Portuguese

Since 1986, besides videopoetry, E. M. de Melo e Castro worked on a series of experiments with other computer media (suportes informáticos), coined by the author as “infopoesia” (infopoetry), in which he used image editor software. Once more – and this is a fact that Jorge Luiz Antonio’s analysis (2001) does not highlight – the prevailing choice of image editors at the expense of word processors reveals the visual affiliation of Castrian poetics. The infopoems’ visual animations acknowledge pixel as the primary unit of meaning, in the perspective of an infopoetic language. Some of the resulting images were published in Finitos Mais Finitos: Ficção/Ficções [Finite Plus Finite: Fiction/Fictions] (1996) and Algorritmos: Infopoemas [Algorythms: Infopoems] (1998), whose initial essay develops “a pixel poetics” and explains the amalgams created in the title. The quest for transgression, which is underlined by the book’s title (1998), is followed by the quest for formal synthesis.

[Source: Álvaro Seiça, "A Luminous Beam: Reading the Portuguese Electronic Literature Collection" (2015)]

Silvestre Pestana programmed in BASIC, first for a Sinclair ZX-81 and ZX-82, and then, already with chromatic lighting, for a Sinclair ZX Spectrum, three poems respectively dedicated to Henri Chopin, E. M. de Melo e Castro and Julian Beck, which resulted in the Computer Poetry (1981-83) series. Pestana, a visual artist, writer and performer – who had returned from the exile in Sweden after Portugal’s Carnation Revolution of April 25, 1974 – brought diverse influences put forward with photography, video, performance, and computer media. From his creative production, it should be emphasized the iconic conceptual piece Povo Novo [New People] (1975), which was remediated by the author himself in the referred series of kinetic visual poems, or “infopoems” (Melo e Castro 1988: 57). By operating almost like TV scripts, the series oscillates between recognizable shapes – such as the oval and the larger animated Lettrist shapes, formed by the small-sized words “ovo” (egg), “povo” (people), “novo” (new), “dor” (pain) and “cor” (color) – and the reading interpretation of the words themselves: “ovo,” the unity, but also the potential; “povo,” the collective, the indistinct, the mass; “novo” and “cor/dor.” This play of relations translates the new consciousness, although painful, of a “new people” in a new historic, social and artistic period, one of freedom and action. In an interview, Pestana (2011) claimed having researched more than thirty languages, only to find in Portuguese the possibility of traversing the singular and the plural, the individual and the collective, the past, present and future, by just dislocating a letter: ovo/(p)ovo/(n)ovo. [Source: Álvaro Seiça, "A Luminous Beam: Reading the Portuguese Electronic Literature Collection" (2015)]

One highrise. Every view, a different city. This is Out My Window -- one of the world's first interactive 360° documentaries -- about exploring the state of our urban planet told by people who look out on the world from highrise windows. It's a journey around the globe through the most commonly built form of the last century: the concrete-slab residential tower. Meet remarkable highrise residents who harness the human spirit -- and the power of community -- to resurrect meaning amid the ruins of modernism. With more than 90 minutes of material to explore Out My Window features 49 stories from 13 cities, told in 13 languages, accompanied by a leading-edge music playlist. (Source: http://interactive.nfb.ca/#/outmywindow/ "Credits")

'Sintext-W' (1999-2000) is a Java version for the Web of the text generator 'Sintext,' (1993) with the collaboration by José Manuel Torres. According to the Web Java demo, 'Sintext-W' can be understood as: In this space the cybernaut can have a first contact with the automatic text generator 'Sintext-W' (Text Synthesizer). The user can visualize the automatic generation of 3 generative texts available here: · 'Didáctica' (example) · 'Balada de Portugal' (extract) · 'Teoria do Homem Sentado' (fragment) For this purpose it is enough that the user clicks on the buttons located below, under the 2nd display window; in the 1st window one may consult the matrix-text which originates it. The text's flow rate may be accelerated or delayed by two controllers; the user can also choose to execute the texts in an endless cycle as a continuous creation of new meanings. (Text adapted and translated by Álvaro Seiça based on the Java demo version at http://www.pedrobarbosa.net/sintext-pagpessoal/sintext.htm)

According to Funkhouser’s reading of Barbosa’s poem “Porto” (1977), “Porto, a city built on steep granite cliffs on the coast of Portugal, is the inspiration for the language presented and rearranged by the author for poetic effect. The output appears as a block of text of capitalized letters, and as such it has a strong visual quality. Barbosa’s program, while certainly cyclical (…) enables 40,320 permutations. (…) The addition of prepositions adds three times as many configurations and prevents the poem from reflecting a slot apparatus.” (2007: 40). “(…) the overall effect that is achieved by Barbosa’s program is that endless different phrases are built that transmit different dimensions of the same sentiment.” (41) Funkhouser considers that there is a “sense of the passage of time (…) [and] other cultural aspects of the city and its people may be read into the lines, some of which nearly defy interpretation.” (41)