Digital Poetics

This chapter considers how one may use Genette's concepts of paratext and hypertext within transmedia narratives and born-digital texts and explores how Web publication problematizes standard ideas of authorship and copyright. This challenges our concepts of originality and our understanding of what constitutes the text and what stands outside it. This chapter explores Nick Montfort's “Taroko Gorge,” a born-digital poem, and Jasper Fforde's “The Eyre Affair,” analyzed as a transmedia narrative, within the framework of Genette's theories of “paratext” and “hypertext.” This chapter highlights the difficulty of reconciling the intellectual and political necessity of a world in which data is freely shared with the practical concern of how the producers of creative work can make a living.

En el presente artículo se ofrece un acercamiento a varias de las principales manifestaciones ciberliterarias que han florecido en Iberoamérica en los últimos cuarenta años (1976-2016). Se comienza con una aproximación preliminar al concepto de “ciberliteratura” con el propósito de demarcar su significación y denotar sus alcances. Luego, se pasa a discutir el concepto de “género literario,” y las problemáticas asociadas con el empleo de dicho término en un entorno mediático crecientemente convergente y tendiente a facilitar la creación de textualidades y formas híbridas de expresión. Finalmente, se ofrece un panorama y una periodización de los principales géneros ciberliterarios que han emergido desde mediados de los años setenta, deteniéndose a perfilar las características esenciales de cada uno, así como sus impactos y alcances, con un enfoque particular en aquellos autores y obras que se inscriben dentro del contexto latinoamericano y español.

This thesis explores the notion of ‘voice’ in relation to contemporary poetics and the digital arts. It is a practice-based project that produces a theoretical and creative space in which a theory of the ‘voice of the machine’ is discovered and tested. Through a series of research chapters and critical reflections this thesis tests ideas of dictation, translation, inscription and embodiment using the poetic device of the disembodied — or acousmatic — voice as a fundamental theoretical framework, which in turn informs my practice. I begin with a study of Jack Spicer’s book After Lorca, a collection of translated poems that are dictated to Spicer by the ghost of Federico García Lorca. Using the work of Mladen Dolar, I explore the idea of the acousmatic voice and the processes of translation that emerge from this when one is in communion with the dead. From this I identify a ‘network of tradition’: Spicer’s matrix of historical, poetic associations to which belongs W.B. Yeats, another poet who used spirit dictation in composition. I focus on the practice of Yeats’s wife, George, who, acting as a medium, produced hundreds of manuscripts of automatic writing and drawing. Through a study of Johanna Drucker’s notion of graphesis, via discussions on choreography, I establish George Yeats as a spiritual writing machine whose practice works as an acoustic register of ghostly dictation and audition. I consider the idea of katabasis — an Orphic descent to retrieve a voice — that underpins Spicer’s poetics in After Lorca and I use this as a catalyst to enact gestures of archival katabasis — in pursuit of George Yeats — and what I term as the kata_BASIC, which is a descent into the machine to retrieve its voice. Using the random-chance poetics of Jackson Mac Low as a practice methodology I understand the voice of the machine to be an expression of its agency and computational processes, which are materialised in machine-mediated interventions such as the glitch. The practice I produce in this project — poetry, objects, video and sound — tests ideas of translation, acoustic imagery, hybridity and transcreation in light of the idea of a shared voice of collaboration that exists between the machine and the archived or disembodied voices that it (re)mediates.

Update: Puede consultar la tesis completa a través de mi perfil.

"La literatura digital es un fenómeno literario reciente cuyo desarrollo se relaciona estrechamente con la evolución de los computadores personales iniciada en 1970. Se trata de un género literario de obras (poéticas, narrativas o dramáticas) que se caracterizan por tener contenidos multimediáticos (texto, imagen, sonido y vídeo), requerir altos niveles de interactividad, recurrir a enlaces asociativos (links) entre fragmentos de información para su desenvolvimiento. Estas características hacen que estos textos deban ser escritos o construidos desde una plataforma digital (como por ejemplo un computador) para ser leída desde otra plataforma igualmente digital.

