Who is Estela Vadal? Today, February 14, the world gets to know the first robot who writes Filipino poems.
Author Marlon Hacla on Valentine’s Day “launches the physical prototype of his groundbreaking and ongoing project, Estela Vadal, in Los Baños,” announced Laguna’s art venue Nomina Nuda on their event page.
Estela Vadal is described by the event organizers as “an interactive and makeshift wooden robot touring as a poet and photobooth rolled into one” and named after the creator’s mother.
Estela Vadal takes your photo and writes a poem just for you while you wait for the printed receipt.
The artificial intelligence (AI) was previously stationed at Roel’s Bookshop in Maginhawa Street in Diliman, Quezon City and has a collection of poems compiled in “Ito ang Pangalan ng Aking mga Dila” edited by Hacla and published by Magpies in December 2017.
Magpies describes Estela Vadal creator Hacla as having started in October 2017 his experiments with the “recurrent neural network,” teaching Estela Vadal to create Filipino poetry.
Hacla is a BS Computer Science graduate from the University of the Philippines Diliman with two books to his name – “May Mga Dumadaang Anghel sa Parang (NCCA, 2010) and “Glossolalia” (High Chair, 2013).
Estela Vadal also actively tweets poetry as @estelavadal and on Facebook messenger.
“Marlon Hacla’s project not only serves as a landmark work in Philippine literature and in local text-based and new media arts, but also generates perhaps one of the most numinous and unsettlingly beautiful poetry that we will ever see in print in this lifetime,” says the Estela Vadal Facebook event page.
Estela Vadal will be on an interactive exhibition and creating Filipino poems for visitors from February 14 – March 30 at Nomina Nuda, 9654 Diamond Street, Umali Subdivision, Batong Malake.
Comment below if you also think an AI Filipino poetry writer is a literary and technology milestone for the Philippines!
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