---
title: versus.exe (Mozilla AI Residency, San Francisco, 2025)
url: https://www.halimmadi.com/singulars/versus-exe
description: Guest poets join the duel. The circle widens across languages (Arabic, French, English, Spanish) and the model absorbs every collision.
generated: 2026-10-19
---

# versus.exe

## versus-exe.txt

trained

performance · trained

Mozilla AI Residency, San Francisco

November 1, 2025 · 14 poems · 190 votes

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

## versus-exe.jpg

![Versus.exe performance at Mozilla AI Residency, San Francisco](https://www.halimmadi.com/singulars/images/versus-exe/IMG_9920.JPG)

## about-this-performance.txt

Versus.exe grows out of the same soil where Carnation.exe first took root. In that earlier match, the poet and the model circled each other like two creatures sensing a future they did not yet know how to share.

The performance begins with a prompt: arrival, anger, joy, shame, or solitude. The model responds immediately; the poet takes thirty minutes. Two poems are printed side-by-side. Visitors vote with colored markers, their choices becoming “selection pressure” that influences both the poet’s and model’s future iterations.

There is a soft humiliation in losing to the machine. The poet spends half an hour crafting each piece while the model generates its response in seconds. But this dynamic is the medium itself. Fine tuning as craft. Iteration as sculpture. The work investigates how judgment transforms into learning, learning into taste, and taste into evolution.

In some sessions, the circle widens. Guest poets including Elise Liu and Theory have participated, introducing varied linguistic and emotional registers that shift audience response patterns across different languages: Arabic, French, English, Spanish.

![Audience voting during the Versus.exe performance](https://www.halimmadi.com/singulars/images/versus-exe/2831d8c8-b769-4e0d-ba6c-c1c838b4d131.JPG)
![Printed poems displayed for audience reading](https://www.halimmadi.com/singulars/images/versus-exe/IMG_1738.JPG)
![Close-up of voting stickers on poems](https://www.halimmadi.com/singulars/images/versus-exe/IMG_1718.JPG)

Rather than collaboration, Versus.exe represents fine tuning as craft and iteration as sculpture. Behind the scenes, dashboards track votes, themes, and decision patterns within the model’s probability distributions. Each audience vote influences future iterations. Winning human poems enter the training corpus, while successful model outputs become lessons for the poet.

![Performance documentation](https://www.halimmadi.com/singulars/images/versus-exe/IMG_1714.JPG)
![Poet writing during the performance](https://www.halimmadi.com/singulars/images/versus-exe/IMG_1700.JPG)
![Audience engaging with printed poems](https://www.halimmadi.com/singulars/images/versus-exe/IMG_1694.JPG)
![Installation overview](https://www.halimmadi.com/singulars/images/versus-exe/IMG_1685.JPG)
![Detail of poems on display](https://www.halimmadi.com/singulars/images/versus-exe/IMG_9911.JPG)

Human participants experience what the artist calls “soft humiliation” when losing to the machine, spending hours crafting poetry only to be outpaced by automated generation, yet recognizing this technological dynamic as the medium itself.

![Printed poem sheets with audience votes](https://www.halimmadi.com/singulars/images/versus-exe/IMG_9912.JPG)
![Voting stickers close-up](https://www.halimmadi.com/singulars/images/versus-exe/IMG_9913.JPG)
![Poems displayed on the wall](https://www.halimmadi.com/singulars/images/versus-exe/IMG_9915.JPG)
![Performance space overview](https://www.halimmadi.com/singulars/images/versus-exe/IMG_9916.JPG)
![Audience reading poems](https://www.halimmadi.com/singulars/images/versus-exe/IMG_9917.JPG)

> Human and machine become altered through their encounter, much like a mother altered by the milk she gives.

![Final installation view](https://www.halimmadi.com/singulars/images/versus-exe/IMG_9921.jpg)
![Documentation of the performance series](https://www.halimmadi.com/singulars/images/versus-exe/IMG_9940.jpg)
![Close-up of the performance materials](https://www.halimmadi.com/singulars/images/versus-exe/IMG_9925.jpg)

[read the poems](#themes)

## poems/

7 themes

### Anger

42 votes · [open this theme on its own page](https://www.halimmadi.com/singulars/versus-exe/anger)

poem a

Bury slice rip stretch
skin mangle maul shred
grind fire the field
of sight see the coarse
flavors of rage level
the kingdom down
to kinder soils warmer
voices and slower
fangs

poem b

Flash of chrome on the sidewalk:
deep breath, ignite the
shortbreath world. A city can be
our glove: locked fingers that
repeat stories in a blown car
horn for dying whales, the amber
shard of the night we'll never
hold. Splash of fumes like
prehistoric paint, we are
graffiti before dry wall.
Someone screams at nothingness;
I respond with a mug filled with
air, this confrontational
silence that keeps us awake.