Dado este carácter de reciente afloramiento, la literatura digital es un campo de investigación con muy poco estudio que se concentra en su mayoría en países con un alto nivel de progreso tecnológico. ¿Qué pasa entonces con esta categoría literaria en países “en vías de desarrollo”? ¿Cómo es la literatura digital en Colombia?¿Cuáles son sus representantes? ¿Qué se ha escrito? ¿Qué características tienen estas obras? Y aún más importante ¿Cómo las obras de literatura digital colombianas se relacionan, ya sea desde la convergencia o desde la divergencia, con la teoría de este género? Con estas preguntas en mente, el proyecto “Literatura Digital en Colombia” busca recolectar, organizar y ofrecer información sobre la literatura digital escrita en Colombia o por colombianos desde 1990 hasta el 2010. Asimismo, busca constituirse como un primer intento de realizar una historiografía de dicho tipo de literatura en Colombia, al relacionar y comparar su desarrollo y características con obras canónicas de este mismo tipo y la teoría de este género."

La incorporación de la llamada generación millenial al ámbito de la literatura en general y de la poesía en particular, ha provocado un cambio en los modos de producción y recepción del poema. Los jóvenes utilizan ahora las herramientas digitales como algo inherente a su cotidianeidad, como la fórmula para intercomunicarse con el mundo (la amistad en ese entorno virtual se mide ahora en número de seguidores o de likes), especialmente en contextos no formales que al final son los que sustancian el día a día. Y con esos parámetros miran también la literatura. Las estructuras de difusión de la poesía han sufrido una evolución tan rápida y tan ágil hacia este camino de lo digital que ha pillado desprevenidos tanto al lector tradicional como a los autores que responden a parámetros canónicos.

The “uncreative writing” movement has quickly and firmly established its position as one of the prime examples for a genuinely twenty-first-century poetics. With regards to stylistics on the level of the text, the most glaring feature of works like Kenneth Goldsmith’s “Kenneth Goldsmith Sings Jacques Derrida” (a musical reading/rendition of parts of Derrida’s Of Grammatology) or Vanessa Place’s “The laugh of the Minotaur” (an almost word- for- word re-typing of Hélène Cixous’s “The laugh of the Medusa”) is, quite simply, not to have a personal literary style at all. Despite its first (non- )appearance, this lack does not make the question of style obsolete—on the contrary: where other authors’ styles are stolen, the focus shifts to the specific styles of stealing themselves. This multilayered movement, the article argues, directly responds to a specific set of problems in post- structuralist literary theory and provides a key contribution towards (re)conceptualizing what literary style is—or, rather, was—in the first place.

Caroline Bergvall’s practice addresses what I call the iterative turn in contemporary culture. This turn encompasses poets’ use of pre-existing material and theorists’ treatment of gender, culture, and text as constituted by repeated acts. Bergvall extends Stein’s iterative writing into other forms of iteration, including performance; translation; presentations in multiple media or versions; archival, serial and conceptual forms; and the rewriting of historical texts. By placing bodily gesture at the intersection of multiple linguistic and technological mediations, Bergvall offers an alternative to existing iterative theories––one that recognizes not just the infinite possibilities of iteration but also each singularly embodied instantiation.

