e-poetry

Simulating computer-mediated environments that dominated our lives in 2020, in merged with the screen for days, computer-generated stanzas that move across a four-array structure play unpredictably together -- allowing, if the reader generates several versions, multiple views.

The history of generative poetry is referenced in the background by Jonathan Swift's Lagado Engine from Gulliver's Travels. (the drawing probably did not appear until the 1727 third edition). Swift imagined this engine as a satire that predicted where literature, art, and science would go astray centuries later. But for years, I have been haunted by the beauty of his illustration. 

In the first column, backgrounded by the Lagado Engine, some of the texts are taken from The Roar of Destiny, a work I began in 1995, while I was working full time online for Arts Wire. In The Roar of Destiny, I wanted to simulate the merging of real life and online life that occurred when at least half of one's life was spent online. I recall that we thought that many other people would soon be working in this way. But that did not happen until 2020, when it was mandated by an epidemic. 

The other columns were written in response to COVID-isolation. The title, merged with the screen for days, is taken from a line in The Roar of Destiny. 

My work with computer-mediated generative literature began in 1988 with the generative hypertext system that I devised for the third file of Uncle Roger and subsequently used to create its name was Penelope in 1989. In my creative practice, a literary "engine" -- that I design, code, and write -- seeks to fulfill an individual vision that would be difficult to convey in print. 

merged with the screen for days is available at https://www.narrabase.net/merged/merged_cover_index.html 

(Source: Author's abstract)

A collaboration with the Queensland State Archives, this is a collection of digital poems using archival material built into a physical space. Interactive elements cleverly repurpose old archive equipment such as card index drawers and microfiche machines. The poems draw on Brisbane’s past and recreate the experience of losing yourself in archival material.

https://www.slq.qld.gov.au/qut-digital-literature-award

This presentation will explore random e-poetry and interspecies based on two electronic works: one that intersect humanity and insect-like robotics titled “Robot-poem@s”, and an eproject/poem based on a performance with sheep: “Negro en ovejas/Black on Sheep.” Robotpoem@s consist of insect-like robots (five quadrupeds and a bigger hexapod) whose legs and bodies are engraved with the seven parts of a poem written from the robot’s point of view in bilingual format (Spanish and English). Binary constructs such as creator/creature are questioned by these creatures purposely chosen from open-source models resembling insects and spiders, thus emphasizing anxiety and removal from humans while underlying the already problematic relation between humans and technology. The final segment of the poem, number VII, rephrases the biblical pronouncement on the creation of humans, as perceived by the robot: “According to your likeness / my Image.” With this statement, the notion of creation is reformulated and bent by the power of electronics, ultimately questioning its binary foundations. An interface to explore these robopoem@s can be found at tina.escaja.com (requires Flash): http://www.uvm.edu/~tescaja/robopoems/quadrupeds.html. This interface shows the original quadrupeds with options for listening to the poems in three different languages (English, Spanish and Chinese), interacting with 3-D models of the quadrupeds, and experiencing Augmented Reality components triggered by the panels that served as matrix of the robot-poets. On the other hand, “Negro en ovejas” is a digital “ovine poem” which intersects words and sheep in an interactive poetic project that allows random poetry as created by the sheep as they graze in the pasture, a performance enhanced and extended to the possible variants created by a digital interface: https://www.badosa.com/obres/ovino/index.html This project includes, therefore, various levels of poetic action and interaction. First there is the process of constructing the text, the base-poem formed by words which have meaning in and of themselves, but also acquire new meanings by contacting with other words (the noun “Sol” - “Sun”- and the verb “Es” -“Is”- become the plural “Soles” -“Suns”- through proximity or contact). Once the written pieces are constructed, they are assigned to sheep who will freely form poems in a performance of movements and bleating which will become its own entity. Finally, when the event is transferred to the digital artefact, any web surfer can access and reproduce the process in a cybernetic interaction and in an exchange which affords them creative authorship: the web user, just like the sheep, creates the poetic experience, joining forces with  the sheep as well. The presentation of the interface at ELO2019 would potentially capture some of the verses in a suggestion and proposal of new interactive dimensions. Both e-lit projects allow for a questioning of binaries and media-assumptions based on electronics, interspecies and random poetry.

White-Faced Bromeliads on 20 Hectares is a digital poem, which includes a mixture of primarily the English language with some instances of Spanish. In this work Glazier explores alternatives to our customary experiences, through the use of a generator which changes the text of the poems every 10 seconds, turning it from it’s traditional static state to one with movement and change. Furthermore, the evocation of traveling through the images and anecdotes, provides an exploration of a multilingual and multicultural experience. Additionally, the presences of the HTML code leads to a work with multiple possibilities, primarily on how the reader perceives and experiences the work due to the possible technical reading of the code and the multiple possible poetic readings.

