News Dr Justin Tonra awarded Irish Research Council New Foundations Grant

Dr Justin Tonra (English) has been awarded a Irish Research Council New Foundations grant for his project Poetry Machines: Technologies of Poetic Composition. New Foundations supports researchers to pursue research, networking and dissemination activities within and between all disciplines. It provides seed funding for small-scale research actions; the development of networks, consortia and workshops; and creative approaches to the communication of scientific concepts or complex societal challenges for a lay audience. Dr Tonra’s awarded was one of thirteen funded under the STEAM strand, which aims to bring science and art, design and the humanities together to work on new ways of communicating scientific concepts and complex societal challenges for a lay audience.

Project summary: Poetry has a long and fascinating relationship with technology that bridges the apparent gap between the humanities and sciences. The printing press, the typewriter, and the tape recorder have each offered radical new formal possibilities to poets, while the digital age has yielded computational methods for generating verse that challenge our basic understandings of the creative process. Poetry Machines is a project which will survey the long history of poetry machines, and communicate the neglected story of how the precepts of science, engineering, and mathematics, have been used to make and shape poetry.

 Link: http://research.ie/what-we-do/loveirishresearch/blog/irish-research-council-announces-100-new-awards-to-support-research-collaboration-and-dissemination/