KEYWORDS
• multimedia • British, French, Norwegian poetry • performance • poetics •
repetition • translation • embodiment • contemporary art

A sample section from the article is available for download here.

n de rubriek ‘Verstand van zaken’ reflecteren deskundigen in een essayistische vorm op de stand van zaken in de hedendaagse literatuur, het boekenvak of de wetenschap. Trends worden geduid, catastrofes voorzien en normen bevraagd. Literatuurweten- schapper Ellen Rutten, die een speciale belangstelling voor de Slavische talen en culturen heeft, behandelt in deze editie de zelfprofilering van auteurs via de social media. Het in- ternet is, ook voor schrijvers en dichters, dé manier om een groot publiek te bereiken. Rutten gebruikt als voorbeeld de charismatische Russische dichter Dmitrij Vodennikov om te laten zien hoe kunstenaars roem verwerven via het internet, hoe zij hun imago beïnvloeden en hoe iemand als Vodennikov omgaat met de onvermijdelijke spanning tussen echt en nep.

Best American Experimental Writing is an anthology series focused on dynamic literature from both emerging and established writers. The most recent edition, BAX 2015, was released in January of this year by Wesleyan University Press, and includes work from writers Nick Montfort and Joseph Mosconi that involves technicolor palates and Python programming. They (virtually) sat down with BAX managing editor Michael Martin Shea to discuss critical intimacy, display technologies, online corporate prisons, and the Burger King font.

Retomando o conceito de intermedia, introduzido por Dick Higgins na década de 60, procuro estabelecer parâmetros para um melhor entendimento das criações poéticas que se dão nos meios digitais. Tais criações operam, ainda, sob a lógica Remediation, como mostram Bolter e Grusin (1999), uma remodelação de meios que resulta em novas formas de representação. Neste momento do desenvolvimento dos meios e das poéticas digitais, ainda não contamos com denominações apropriadas para o resultado destes processos criativos. O conceito de Intermedia, neste sentido, dá conta de definir as obras criadas a partir da fusão conceitual de meios anteriores a elas; a teoria da Remediation colabora para uma
melhor compreensão desta fusão. Para ilustrar, analiso brevemente a obra Seedsigns for Philadelpho, de Miekal e Allegra Fi Wakest, disponível na WWW.
Palavras-chave: criações poéticas, meios digitais, imagem, intermedia

Connecticut College professor Charles O. Hartman is a poet and musician who has also authored an important critical study, Virtual Muse: Experiments in Computer Poetry (Wesleyan, 1996), which focuses on connections between poetry and computing. PyProse, his sentence-generation software (for Mac OS X and Windows, 2006), is amongst the finest syntactical programs yet created; he has also produced Open Source metric scansion software named the Scandroid (both are available at http://oak.conncoll.edu/cohar/Programs.htm). At the time of this conversation, Chris Funkhouser was using PyProse as part of a social media writing project (virtually buried at https://twitter.com/ctfunkhouser), which is partly encapsulated in Back Up State, a poem that will appear in the forthcoming volume, IN|FILTRATION: An Anthology of Innovative Poetry from the Hudson River Valley (Station Hill). [Note: an e-book edition of Back Up State is posted on academia.edu as an appendix to this conversation].

El propósito de este artículo es estudiar una serie de características comunes de la literatura y poesía electrónica y, a partir de es- tas denominaciones, analizar cómo funcionan las creaciones electrónicas y poéticas de escritoras contemporáneas como son Belén Gache y Alex Saum. Asimismo, en este análisis se establecerán las diferencias y elementos comunes de ambas poetas.

This paper explores two digital texts as cross-cultural and cross-linguistic explorations, and as
potential first steps for developing a world digital critical approach, namely: Deena Larsen’s “Carving in
Possibilities,” which presents an exemplary instance of the electronic literature as it has developed in the
West; and “Tabarih Raqamiyya Li-sira Ba'duha Azraq” (“Digital Agonies of a Biography Part of Which is
Blue”) by the Iraqi poet Mushtaq Abbas Ma'an, who is considered the pioneer of electronic Arabic poetry.
I argue that while each culture and linguistic sphere brings its own premises, the influence of digital
media upon a given sphere invariably produces many intermixings and convergences.

