Scentology: Core Concepts & Application
Scentology: Core Concepts & Application
The rise of AI-assisted writing has triggered a wave of concern: fears of mimicry, plagiarism, and emotional absence in machine-generated texts. This project approaches the question from a different angle. Rather than outsourcing creativity, I engage the AI as a tonal collaborator—a responsive surface against which my emotional registers are tested, fractured, and refined.
This is not a theoretical treatise, but a practice-based reflection. It documents the co-writing process from a poet's perspective, where tonal calibration becomes the primary focus. The goal is not to prove the machine's capacity to feel, but to examine how its limitations can help humans write more honestly.
Model used: GPT-4 (custom tone-iteration prompts, no API coding involved)
Working techniques:
Mirror tone modulation
Narrative rhythm alignment
Detection of scent-residue (emotional aftertone)
Theoretical frame (light references):
Barthes: The punctum—the emotional sting beyond meaning
Bachelard / Scarry: Poetic space and emotional presence
Benjamin: Reverberation as memory logic
These frameworks support the idea that what lingers unsaid often holds the emotional weight.
A triptych of poems demonstrates the tonal evolution across human–AI co-writing:
1. Words' Birthday (original poem)
2. Names I Never Wrote (AI imitation)
3. A Handful of Obituaries (human rewrite)
Each version is annotated with tonal commentary. The AI captures rhythm and structure but lacks "residual weight." In my rewrite, I disrupt syntax, compress imagery, and withhold resolution to create a deeper tonal descent.
AI can generate the shape of language, but not its duration of feeling.
Tone is not aesthetic decoration; it is the unfinished emotional action of the writer.
The machine can simulate emotional texture, but it cannot hold emotional responsibility. That remains the human task.
In this collaborative process, I did not outsource authorship—I distributed sensation.
The AI responded to language. I responded to its failure to feel. And in that gap, a poem was born.
You're afraid AI will take your writing.
I'm afraid people will forget how to hear themselves in what they write.
This is how I use AI:
Not as author.
Not as oracle.
But as a surface I press against until I hear what I didn't know I was trying to say.
Tonal Pressure Curve (Suggested Visual Aid — forthcoming)
This visual will sketch emotional density, rhythm complexity, and tonal residue across the poem versions. To be appended in the next version of this proposal.
A graph comparing the emotional density, rhythm complexity, and tonal residue of each poem version.
This proposal demonstrates an applied research method aligned with Scentology and the AMI framework. It is the first tonal field report from an emerging ethics of emotional co-authorship.