Author description: White-Faced Bromeliads on 20 Hectares is a JavaScript investigation of literary variants with a new text generated every ten seconds. Its goals are as follows. (1) To present a poetic evocation of the images, vocabulary, and sights of Costa Rica's language and natural ecosystems though poetic text and visuals. (2) To investigate the potential of literary variants. Thinking of poems where authors have vacillated between variant lines, Bromeliads offers two alternatives for each line of text thus, for an 8 line poem, offering 512 possible variants, exploring the multi-textual possibilities of literary variants. (3) It explores the richness of multiple languages. (4) It mines the possibilities of translation, code, and shifting digital textuality. Having variants regenerate every ten seconds provides poems that are not static, but dynamic; indeed one never finishes reading the same poem one began reading. This re-defines the concept of the literary object and offers a more challenging reading, both for the reader and for the writer in performance, than a static poem. The idea is to be able to read as if surfing across multiple textual possibilities. Such regeneration allows traces of different languages to overwrite each other, providing a linguistic and cultural richness.

Blending Spanish and English and offering a sort of postcard prelude to each of its constantly changing stanzas, White-Faced Bromeliads on 20 Hectares is a poem that explores alternatives and crossings. From line to line the reader can enjoy the turns of phrase but then must figure out how to deal with their constantly turning nature. Options include waiting for the line that was being read to re-appear, re-starting from the beginning of the line that just appeared, or continuing from the middle of the word or phrase.

"Chi ha ucciso David Crane?" (2010) is a "possibility" story and it has a single page beginning of the story and a reduced number of end pages. The novel is narrated in the first person by the protagonist, who proposes to the reader from time to time the choices to continue reading of the single story. At the beginning of the story the reader finds himself in a dangerous situation for the protagonist, and immediately he is offered an important choice: continue the current story or remember the previous facts to understand, in a long flashback, the reason why the protagonist he is in that situation. The choice is important from the point of view of the narrative because, in the case you choose to live the current story, it will no longer be possible to go back to reading the flashback (unless you start the novel from the beginning). Vice versa, the choice to read the flashback will allow, at its end, to resume the events "current" and to read the story started on the first page.

Source: http://www.parolata.it/Letterarie/Iperromanzo/IperCrane.htm

“Młodość 1861 liter później” (“Youth 1861 letters later”) is a work based on Adam Mickiewicz's poem „Oda do młodości” (“Ode to the Youth”) from 1820. After the user activates the process, the original poem disappears letter after letter and the title changes accordingly to the number of disappearing signs. On the entry page we could see the original work by Mickiewicz which in this case is entitled “Młodość zero liter później” (“Youth zero letters later”) and user by clicking the top right corner of the page or the Esc button activates the process which is defined as “doczekiwanie starości” (“waiting for the senility”). The process of disappearing goes in one, inevitable direction and cannot be reversed, the only thing a user can do is to pause it or witness the terminal decay of the work into nothingness. After all letters are gone the title displayed is: “Młodość 1861 liter później” (“Youth 1861 letters later”).

Original work by Adam Mickiewicz is one of the flag examples of Polish romantic tradition, which in this case could be characterized by the grandiloquent tone of the work and totality of the presented vision. The implied timelessness and grandiosity of “Oda do młodości” in “Młodość 1961 liter później” is contrasted with the absolute inevitability of decay and the passing of time. Something that once was the anthem of the youth turns into nothing more than a collection of empty spaces and the explosion of human potency is reduced to the possibility of mere pausing or postponing what is terminal.

“Młodość 1861 liter później” is one of the examples of Leszek Onak's prolonged investigation into the topic of time, present in his previous works such as “Kręgosłup Czasu” (“Spine of the Time”) from 2011. What is specific about “Młodość 1861 liter później” is its seriousness and undoubtedly pessimistic tone.

The work is dedicated to Genowefa Zmarlicka.

“PONTOS” is an (im)possible attempt of approach between margins by means of intersecting visions. It is a process of alterity between two symmetrically opposed perspectives ((two poems written by two persons on each bank of the river Tagus), in a gradual endeavor of (self)reflection (a permutational poem aided by computer software) which will result in a continuous transmutation by an audience (a combinatorial text open to mutation by means of tactility). On one side, margin A, always more beautiful if seen from margin B; on the other side, margin B, offering a privileged space for the contemplation of its antipode, albeit its paradoxical non-existence. “What is the vision of the person that I can't see but that I know it is on the other side?” “With whose eyes would I describe my margin, from a side that I sense being impossible to reach for myself?” By trying to build a bridge, no more than a connection between points, “PONTOS” represents the experiment of being another, by means of words, always playing with the (im)possibility of fulfilling it.

Objects is a digital poem. It creates random combinations with the 27 seven names of the portuguese women killed by their spouses in 2015. The code is based on Silly Poet by Abe Prazos. 

(Source: https://www.openprocessing.org/sketch/244543)