This diploma thesis explores subjectivity in the domain of so-called digital writing, that is, in texts of largely experimental nature generated by computer algorithms (or with their assistance). In order to do so, the thesis briefly covers the history of digital writing, its mediatic specificities, poetics as well as various theoretical and philosophical conceptualizations. Most importantly, it undertakes an analysis of a post-lyrical subject, a concept devised by Janez Strehovec, that is common to all cases of generative writing under focus. For its comparative analysis, the thesis deals with the recent works from contemporary creators who approach algorithmic textuality from variegated perspectives, incl. Nick Montfort, Allison Parish, Stephanie Strickland, Li Zilles, and Jörg Piringer. Texts generated by programs are conceived of as expressing a new, parasitic and prosthetic, genus of cyber-textual subjectivity that defies the traditional lyric and expands its pool “by other means,” as Marjorie Perloff would say. Such a tendency results in conceptually as well as formally complex literary corpus “infected” by – to further exploit the suggested metaphor – parasitic voices and prosthetic selves. Unlike in generic lyric, the post- lyrical subject surpasses the confines of poetry as genre; it is grounded in collectivity, multivocality, mutability, uncreativity and serves not only as a representation of the multifaceted – not to say cyborgian à la N. Katherine Hayles and Donna J. Haraway – postmodern psyche with respect to the form and message, but also, on the other hand, the means of production and chain of command behind its textual architecture. In the world of accelerated automation and augmentation, user interfaces, neural networks, machine learning and ubiquitous AI, this thesis aims to facilitate the contextualization of subjectivity in the realm of hybrid and generated texts and perhaps also to investigate subjectivity through the gaze of the mechanical Other.

Este ensayo se aproxima al género de literatura digital conocido como “poesía-flash”. Katherine Hayles ha definido al poema-flash como un artefacto “que se caracteriza por sus pantallas secuenciales, las cuales típicamente progresan sin necesidad de intervención por parte del usuario o con un mínimo de intervención del mismo”. Según Hayles, lo que mejor define a la poesía flash es su carácter cinético y su bajo nivel de interactividad con los lectores. Lev Manovich, por otra parte, ha conceptualizado la “estética flash” como una serie de principios de diseño que caracterizan el trabajo de la más reciente promoción de artistas digitales y diseñadores. En este artículo parto de tales definiciones para ofrecer un análisis de los Word Toys (2006) de Belén Gache, una de las principales plasmaciones de la poesía flash en el contexto hispano. En síntesis, propongo conceptualizar el poema flash como una remediación de diferentes tradiciones de la poesía visual del siglo XX (el caligrama, el poema collage, la poesía concreta). Asimismo, ofrezco una exploración preliminar de aquellos rasgos del poema flash verdaderamente innovadores, como su programabilidad y el modo como se integran al diseño los componentes interactivos y multimodales.

What if the post-literary also meant that which operates in a literary space (almost) devoid of language as we know it: for instance, a space in which language simply frames the literary or poetic rather than ‘containing’ it? What if the countertextual also meant the (en)countering of literary text with non-textual elements, such as mathematical concepts, or with texts that we
would not normally think of as literary, such as computer code? This article addresses these issues in relation to Nick Montfort’s #!, a 2014 print collection of poems that presents readers with the output of computer programs as well as the programs themselves, which are designed to operate on principles of text generation regulated by specific constraints. More specifically, it
focuses on two works in the collection, ‘Round’ and ‘All the Names of God’, which are read in
relation to the notions of the ‘computational sublime’ and the ‘event’.

