for this project, I was asked to devise some sort of system in which a poem could be randomly generated using the words that I had found while searching for text around the city (previous project)
In all honesty, I didn’t originally plan for this project to be about anything. I was sitting in an office watching elevators open and close when I noticed that as one elevator was opening in one direction, another elevator was closing in the same direction, thus creating the illusion of one fluid movement. It felt so serendipitous and unreal that I wanted to make something with it. My method of generating poems was simple. I associated each elevator on each floor of the New School University Center with a word. When someone on my floor would enter an elevator, I followed them in and noted whatever word was on the door of the elevator we entered together. When they left the elevator, I would leave with them and record the word on that elevator door. I did this usually for an hour at a time and eventually a poem would come to exist. 
Originally, I made a diagram in a notebook telling me which words went with which elevators. In doing this I assumed that there were six elevators on each floor, and that the elevators on each floor were numbered 1-6. None of this was true. I also forgot to include the lower level of the building in the diagram. I still got a poem out of it, but the process of recording it wasn’t as thought through as it could’ve been. The next time I went elevator creeping, I decided to tape my words onto the frames of elevator doors. This was much easier.
The next time I did it, I kept track of the floors as I passed them as well, just for fun.
After, I had my poems, I asked friends and family to record themselves reading the passages. I was curious about how different people might construct the phrases differently to create a poem. I asked two friends of mine at Parsons, one of whom enjoys writing and poetry, a friend at Cornell interested in both astrophysics and writing, and my aunt. I thought maybe different types of people would provide more variety.
I compiled these audios and some video I had taken into a video as closure for the project.
