“E-poetry relies on code for its creation, preservation, and display: there is no way to experience a work of e-literature unless a computer is running it—reading it and perhaps also generating it.” Stephanie Strickland outlines 11 rules of electronic poetry.
Machines of Disquiet (iPad App) has been developed in the context of an ongoing research project at the University of Coimbra, Portugal, and its goal is to create a Digital Archive of the Book of Disquiet [Livro do Desassossego – LdoD], an unfinished work written by Fernando Pessoa between 1913 and 1935. Machines of Disquiet is the name chosen for a number of experimental applications for mobile devices (iOS and Android) that aim to provide reading and aesthetical experiences based on the text of the Book of Disquiet. Every application is an attempt to find a new setting for experiencing the LdoD as sensitive matter (i.e. matter experienced in different modalities – text, drawing, sound, image, motion) and explores the expressive potential of these types of devices, particularly in terms of interface (e.g. multi-touch interactions and motion sensors). (Source: ELO 2015 catalog)
At the heart any scandal is a story, or a thing of many stories; sc4nda1 is even more peculiar, but also begins with a telling. What you have before you started as an essay (or intent to rant) about an observation I kept reading in recent criticism, that electronic writing has not been properly dressed for the serious table. Where, the questions ran, are the publishers, the editors, the established and establishing critics? In a time of intense experiment and innovation, who says which textual deviations make real difference, and which are just bizarre? More ominously: where are the naive, casual readers, the seekers of pleasurable text who ought to move design's desire? To spin an old friend's epigraph, just who, exactly, finds this funhouse fun? ...And so to the thing itself: probably more exploration than investigation, though who knows what offenses may come to light. You may find it (inevitably) a post-serious entertainment for hand, eye, ear, and brain, other organs optional. If the thingy deserves a generic name, try arcade essay, a cross between philosophical investigation (well okay, rant) and primal video game. Duly object-oriented, the work no doubt inherits bad attributes from both parent classes, but hopefully some virtues as well. There is one sure way to find out. (Source: Author's description from website)
Deep Surface requires a Web browser with Flash Player 7 or later. Audio is an important part of the experience, so you will also want headphones or powered speakers.
“A Pen” is an exploration of text as a tool for writing, rather than as the result of writing. It is about the interpenetration of code and language in programmable media to imbue letters and words with behaviors, allowing the poem to emerge from their play. It is about creating tools for the readers to become involved in the process of shaping the poems that arise from these processes. Last but not least, it is a further development in Jim Andrews’ lifelong exploration of the visual characteristics of written language, and the capabilities of computers to both render it and reinvent statuesque letters as dancing signifiers that respond to input from the reader.
(Source: Leonardo Flores)
This suite of Letterist sound poems for the iOS platform offers several environments and behaviors for the letters that inhabit them.The interfaces go from simple to complex, and Piringer uses phrases with the verbs “draw, control, build, create, and connect” to guide the reader to interact and play with the letters and tools offered. (Source: Leonardo Flores, I ♥ E-Poetry)
This course enabled an online cooperation between teachers and students within a cooperative transatlantical teaching framework, it is based on a collaboration between the University of Siegen, Germany and Brown University, USA. Five student groups were assigned one topic and one work (plus relevant examples), as well as leading questions to discuss and close read the assigned work. Topics included: installations, textual instruments/instrumental texts, digital photography, and mapping art. Over the semester students discussed their assigned work via an online forum, while participating in face-to-face classes at their universities. For a final session both students and teachers met online for a video conference.
News Reader is software for reading and playing the network news environment. News Reader initially offers the current "top stories" from Yahoo! News — which are always drawn from mainstream sources. Playing these stories brings forth texts generated from alternative press stories, portions of which are (through interaction) introduced into the starting texts, gradually altering them. News Reader is an artwork designed for daily use, providing an at times humorous, at times disturbing experience of our news and the chains of language that run through it.
Source: Turbulence
"Pax" is a lesser apocalypse that began to unveil itself one stormy spring day near Dallas when someone closed the terminal and the guns came out. It's about flying and falling, truth and desire, nakedness, terror, and the home land. While some may find these themes all too American, they are as Chekhov might have said originally Russian: recall what happened to those cosmonauts who took off from the USSR and landed in the CIS, displaced by a trick of history, discovering (as we all must) that we travel through time as well as space. It's become a common experience these days, this journey to another world, this never coming home. Especially when the guns come out.
As will be apparent, this is not a work of literature in the ordinary sense; neither does it have the formal properties of a game, though it is meant to be be played as well as read. Taxonomic questions--whether this text is hyper, cyber, techno, or oulipo, indeed whether it is "text" at all--I leave to those who care about such matters. Some years ago and in another world, John Cayley pointed out that we play many things besides games--for instance, musical instruments. He went on to wonder if we could create textual instruments, rule-governed systems for producing patterns in which the element of configuration or play is highly prominent. Though it is probably not what Cayley had in mind, the form of "Pax" began as an attempt to realize his suggestion.
(Source: Author's description on About Pax page)
Afeeld is a full-length collection of playable intermedia and concrete art compositions that exist in the space between poetry and videogames. It was published as a 'Digital Original' by the Collaboratory for Digital Discourse and Culture at Virginia Tech in 2017.
Content from Afeeld has been exhibited at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, the 2013 Modern Language Association Convention in Boston, MA, the 2012 Electronic Literature Organization Conference in Morgantown, WV, the Carroll Gallery at Tulane University, the Ellen Powell Tiberno Museum in Philadelphia, PA, the CalArts Library in Valencia, CA, the 2011 Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference in Washington, D.C., the 2010 Post_Moot Convocation at Miami University of Ohio, and the Zaoem Festival of Contemporary Poetry in Ghent, Belgium. Excerpts have also appeared online in Abjective, Certain Circuits, London Poetry Systems, Otoliths #16, Oxford Magazine, and Word For/Word #14. Alphabet Man was published as a chapbook by Slack Buddha Press in April 2010, and was honored with an &Now Award for Innovative Writing in 2012. Count as One was published as a chapbook in the Fall 2009 issue of New River: a Journal of Digital Writing and Art. This is Visual Poetry was published in July 2010, as the 51st chapbook in Dan Waber's "This is Visual Poetry" chapbook series. Asterisk has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, through a grant made by the Humanities Gaming Institute at the University of South Carolina.
(Source: About Afeeld)
In "Errand," animation is used to establish links and disjunctions between images of moving objects in the natural world (e.g. frogs and butterflies) and the lexical and figural dynamics of the poem. These visual-kinetic images heighten the tensions among the meaning—mobilizing acts of "seeing an image," "watching a movement," and "reading a word." The work also employs cursor-activated elements, such as "touching" and "reading." "Errand" reflects on the nature of language and of reading, and these self-reflexive elements are embedded in considerations of how protocols of reading shape our consciousness.
(Source: Electronic Literature Directory entry by Patricia Tomaszek)
