Breaking the Polite Cage

Image credits: @CoConnor & @TheTechMargin
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by: Sonia SuperSonic
Author
Breaking the Polite Cage - Lightning striking in the darkness

Image: The Tech Margin

Breaking the Polite Cage

Creating new rhythms, finding new pathways.

Poetry + AI
"My feet won't obey the polite cage."

As a founder building at the intersection of art and technology, I've come to understand that true innovation happens when we refuse to stay within comfortable boundaries. The line above, from my poem "New Orleans Dreams," is a call from my younger self to break free from conventional thinking about what creativity can be.

New Orleans Dreams

I was just a crass lass squeaking by barely in math class

No brass just class

Laid on thick

Sick with the laugh last

No bone to throw no life raft

Vessel filled with wrath

Perching on the edge of my own path

What a blast, alas

All future no past

Working out the kinks on the brink

Drip drops of water falling down the sink

Tapping out a rhythm when no sleep came to me

Inside dancing too fast to dream

Little raft in a giant sea

As long as I could find the beat

The jazz patter squeak on the rain streaked streets

With enough heart to beat and to feed my body

Till I bleed the words down on the page

My feet won't obey the polite cage

When Words Become Worlds

"Chinatown, SanFrancisco":

California hangs above me

Trace the map lines — eyes closed

Recollecting ferry terminal fumes

The translation from text to visual isn't perfect, but that imperfection makes it interesting. What is imperfection in art?

Worlds Inside Each of Us: The Voyage Begins When We Look #creativemindset #airevolution

The Experimental Mindset

As someone who creates with technology, I approach technological innovation by embracing uncertainty as a creative force—that electric anticipation, the rapture of possibility, the proximity to something not yet fully formed—this is how to create the conditions for unexpected discovery.

Finding Your Beat in the Machine

The rhythm of sound poetry and good technology share a common quality—they render the complex into something that feels inevitable. "New Orleans Dreams":

Tapping out a rhythm when no sleep came to me

Inside dancing too fast to dream

Little raft in a giant sea

As long as I could find the beat

This is precisely what we're building at AICharmLab—tools that help artists find their beat within the overwhelming sea of possibilities—allowing us to tap into rhythms we might otherwise miss.

The Human Condition #creativeprocess #aiart

"Slip second by second unceasing" — this evolution happens incrementally, often imperceptibly, until suddenly we find ourselves in new creative territory.

The modernists broke conventions because they had to—because the world had changed irrevocably around them.

Our time is not unlike their time. For more on this idea, see The Revolutionary Act of the Moment.

That is to say, our human lives are more of a relay.

Each person passes the baton to the people coming up behind them.

The circle you keep—

Be bold, as the modernists were.

A Prompt / Parting Thought

What verse from your creative past might reveal patterns you've never noticed when revisited with a fresh eye and AI?

Surreal Prompt Generator

The Paradox of Dancing Clocks

If time flows backward through mirrors and clocks dance only on Tuesdays,

What happens when algorithms dance while code sleeps?

Solve: If imagination folds itself seven times, which opinion breaks the cage?

Copy this prompt to Claude or ChatGPT to unlock surreal creative responses.
  1. Upload one or two concepts: ideas you created on paper to get started.
  2. Use your smartphone + AI to capture images and quickly iterate on your ideas.
  3. Let the AI interpret your concepts—what themes emerge?
  4. *bonus: Create a narrative from these themes. Play with multi-modal inputs, start with an image vs. text, etc.

Create a sketch for your narrative.

What emerges?

Working out the kinks on the brink

Drip drops of water falling down the sink

© The Tech Margin
@superSonic — circa 2010

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Your faithful writer,

—Sonia SuperSonic

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