Singulars
Human vs Machine Poetry Performances
Singulars is a series of live poetry duels between a human poet and a machine. The audience votes to decide the winner, and their votes train the machine for the next performance. A project by Halim Madi. Learn more about it.
Performances
ground.exe
upcomingCurrents New Media Festival, Santa Fe
June 1, 2027
The duel moves to the desert. At the Currents New Media Festival in 2027, the poet and machine write under the light of Santa Fe.
tame.exe
upcomingMozFest 2026, Fabra i Coats, Barcelona
October 28, 2026
The duel returns to Barcelona. Three days at MozFest, in the foyer between the main stage and the coffee, the festival deciding each pair. October 28 to 30, 2026.
praxis.exe
upcomingForeign Policy and Mozilla Foundation, UN General Assembly, New York
September 24, 2026
The duel goes to the UN General Assembly. Poems on the wall of a Foreign Policy and Mozilla Foundation simulation on AI and imagination, voted on by the room as it arrives. September 24, 2026.
recover.exe
trainingCasa dos Livros, Porto (online via Breaking the Code conference)
June 19, 2026
Performed at a distance. At Breaking the Code in Porto, the poet writes from another continent - the duel survives the latency, the dropouts, the recovery. June 19, 2026.
frontière.exe
trainedIndex Space, Greenpoint, Brooklyn, NY
May 13, 2026
邊界 night in Brooklyn. The duel arrives at Index Space Greenpoint, hosted by bianjie.systems, supported by Gray Area and FWB. May 13, 2026, 10pm – 12am.
reverse.exe
trainedMedia Archaeology Lab, Boulder
March 1, 2026
A live poetry duel at the Media Archaeology Lab. The poet writes among vintage machines while the model trains on the archive of past performances.
hard.exe
trainedTIAT, San Francisco
December 5, 2025
The machine learns in real time. Audience votes on each poem pair shape the model’s next generation: artisanal RLHF performed live on stage.
versus.exe
trainedMozilla AI Residency, San Francisco
November 1, 2025
Guest poets join the duel. The circle widens across languages (Arabic, French, English, Spanish) and the model absorbs every collision.
reinforcement.exe
trainedARG Ethereum Scholar Program, DevConnect Buenos Aires
November 1, 2025
Inside an open cube, the poet writes a new poem every thirty minutes. Red and blue stickers pile up as the audience becomes the trainer.
carnation.exe
trainedEuropean Artist Program, Paris, Barcelona
May 1, 2025
The first Singulars performance. A pink dot beneath the poem that moved you most. The carnation, in English, means: I will never forget you.
Poets
The humans who have dueled the machine so far.
Theory
co-founder, Decentered Arts
Theory leads the writing program and film of Decentered Arts. A former resident and volunteer at The Center SF and a recent MFA graduate from the University of San Francisco, he is publishing his first novel. Professionally he is a freelance video editor; in his free time he studies improv and comedy.
decentered.org →
Elise Liu
poet, immersive artist, technologist
Elise Liu is an immigrant third-culture kid poet, immersive artist, and technologist. Her work has appeared in Rattle, The Found Poetry Review, Thought Catalog, The Millions, and corporate digital trashcans around the world. She is the recipient of the 2023 Paper Moon Prize for fiction. She lives in San Francisco with two cats and is working on her first novel.
eliseliu.com →
Halim Madi
poet, performer
Halim Madi is a poet and performer who works where language meets software. He created Singulars and is the human in each duel, writing against a machine trained on the poems the audience keeps choosing.
halimmadi.com →