case code. Coding languages and DNA are not as dissimilar as we might assume. The differences between the two lie within human agency. Code, by design, does not evolve. What happens if we remove human agency and allow recursive code loops to evolve on their own? poetry.DNA is a generative poetry bot that is modelled after biological principles such as evolution, mutation, and self-regulation. It is given a database of poetry (from a variety of styles & genres) and has one sole purpose, to create a poem. Each time a user visits the website, the poetry bot is affected. There is a direct relationship between the online migration of users and evolution, each visit pompts a trigger to revisit the read cycle within the code with several consequences:

A majority of lines within the poem will “mate”, using current words and sentences to reconstruct new lines.
A smaller portion will “mate” with new information drawn from the databank.
A very small portion will “mutate” creating potentially harmful additions or removals with the poem.

This process mimics evolution in nature - It does not have purpose, there is no end goal. poetry.DNA is a meditation on current coding paradigms and intelligence. There is always an exception to produce tangible results. We, as humans, did not arise from the need to produce tangible results, we are a product of random genetic entropy.