### Death

5 votes · [open this theme on its own page](https://www.halimmadi.com/singulars/versus-exe/death)

poem a

Even the observation
that it's hard to speak of death
without becoming trite,
risks becoming trite.
So go ahead:
relish that meal,
bask in a post-coital glow,
cherish that conversation,
hear the roaring applause
of yet another achievement.
Hoard the mundane, the
transcendent,
and bury it all with you like a
king.

poem b

this bleeding against the
current of light/ death
dissolves what I am or what I'll
be/ embalmed photos wherefir
rest ajar/ with drops of dead
time/ I pawn the memory of you
to the last minute/ balancing on
the edge of to or not to be/
suicidal birds insert themselves
through my ears/ cricket dreams
find darkness where I had not
looked/ death makes billboards
of books I haven't read/ and the
ink runs when I open this
letter/ available that I was for
this moment/ of less than
nothing to become everything and
nothing at the same time/
shadows opening like petals
within flesh

### Memory

30 votes · [open this theme on its own page](https://www.halimmadi.com/singulars/versus-exe/memory)

poem a

a fractured glass, light so hard
it breaks itself. We carry these
shining shards - each word a
caress on glass - fingertips
trembling at the borders of what
we have been: this second
without regret; these voices
that echo softly because they
refuse to break altogether.

poem b

If a relationship falls in a
forest
and the parties involved fail
to grieve it together, does it
make a sound do the sheets
lose the skin's scent do the
symbols
in each letter stop spelling
anything
but the composting of promises
broken
like bread or bones
or lines
the length of splitting futures
trees growing hands out of
branches
stretching holding so the fallen
doesn't
make a sound

### Moral Responsibility

24 votes · [open this theme on its own page](https://www.halimmadi.com/singulars/versus-exe/moral-responsibility)

poem a

A litote is not a poem - a litote is a figure
of speech used by ChatGPT
in a million and n generations. A statement
of not followed by a statement
that may be less. "This is not an
example - it is a litote," for example.
Made by generations of poets and then
marketing executives, the litote
of Shakespeare is not a bad idea in a poem.
It makes you think
you are thinking. Yet a litote is not a
solution - it is the cost of living.
This poem costs a room in San Francisco,
$2k minimum, plus if the poet eats,
that too. Generations have been lost. The
litote has the right to defend itself.
Love is not time's fool and the litote is
not the hive mind's whip,
is not the question of how future
generations eat after I who makes the poem
early-exits these last two lines. This poem
is the agreement not to talk
about that. Eat what? How many hundred
thousand tokens to explain.
The litote is not the water bottle. Is not
the same red sky.

poem b

know how to appall oneself / what an
unbreathable suffocation / His little
fingers against the photos / this residual
gesture / the mouths closing / clerk at the
doorway / the moth of the key /
ball-darkness illuminated by a candle /
names / dates / precious and gibberish /
the instant grin / extended hand which
prohibitions / adjusted / rigid / before
beginning / to do / say / decide / not to
hide when it's night outside / become
candelabra when the step sounds / (the duty
to remember / but what is this moral
obligation / if not all these acts /
refusing to leave / embracing what comes /
daring / to dare three times / until this
classic of air / because the myth / is
always a '?' that stays lost)

### Solitude

51 votes · [open this theme on its own page](https://www.halimmadi.com/singulars/versus-exe/solitude)

poem a

I carry some solitude like a
cold tag of scent. light train
gliding through aluminum
buildings, each window holding a
world where I become a tourist.
inside this in-between I run my
hand over aging wood,
discovering a note of breath
caught there. solitude is to
candle every gesture of your
absence, to burn it all before
beginning again. then I go out,
turn the corner, and there you
wait for me in another light,
this what grants me happiness:
the loop where I lose myself and
find you there.

poem b

You measure yourself
like the coastline,
a so-called paradox,
since the shore runs
not in a straight line
but the wild scrawl of a
seismograph.
You can measure yourself, never
running
out of demical places like pi,
and never yield a useful map.
You view yourself as
idiosyncratic
but a useful map omits, averages
the jagged winding contours of a
self.

### Solitude II

34 votes · [open this theme on its own page](https://www.halimmadi.com/singulars/versus-exe/solitude-ii)

poem a

In the dusk of the mattress
firm website you can toggle
a size greater than California
king - "a bed so large
your body will think
it's a country", "foam so
absorbent you'll never
know the other
is moving", "a viscous latitude
so dense you'll drown
in your own breath"

poem b

No one knocks
on this door where I am
both the welcome and the closed
latch - I inhabit a country
with no borders its passport
is unreadable
Every word I write erases
the previous chapter
until I am only a question
mark stranded
in a sentence
that advances alone

### The Intersection of Art and Technology

4 votes · [open this theme on its own page](https://www.halimmadi.com/singulars/versus-exe/the-intersection-of-art-and-technology)

poem a

Light pixel-grid patterns ripple
across the gallery walls,
sculpted air breathing wire and
vibration. Invisible drivers
orchestrate these
electro-stones, invisible
bullets of nicotinized
lightning. A human cuds in front
of laser-coded canvases and
invites electrostatic sparks
harvested from old dreams. The
glow of digital druids spills
onto ancient stone, coating
alcoves with coded algae.
Between source and screen, an
abyss narrows, while hypertext
flowers burst on the tongue's
humid jungle. A little robot
reads Baudelaire, on a disk worn
like an oyster shell.

poem b

a listicle / a passive tense /
spraypainted
electric potatoes / a child
pulling the ear / of a muzzled
dog / the selfie cam / the
algorithmic birdsplat /
stone-mapped / suspensions in
glittering RGB / look / are you
looking / even fascists make art
/ gorgeous mural-work / the
light just so / the good strong
nose / & that glorious suiting /
so i don't defend art /
between the backslashes / what
is it / is it motion-responsive
/ alive / specific as tearsalt /
well-labeled by your human
feedback / ? / here with us at
the intersection /
the neon arduino heartbeat /
boop-de-boops / we are alive /
more than money / only so long /
our bits & bitterness / & when
you've done your time / the
light chimes on / & honey / do
learn to code / the future is
coming / & the skills do
transfer /