EXHIBITIONS

Page Against The Machine – with added Act 2 (2025)

A reprisal of 2024’s performance with a second act. Performed at the Scottish Poetry Library as part of the Being Human Festival.

Critical Shifts (2024)

{poem}.py exhibited as part of exhibition at the Barin Han, Istanbul https://criticalshifts.com/

Evil Google Sells your Words

performance and talk at Wigtown Book Festival 2024

Machine Whispers (2024, 2025)

An interactive installation exploring how poetic language is affected when fed through a series of AI and other machine translation tools. Users feed a piece of poetry into a custom-built application and send it through a series of languages and tools to see how the words and meaning change. The installation provokes discussion around human skill/creativity in the age of AI, while also revealing wider dangers these tools can have when used by/for immigration or law enforcement, for translating medical records, or the processing of sensitive documents. Invited exhibit at the Push The Boat Out Poetry Festival, Edinburgh, November 2024, and at the Edinburgh Science Festival in March 2025.

LEX-9000: Human Verses Machine (2024)

A fully functional ‘automatic writing machine’ in the form of a 7 ft robot, the LEX-9000 is an interactive installation designed and built as a spoof new product which ‘launched’ at the Edinburgh International Book Festival this August as part of the Writing the Wrongs of AI project. LEX is a parody critique of the promises and perils of GenAI models such as ChatGPT, ‘marketed’ as your friendly writing buddy but that becomes more controlling as the underlying incentives and logics of these models become more evident. https://vimeo.com/1002530327

Page Against The Machine (2024)

A short play developed as part of WWAI which depicted the spoof product launch of the LEX-9000 by Danny Celeste, the CEO of our imaginary company Token AI, and which was disrupted by protesters highlighting the negative impacts of GenAI on the publishing industries and wider society. Performed at the 2024 Edinburgh International Book Festival. https://vimeo.com/1002527616

The Poetry Hole (2023), Exeter & online

A collaboration with the University of Exeter and Four of Swords Theatre company as part of the We Love Big Brother interactive drama project, the Poetry Hole is an app which translates Oldspeak to Newspeak in real time. The project is part of an investigation into experiences of people with schizophrenia and the emerging practices of AI assisted ‘avatar therapies’. http://four-of-swords.com/

Particle Poem Collider (2022), Edinburgh

Commissioned for the 2022 Push the Boat Out International Poetry Festival, Edinburgh, the PPC fed poetry from the festival through an AI to create an amalgamous collective poem which was displayed on scrolling LED panels at Summerhall. The PPC questioned ideas of ownership and authenticity in an AI age, and was accompanied by a curated Poetry pamphlet and editorial ‘Sonnets to Space Happened’. https://pipthornton.com/2022/10/27/particle-poem-collider/

Poet vs. Google : Improv slam (2021)

Mirroring the fluctuating value of words as they are auctioned off for Google adverts, this work invited poets/improvs to pitch themselves not only against each other, but against the algorithmic reckoning of linguistic capitalism in a series of knock-out live improv slams. Participants competed to create the most capital from improvised poems priced by Google and prompted by existing first lines.

ARCADIA (2020), Fruitmarket Gallery Bookmarket, Edinburgh

Commissioned installation for The Fruitmarket Gallery Bookmarket, Waverley Mall, Edinburgh, Feb-March 2020. LED stock market ticker displays the text of Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project as priced by Google’s algorithms; a critique of capitalism and advertising in both digital and physical spaces.

**NEWSPEAK (2019) Data Lates, Edinburgh Festival Fringe, (August 2019)**

Displayed as part of Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Data Lates installation, Newspeak (2019) feeds Orwell’s 1984 through Google’s algorithmic market as a political critique of the power that Google has over language.

What Are Words Worth? August 2019

Workshop performance as part of the Edinburgh International Festival. Playwrights were invited to negotiate their way through a linguistic landscape restricted by the value of the stories they told.

{poem}.py: a critique of linguistic capitalism

Peripheries, Electronic Literature Organization Media Arts Festival, Glucksman Gallery, Cork (July 2019)

{poem}.py: a critique of linguistic capitalism: LMAO Data as Culture exhibition, commissioned installation, Open Data Institute, London (Oct 2017- Oct 2019)

{poem}.py: a critique of linguistic capitalism: After Money symposium and exhibition, Edinburgh Civic Arts Centre (November 2017)

{poem}.py: a critique of linguistic capitalism: Inter/Sections Media Art Technology exhibition, 6 day installation of framed poem-receipts with live printing, Mile End Arts Pavilion, London (Sept 2017)