OuLiPo Variations
Playful variations on the N+7 machine.
Created Apr 9, 2024 - Last updated: Apr 9, 2024
The original N+7 machine
The N+7 machine was invented in 1961 by Jean Lescure of the French OuLiPo poets. It involves replacing each noun in a poem with the seventh one following it in a dictionary.
My project
Try it out here!
I created some some playful variations on this machine by:
- Replacing every verb in the poem with the 7th verb after it in the English dictionary
- Replacing every adjective in the poem with the 7th adjective after it in the English dictionary
- Replacing every 7th word with a random rhyming word
- Generating music using every 7 characters of the input poem
Built with the spaCy Python natural language processing library, the Websters English Dictionary as a json file, the DataMuse API for rhymes, Midi.js for the jukebox, and a minimalist Flask application deployed for free on PythonAnywhere.
My original Jupyter notebook exploration is here.
![OuLiPo Variations](https://kaizengrowth.github.io/digitalgarden/projects/oulipo_variations/featured.png)
Next steps
This project was created as an enthusiastic extension of our Week 1 homework assignment for the class: “Let’s Play: Wayward Sentences”, taught by Kameelah Janan Rasheed and Shiraz Abdullahi Gallab at the School for Poetic Computation.
Here are some other variations I’d love to implement next:
- The 7th vector embedding
- Using a LLM as an API, such as GPT 3.5, to calculate the 7th most probable word after a given word (Markov Chains!)
- Linking the 7th result in Google for each word