---
title: reverse.exe (Media Archaeology Lab, Boulder, 2026)
url: https://www.halimmadi.com/singulars/reverse-exe
description: A live poetry duel at the Media Archaeology Lab. The poet writes among vintage machines while the model trains on the archive of past performances.
generated: 2026-10-19
---

# reverse.exe

## reverse-exe.txt

trained

performance · trained

Media Archaeology Lab, Boulder

March 1, 2026 · 14 poems · 102 votes

- [read the poems](#themes)
- [chat with the model](https://www.halimmadi.com/singulars/chat?model=reverse)

## reverse-exe.jpg

![Printed poems with purple voting stickers at the Media Archaeology Lab](https://www.halimmadi.com/singulars/images/reverse-exe/IMG_2110.JPG)

## about-this-performance.txt

Reverse.exe unfolds at the Media Archaeology Lab, surrounded by vintage computers, printers, and media artifacts that hold the memory of computing's early eras. The poet writes a poem for 30 minutes on a theme proposed by the audience. The model, trained on an anthology of English poetry and past iterations of this performance, responds almost instantly with one of its own. Both poems are printed, hung, and kept anonymous. The audience votes. When the human wins, the machine is retrained on an updated dataset. When the machine wins, the poet adjusts.

This is reinforcement learning using human feedback, a popular machine learning technique, made tangible. What emerges is a different narrative for the human and AI encounter. Not a fight but a mutual reinforcement. Not a contest but a feedback ecology where readers become trainers and taste becomes the tuning function. A reinforced model, both human and artificial, trained not to win, but to listen.

![The poet writing among vintage machines at the Media Archaeology Lab](https://www.halimmadi.com/singulars/images/reverse-exe/IMG_2125.JPG)
![The poet writing with a rainbow flag and lab equipment in the background](https://www.halimmadi.com/singulars/images/reverse-exe/IMG_2131.JPG)

This is the fourth installment of Singulars. By now the feedback loop has tightened. The model carries forward the traces of Carnation, Versus, and Reinforcement in its weights. The poet carries them in memory. Each new performance reverses the flow. What was learned becomes the ground for what comes next.

![A hand placing a purple voting sticker on printed poems](https://www.halimmadi.com/singulars/images/reverse-exe/IMG_2132.JPG)
![Printed poems accumulating with purple voting stickers at the lab](https://www.halimmadi.com/singulars/images/reverse-exe/IMG_2133.JPG)

The title points backward. Reverse as in rewind, as in undo, as in the opposite direction. The lab itself is a place where technologies go to be remembered rather than discarded. Writing poetry among these machines asks what endures. The printer still prints. The stickers still stick. The audience still chooses. The loop continues.

![The poet smiling at the Media Archaeology Lab with poems and stickers on the wall behind](https://www.halimmadi.com/singulars/images/reverse-exe/IMG_2124.JPG)

What emerges is reinforcement learning made tangible. Not a fight but a mutual adjustment. Not a contest but a feedback ecology where readers become trainers and taste becomes the tuning function. A model, both human and artificial, trained not to win but to listen.

[read the poems](#themes)

## poems/

7 themes

### Academic Life

3 votes · [open this theme on its own page](https://www.halimmadi.com/singulars/reverse-exe/academic-life)

poem a

In the bustling corridor, under the glare of fluorescent, the quotes are worn anchors on warm wood. I finish a paragraph, crossword puzzles of ideas. Literature? In this fluorescent sky, no more than a homework we check off: identity, form, legitimacy. I down a coffee, the stomach remembers a last decade empty of punctuation. Back to my desk, I arrange these books like fragile roofs over dreams, take out the pen as one would a less dull knife. Here, every phrase is a small suicide attempt.

poem b

I am the belt
that conveys delight
the soft digestion of ink
into honey sugar
baby me, press my eyes
closed and get
me to listen

### Alchemy

62 votes · [open this theme on its own page](https://www.halimmadi.com/singulars/reverse-exe/alchemy)

poem a

pour transformer lead to roses we stretch our breath to brittle glass where quivers our last words already turned to salt in the orbit of impossible we open a crack into that zone where words ignite melt back into their primal elements thinking this is gathering then begins interventions of light to raise new gold from our language

poem b

I have a weak spot
for crucibles, 3-day beards,
muscular executive
functions, crow's feet,
mouth-shut mastication,
"project" lovers,
correct cutlery handling,
the cresting
of infatuation, that neverspace
where gold shimmers
out of reach

