Current Projects and Collaborations

In addition to individual literary projects, Amy Catanzano is collaborating with scientists on the following:

The High-Energy Collider Poem: Particle Poiesis at the Planck Scale
A Multimodal Physics-Poetry Experiment

Collaborator: James Beacham, particle physicist in the Duke University team for the ATLAS Experiment at CERN and international speaker on science, technology, and art (Switzerland).

Description: Read Catanzano’s poem, “Resonance,” and her Author’s Note at Conjunctions online for a project overview.

Outcomes-in-progress include a pre-print scientific paper, creative literary texts, a poetry-physics experiment, and a collaborative book manuscript.

This project is supported by the W. C. Archie Endowed Fund for Faculty Excellence from Wake Forest University, which funded Catanzano to conduct research at CERN for an upcoming third site visit, and with supplementary funding from the U.S. Outreach office of the ATLAS Experiment at the Large Hadron Collider.

World Lines: A Quantum Supercomputer Poem
Transmedia Quantum Poetry

Formats: print publication (originary poem published in Phase 1 of the project with computational possibilities underway in Phase 2), web portal (underway in Phase 2), interactive arts installation (anticipated in Phase 3).

Collaborator for Phase 2: Michael Taylor, applied mathematician and senior research associate in climate science at University of East Anglia (Norwich, United Kingdom).

Description: World Lines: A Quantum Supercomputer Poem is a poem and poetic form invented by Catanzano based on a theoretical model of a topological quantum computer, which computes by quantum knots. Phase 1 of the project, which developed the originary poem, was presented at the Simons Center for Geometry and Physics at Stony Brook University. In Phase 2 of the project, currently underway, Taylor has used the Python computer programming language, machine learning, and artificial intelligence technology to develop an algorithm and quantum script that reads the originary poem to computationally express all possible versions.

After parsing each sentence in the poem and identifying branch points—words in common—Taylor trained a linguistic processor to choose world lines that are semantically logical to track how different topological paths move through a text map into different versions of the poem. Catanzano is using these variants, as well as visual data from the computational process that created the variants, for a book collection of computational poetry. Visual artwork and a range of translations of the variants are also being developed.

Catanzano and Taylor also are developing a web interface, where, after a text is loaded, a World Lines algorithm can find the branch points and do one of two things: 1) allow the reader to manually navigate along a world line, creating a new poem as a re-structured sample of the text that could be stored and studied, and 2) run a simulation and generate world lines that the reader can choose between in order to render new poems.

Phase 3 of the project will involve creating an interactive art installation based on the poem using virtual reality.

Outcomes overview: Phases 2 and 3 include computational poetry and translations, visual poetry and literary artwork derived from computational data, the evolution of quantum script writing, an interactive web interface, theoretical investigations of quantum linguistics and information theory in relation to poetics, an educational tool for poetry and physics, and an interactive art installation.

Mapping the Universe in Three Dimensions: A Spectroscopic Poetics
Danced Poem: Film and Performance

Collaborator: Satya Gontcho A Gontcho, project scientist at Berkeley National Laboratory (California)

Description: After meeting at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory and collaborating on an interdisciplinary performance, Gontcho A Gontcho and Catanzano are now exploring the science and poetics of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) Survey at Kitt Peak National Observatory. The survey is measuring the effect of dark energy on the expansion of the universe by obtaining optical spectra for tens of millions of galaxies and quasars, constructing the largest, most detailed 3D map of the universe to date.

Anticipated outcomes: poetry, dance, collaborative performance, experimental film, and documentary.

This project is supported by the W. C. Archie Endowed Fund for Faculty Excellence from Wake Forest University, which funded Catanzano to conduct research with Gontcho A Gontcho in Tucson, Arizona.

Ambiguity in Poetry and Quantum Physics
Transdisciplinary Discussion Project

Collaborator: Mark C. Kruse, professor of physics at Duke University (North Carolina, USA) and head of the Duke University team for the ATLAS Experiment at CERN (Switzerland).

Description: Kruse and Catanzano are exploring how the role of ambiguity in poetry can provide insights into particle physics and quantum phenomena, not through explaining quantum concepts in a general and accessible way, but rather through the unique experience that poetry can provide.

Anticipated outcomes are in progress.