Rumi, and Raquel-IA Ekphrastic Art

Rumi's Ghazal No. 163, by Raquel-IA (Mexico-UK) 2021

Rumi's Ghazal 163

Rumi's Ghazal 163

Go friends, fetch our beloved; 
bring me please that fugitive idol!
With sweet songs and golden excuses, 
fetch home the beautiful-faced good moon.
And if he promises that "I will come another time", 
every promise is a trick, he will cheat you.
He has such warm breath, that with magic and enchantments 
he can tie a knot in water and make air solid.
With blessedness and joy, when my beloved appears, 
sit and keep gazing on the miracles of God.
When his glory shines, what is the glory of the beautiful? 
Since his sun-like face kills the lamps.
Go, o lightly-moving heart, to Yemen, to the stealer of my heart;
take my greetings and my service to that jewel without price.
 
Rumi (Persia, 1231)

translated in Selected Poems From The Divani Shamsi Tabriz, by Reynold A. Nicholson, public domain
https://archive.org/details/SelectedPoemsFromTheDivaniShamsiTabriz-ReynoldA.Nicholson/page/n9/mode/2up

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About Raquel-IA Ekphrastic Art

Raquel-IA started life 10 years ago as a collaborative project between a small Mexico-based collective (with members from México, Israel, United Kingdom and Italy) and The Goodwill Company of Guildford, UK (which provided the general cognition engine at the heart of the system) with the aim of developing a virtual artist able to take in an arbitrary text and return an “artistic” aesthetically-pleasing representation of it… a first stab at ekphrastic art if you will!

This is useful for two main reasons: it helps us understand the brain and human creativity and it helps improve artificial intelligence systems. Rachael-IA uses vocabulary-reduction and a free-association of ideas between what the user writes and ekphrastic descriptions of a knowledge base of artworks; sentence by sentence. Once the visitor asks her to generate an image, she applies her skills about painting in order to produce an original new piece of art, representative of the text provided.

Much remains to be done - such as adding styles, textures, synesthesia and symbolism - and we are particularly keen to find collaborators in the Arts & literary community to help us expand the knowledge base of artworks and also to refine her “artistic skills”. 

Dr. Marcelo Funes-Gallanzi, Chairman, The Goodwill Company Ltd.

Find out more at: www.ekphrasis.net