Daphnomancy is an improvised music and text project by poet Michelle Detorie and guitarist Kurt Newman. The project began in 2005.

Materials: Hollow body electric guitar, FX, amplifier, ViaVoice voice recognition software, laptop computer, projector.

Process: Voice recognition software is fed signal from Kurt’s guitar amplifier and thus generates text from the sounds of the guitar. Text is broken, amended, and in other ways altered by Michelle in real time. Everything is 100% improvised.

Daphnomancy has been performed live and a collection of the poems created via the process has been published as a chapbook. A PDF of that chapbook is now available at the Poetry Center Chapbook Exchange. 

Read our article about the project (orig published in Kitchen Sink) here.