Water: An interview with Six:Thirty

Matteo Loglio and Six:Thirty have designed a network of floating buoys that generate poetry from local water conditions

“We believe that we can forge stronger bonds with our natural surroundings through art, design and technology,” says James from creative agency Six:Thirty, whose latest project Natural Networks is a web of floating buoys that generates poetry from local water conditions. Developed in collaboration with London-based interaction designer Matteo Loglio, Natural Networks is just one of 13 H20-themed projects on show as part of Water at Copeland Gallery this LDF. We caught up with James ahead of the exhibition to chat waterways, sensors and the creative potential of AI.

Anyone that’s spent time following poetry bots on Twitter can tell you that even without authorial intention, computers can generate some poignant moments and beautiful turns of phrase. It’s with this in mind that designer Matteo Loglio and creative agency Six:Thirty have developed Natural Networks, a water-born AI poet that records data from locations on London’s canals and uses it to generate machine-made verse.

The bright orange 3D printed buoys, which draw on Matteo’s background in toy design, are embedded with environmental sensors that feed information about the light, temperature and motion to a Char-rnn network. This neural network is a kind of artificial brain, which is stimulated by the sensors, mimicking perception and emotions. The ability to see and analyse the world is then used to compose poetic text based on mood, starting from a large dataset of existing poetry.