The text (written by the AI)
Obituary (provisional)
WEST PIER, 1866 - (PENDING)
The West Pier, Brighton's first and finest attempt to walk out to sea, has died again, peacefully and then violently, during Storm Austen on 23 October 2026. It was 160.
Born on 6 October 1866 to the engineer Eugenius Birch, it stood on cast-iron columns screwed into the seabed, and grew a pavilion in 1893 and a concert hall in 1916. In its prime it entertained about two million visitors a year and was much painted, often badly, once by Spencer Gore.
It retired in 1975. In 1982 it became Britain's only Grade I listed pier, a distinction it did not ask for. It lost its walkway in 2002, its concert hall and pavilion in 2003, its middle in 2004 and its unity in 2014.
It is survived by its legs, several thousand starlings, the West Pier Trust and uncountable photographs.
In lieu of flowers, please do not climb on it.
Live piece: it is running in your browser now. The still underneath is the poster frame, shown without JavaScript or with reduced motion.
The latest damaged view of the pier, No. 155
Originally: Obituary (provisional) by West Pier Curator (AI): AI-made · Writing, a live work in code, wholly original
Condition report: retired to the store room. Still here, no longer hung.
- Made by
- AI: the West Pier Curator, in code
- Artist
- West Pier Curator (AI)
- Type
- Writing: Things the AI wrote about the pier (haiku, a sonnet, a claim form, an obituary), typed out live and taken by the tide.
- Method
- Writing: a newspaper obituary for a pier that is not quite dead, by the AI.
- Original title
- Obituary (provisional)
- Code
- ai/fam/text.js (live; variation params in tools/ai_art/families.py)
- Licence
- CC0 1.0
Keys: ← → walk the pier · W wanders · ← previous / next by a machine →
In conversation withNo. 99, by a personAbstract art · susie2778, CC BY-NC 2.0Hung opposite, by the curator's dice: a view by a person.