Gray Area Grand Theater: Weirding AI: Fine tuning and RAG for Poets & Artists

This 2-day workshop invites participants to explore the intersection of AI-generated poetry and queer poetics, crafting their own fine-tuned, AI-driven poetic voices. Rather than simply prompting a language model, participants will engage in the deeper creative act of designing the datasets that shape AI’s expressive potential—curating its tone, constraints, and poetic identity.

We’ll examine AI as an uncanny poetic collaborator, situating our work within a lineage of algorithmic writing that spans Markov chains, Oulipo constraints, and contemporary LLMs. Through hands-on experimentation, we’ll move beyond surface-level AI generation to explore fine-tuning and dataset curation as a form of authorship, uncovering how AI can serve as an extension of poetic intention, surprise, and enchantment.
Concepts We’ll Explore:

AI & Divination: Generative text as a form of oracular revelation (Tarot, automatic writing, AI as an unpredictable mirror)
The Psychedelics of AI: The uncanny, the surreal, and the queerness of probabilistic meaning
Poetic Constraint vs. AI Uncanniness: What happens when we design the constraints rather than just generate text?
Performance, Theatricality & AI: What does it mean to create an AI with a persona? How do we perform with machines?
Fine-Tuning vs. Prompt Engineering: The difference between curating a dataset vs. writing good prompts

This workshop is for poets, artists, and technologists eager to experiment with AI not just as a tool, but as a co-creator—one that challenges, surprises, and extends our sense of poetic authorship.