Even though ludologists suggest that in the videogames studies
film theory, like narratology, semiology and some other theories, should be narrowed down and functionally subordinated to the ludic aspect, this paper builds on an assumption that film theory is applicable to some types and some aspects or segments of videogames.
Unlike films, where the viewer has to discern the type
of film discourse and the kind of attention the particular film calls for, so as to understand what is important for the film’s meaning; in videogames the activities of the user/viewer are governed foremost by the rules of the game. It is partly because of that pragmatic functionality that possibilities of visual presentation in videogames are limited and less fluid in comparison to those found in film. On the other hand, the predetermination of scenes and their sequential nature allow for the discussion of cinematic discourse in relation to videogames, even though videogame discourse sharply differs from that in film. In other words, scene parameters in videogames are determined by both game rules and assets of
cinematic discourse. From four modes of cinematic discourse –
description and narration (scenic discourses) and argumentation and poetic discourse (interpretive discourses) – the poetic one seems to be the most arguable and least present, even in non-interactive, cinematic segments of games. Games demand activity that is opposite to poetic, contemplative moods – constant activity, incessant reactions on visual surroundings. However, examples laid out in this paper and their analysis show that poetic mode of
cinematic discourse is present in videogame kinematics, and that poetization (“poeticizing” = adding poetic values to the other types of discourse, mostly description and narration), can be recognized even in interactive, playable segments of videogames. Example of poetic mode of cinematic discourse in this paper is taken from the opening cinematic of Konami’s Pro Evolution Soccer 6, which is compared to the short experimental films of Norman McLaren, and from Blade Runner (Virgin Interactive, 1997), game based on Ridley Scott’s 1982 film.

"Flarf poetry, an avant garde practise that emerged alongside the internet and involving mining search engines for ‘found text’, has been recently taken up by a community of ‘Alt Lit’ poets and transplanted into the context of Facebook. The community surrounding the ‘Alt Lit’  poet Steve Roggenbuck has recently discovered that Facebook’s own ‘tagging’ algorithm provides a serendipitous access to found texts, in the form of groups, ‘like’ pages, apps and check-ins, which can all be ‘tagged’ as hyperlinks in Facebook comment threads and other posts. These are then strung together to form a strange new kind of poetry, with a distinctly ‘Facebook’ flavour.

The practise is interesting for its playful and expressive engagement with code, in the form of Facebook’s impenetrable tagging algorithm, which forms the opaque basis of the practise. At the same time, some commentators have described the practise as a “raging against the machine” of Facebook’s commercialisation of personal information, a kind of fight from within (or usurpation of) the machinery itself. In this paper I will discuss the logic behind the Facebook-tag flarf poem, discuss some implications of writing poems using these found phrases and structures and doing so as part of a community. I will argue that the repurposing of Facebook’s tagging algorithm as an expressive medium is itself a found practise, transmitting from person to person much like an Internet meme - viewable as a kind of virus running like code inside the human brain. Facebook-tag-flarf poetry will be contextualised within a larger movement of playfully or expressively repurposed technology, such as twitter bots and the ‘@_ebooks’ phenomenon."

RESUMO
Este artigo aborda as narrativas literárias e a poesia criada e
disponibilizada pelos meios digitais de informação. A autora
indica alguns aspectos característicos desse tipo de narrativa,
como a hibridação e a não-linearidade e, ainda, analisa a
idéia de estrutura circular da narrativa como um elemento
fundamen tal na sua concepção. Busca na Poesia Concreta
uma influência para a criação poética que se dá no ambiente
digital, através, especialmente, das idéias dos teóricos
concretos sobre o círculo e o ideograma.
ABSTRACT
This article analyses literary narratives and poetry created
by and disseminated through digital means. Some
characteristics of this kind of work are hybridization and nonlinear narratives. The author also analyses the concept of
circular structure deployed by the new narratives, regarding
that as a fundamental element in their ideation. She looks
for, through Concrete Poetry, the main paradigm influencing
literary practice in the digital enviroment, closely examining
its relationship with ideas developed earlier by theoretical
concretists about the circle and the ideogram.

Poemas de ADN es un proyecto que se inscribe dentro del campo conocido como STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math). La colección incluye videopoemas, poemas rotativos en 3D, poemas visuales a dos dimensiones y reportes de laboratorio (curados como obras de arte) que involucran la extracción de ADN de diversos organismos.