Concrete Writing with Proteins

This paper explores an alternative approach to textual production through protein folding mechanism and artificial intelligence. Drawing primarily on the legacy of 20th-century-concrete poetry, I propose the concept of "concrete writing": a form of compositional activity that seeks expression in the real through the materiality of language. I begin by introducing key aspects of concrete poetry that inform my conceptual framework. Then, through Eduardo Kac's and Christian Bök's works, I discuss how their artistic practices exemplify the possibilities of concrete writing on a molecular level. I then elaborate on the structural parallels between protein folding and textual composition, for my own experimentation. In the last section, I present paragrams, a series of speculations that use AlphaFold to design and generate new textual objects. This work intends to contribute to the ongoing discussions of text generation using AI models by reconsidering the prevalent yet somewhat reductive view on language.

Keywords

concrete poetry, experimental poetry, AlphaFold, protein folding, concrete writing, paragram, coding