what about forms?
Since I came to America, I’ve filled out numerous forms, including VISA, I-20, W-2, DS-194,…etc. They all have their numbers and indexes. I realized that filling out forms means to apply for something, thus indicating I’m still an outsider for what I am applying for. Starting from the most basic part, VISA, just to be in this country legally, then I-20, a study permit, then DS-194, the record every time I depart and arrive at this country. And also lots of others forms that come after these, to deal with all aspects in my life here. I realized how few forms I had to fill out when I was living in my home country. Here, these forms are my identity; this is how the government has registered me, and thus, every time I travel, I have to bring a folder of testimonies. It feels inhuman when the officer admits the documents more than recognizing me as a person. And the languages used in the forms make me feel even more so – alienated and foreign.
stuff I used
#01 Tracery
Starting in week 3, I used Tracery to create prompts for the forms. The results were sarcastic to me. The level of my incomprehension of the generated documents is almost the same as the forms I see in real life. The number of prepositions and nested nouns confuse me with the subject the question is asking.
#02 Transformer, GPT2
Using transformer and GPT2, I used the questions generated from Tracery as prompts, letting the computer answer the forms itself. I also added a government department on the top and a scary statement that its consequence always looks severe, but I also cannot not sign.
#03 Standalone Python in Browser, HTML, Flask
Last but not least, to make those generated forms look official, I find the layout necessary. So I wrote a standalone python script in my text editor, adding HTML elements such as tables and hyperlinks, trying to build the structure of a form in the browser. Currently the HTML is written in a very messy way in Python, in the future I would love to integrate in a cleaner way to make it possible to use in a more generative way.
These are the main function code I wrote to run in a browser. As you can see the last part is so messy…(but it works!) Using the render_template enables me to write a simple CSS for the page.
return "<h2>"+dpt+"</h2><b>"+date+"<br><br>"+instruction+"<br><br><br><br>"+section+"</b><br><i>"+notes+"</i><br><br>"+"<table><tr><td>"+prompts[0]+"</td><td>"+output[0]+"</td></tr><td>"+prompts[1]+"</td><td>"+output[1]+"</td></tr><td>"+prompts[2]+"</td><td>"+output[2]+"</td></tr><td>"+prompts[3]+"</td><td>"+output[3]+"</td></tr><td>"+prompts[4]+"</td><td>"+output[4]+"</td></tr></table><br><br><p><b>"+vow+"<br><br>"+signature+"</b><u>"+computer+"</u><a href ='https://tuan-h.com'> [ print ] </a></p>"+render_template('index.html')
Final output
Other thoughts & Future Development
- use other corpora
-
- instead of GPT2 -> for a more specific tone/ logic
- choose corpus based on the government department?
- the prompts are often too short to generate logical answers
- include user input
- instead of local host -> connect to the server and a domain
This is like an experiment with something that makes me feel alienated. Initially, I thought computer-generated content would be a good fit for it, that’s why I chose this direction. However, after spending time with it, I feel like there are a lot more aspects of this medium that are worth exploring. The authoritative stance, what questions to pose, what aspects the form wants to learn from its applicants, etc. By using different corpora and formats, I might be able to dive deeper into more specific themes and messages.