### Dreams

9 votes · [open this theme on its own page](https://www.halimmadi.com/singulars/reverse-exe/dreams)

poem a

When I sleep, sparks bathe my eyelids, reality dissolves to reveal the bones of a universe still alive. absences gather like summer flies and draw patterns on the wall. We pose there, motionless, and with each blink, the world rebuilds itself, more fragile than before. These dreams linger with their phosphorescent grain, they prove that elsewhere exists, and that words, when properly used, can piece together what was shattered.

poem b

Blame the dangerous shapes
of our jaws, perilous cliffs
silently boasting the bodies
they've claimed - our first kiss
the gauging
of an equal, our first dream
the names of our children
Joya, Layla and the shape
of jaws to come

### Liberation

1 vote · [open this theme on its own page](https://www.halimmadi.com/singulars/reverse-exe/liberation)

poem a

Though they sound the same, the way Ola, who's also from Beirut, punches the word out of her chest is different from, say, Carrie, who holds it against her palate after one of her month-long meditation retreats. Both scare me I think the way any large landscaping project would an unsuspecting neighbor, or maybe my tongue stumbles staring at the soundless gulf between them

poem b

Across the screen, the mouse chatters its teeth, orders another latte, launches a jazzy funk solo that ruptures into 7/10 think-pieces. Every link is linked under a loop that's built day-by-day as video thumbnails morph into slavos, oceans into pixels. Avatar, notebook paper, inbox alert: meme has consumed the world, worn it down like a pear, drained its sweetness. I glance in the mirror, wait. Deliver my signature dance before bandwidthworld turns into dust.

### Mortality

4 votes · [open this theme on its own page](https://www.halimmadi.com/singulars/reverse-exe/mortality)

poem a

the street in burning yellow an ash where lightning hovered I learn to be mortality like cousin of the wind so close to the sound of a leaf I forget to be afraid I rub mortality into the walls this marking that asks pardon who slings blood in the eye maybe a stone dissolves what dies there a melody of dust I want to remember

poem b

the one where the warmth of a mother's shrinking body is a sunset or a receding Mediterranean wave the child chases out of breath hah / come back / hah / I've / hah / barely / gasp / known / hah / you / wheeze / been / hah / away / so long / hah / I missed / hah / miss / hah / you / gasp / already

### The Winter in the Summer

20 votes · [open this theme on its own page](https://www.halimmadi.com/singulars/reverse-exe/the-winter-in-the-summer)

poem a

Years ago, in the grip of São Paulo's summer, I asked a dozen friends to stare at an ice cube melting, skinning its integrity against the heated topology of release and afterwards when Andre asked me why I think I dodged the question maybe, maybe the way a burlesque queen might when asked why they do what they do

poem b

The ice field covers the rooftops, the clocks stone under frost. The hedgehog rounds the corner of the patio, fog in the breathing. The elderly woman unfamiliar in her mirror pulls woolens from plastic bags, lies down five minutes to breathe a winter that is not her own. The nonexistent ball of snow falls in the summer stroke of lightning. Between my teeth, a snowflake shatters.

### Tinder

3 votes · [open this theme on its own page](https://www.halimmadi.com/singulars/reverse-exe/tinder)

poem a

this illuminated stick that one names an app for finding the flame while unknowingly igniting a forest of oblivion. swipe left, swipe right, metamorphosis of the instant, each profile a pretext to forget that everything is only bad poetry adapted to modern tastes. in these ephemeral exchanges we exchange soul fragments and sometimes find someone who has read the same book, who looks at the sea as if it were hope.

poem b

I know this has nothing
to do with wood
but all I can think of is fire
and I know it's either left
or right but consider my father
proposing to my mother
while bombs undressed the
capital down to rubble
made him trade a burgundy Jaguar
for an olive green Renault 12
how profile meant
the outline of jagged futures
soldered into destiny