Call for paper for a symposium to be held in the 1 and 2 October 2026, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice.
Argument:
What is the place of poetry in a world dominated by AI and the automation of language? Umberto Eco once argued that ‘no algorithm exists for the metaphor’, suggesting that the limits of AI and of computation in general are marked precisely by poetry as a disruption of code. Computer scientists have shared this intuition too: the Soviet mathematician Andrey Kolmogorov held that poetry cannot be written in scientific and technical languages, as these provide no flexibility.
Can AI, then, generate poetry? Eco was referring to symbolic AI, grounded in deductive inference, whereas large language models (LLMs) operate today on inductive inference, which at scale exhibits astonishing performances in language competences and in detecting high-order conceptual abstractions such as style. Yet the same argument holds for deductive and inductive machines alike. Poetry, as Charles Sanders Peirce would argue, follows neither the rules of deductive nor of inductive reasoning; it constitutes the breaking of such rules, as in abductive reasoning, in which one envisions a new world and invents a new language for it.
The symposium revisits the traditions of avant-garde poetry that experimented with algorithms to contest the politics of authorship and creativity. It investigates the disruptive power of poetry and the limits of contemporary AI, and explores the contribution that the humanities bring to a world marked by the rising hegemony of computer science in cultural heritage. It also moves from the remarkable findings of Icaro Lab, which demonstrated the use of poetry in jailbreaking the security of AI models. Ultimately, critical humanities do not merely comment on AI from the outside: they can offer practical tools to analyse, test, and put such systems to the proof.
See the full call online.
Proposals submissions:
Scholars may submit an abstract of their presentation (max. 500 words) and a short CV or bio (max. 100 words) via the online application form. Deadline for submission: 15 August 2026.
The symposium welcomes contributions from across the humanities, social sciences, computer science, and artistic practice. For a full description of the symposium themes, the complete call for papers, and submission guidelines, please visit the symposium webpage.