nyc: come play with poetry camera on sunday
feb 11, 2024 @ 2-7pm
Poetry Camera is a camera that prints poems of what it sees. It’s an art project and labor of love by Kelin Carolyn Zhang and Ryan Mather.
We’ve been sharing this project sporadically on social media, but want to document our progress in more detail with a proper newsletter. We want to share as we learn and work with the garage door up. If you want to help support our art and our commitment to open education, we’d appreciate it if you shared this newsletter with a friend who’d vibe with it.
we’re gonna be at whitebox pop-up gallery
If you’re in NYC, come play with Poetry Camera yourself in Bushwick at the WhiteBox 001 gallery pop-up. Thanks to Artifice for bringing us in.
RSVP to the opening reception
Location: 61 Wyckoff Ave., Brooklyn NY 11237
Opening reception: Sunday, February 11, 2-7pm. We’ll be there irl!
Public viewing hours: Feb 17-18, 2-6pm; Feb 24-25, 2-6pm
we’re working on poetry camera v3
We’re sprinting towards building Poetry Camera V3 in preparation for the Whitebox show so people can use Poetry Camera unsupervised, including:
a jaw that opens on the enclosure chin, to switch out receipt paper more easily
a viewfinder so you can know what exactly you’re taking a photo of
better error handling in the code
model changes & prompt tweaks for more interesting output
custom printout for the event
we demoed @ figma nyc last week
We shared Poetry Camera Figma NYC’s AI in Creative Tooling Night last week, as an example of the new experiences that are possible with generative AI models. Thanks to Michael Bullington, Mihika Kapoor, and Jordan Singer for hosting. We went until we ran out of receipt paper for the night – a lesson for future events :~)
can you believe we’re doing other stuff too
Poetry Camera was recently featured in Popular Mechanics as part of a piece on DIY AI projects. Thanks to Sarah Wells for telling the story of our creative perspective and our AI-empowered process. This project absolutely would not exist if ChatGPT weren’t around to help us start tinkering.
We’re starting to collab with artists, poets, and photographers. We’re excited to put Poetry Camera into the hands of creatives — and even develop custom versions — to see what ideas it sparks.
People on Instagram and Tiktok are into it! We’re very behind on posting videos!
We’re continuing to work on open-sourcing the instructions and making a DIY kit so you can learn to build this yourself. More soon, after we finish V3 this week.
we need some help with batteries
We’re looking for expert help with our battery circuitry. This keeps me up at night. If you are/know a friendly electrical engineer, we’d love your help. This is a paid consulting gig — we want to get it right.
Let us know what you’re interested in hearing about next time. We want to share as much as we can. Talk soon.
Again, if you want to help support this project, we’d appreciate it if you shared this newsletter with someone who might like it.
Wonderful work. Excited to join along the journey. 🫡