Portuguese

With this paper it is my intention to reevaluate the use of the adjective “haptic” with respect to a growing demand for tangibility between human and machine, namely through multisensory experiences made available by mixed reality/virtuality. From a haptological philosophic perspective, a tradition oscillating between the emphasis on vision and the emphasis on touch, this paper also intends to analyze notions of touch, gesture and contact, in their multiple meanings, in which the latter serves as a probe to explore the idea of cybrid bodies within processes of haptic perception in HumanMachine Interface (HMI).

The replacement of mechanical-electronic interfaces for tactile haptic contact with the screen, using hands, fingers and, in some cases, biological bodies, brings to the fore a series of literal gestures with obvious influence on the way we read and write in digital multimodal environments. Making use of a rhetoric based on perceptual qualities such as “transparency” and “softness”, this prosthetic reduction seems to give continuity to an ancestral desire of immediate and non mediated access to knowledge. On the other hand, it ends up by paradoxically reinforcing the domain of visuality propelled by Gutenberg’s paradigm as well as an understanding of reading as a visual process. Based on approaches and departures that paradoxes like these are able to trigger, I propose to examine notions of touch and gesture, in relation to writing and reading processes. Namely, taking into account the way it was understood by artistic vanguards such as the Portuguese Experimentalists – whose intermedial, cybertextual and intersensory concerns are still able to give birth to renewed readings when it comes to transactions between literature and digital. Furthermore, a special emphasis will be given to confluences of both analog and digital gestures, as one of the central characteristics of haptic reading processes produced by actual and virtual manipulations of the text in digital literary artworks

The present article proposes a reflection on the much-discussed theme of the ―neobaroque‖ in experimental literature. Drawing attention to the presence of baroque influence in the literary art of Italian Futurists and Experimental Portuguese Poets, I argue that, if cybernetic poetry is to be seen as a continuation of Experimentalism, its growing emphasis on gesture and touch should be analysed in accordance with theories pointing to the presence of a gestural dimension in the baroque and, as a consequence, in historical avant-garde movements. Particular emphasis will be given to the theoretical writings of Italian Futurist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and Experimental Portuguese Poet Ana Hatherly, two Vanguard exponents whose artistic works were directly concerned with the tactile/haptic dimension of arts.

A talk-performance delivered at the University of Coimbra on Torres's praxis. The talk was scripted with a constraint with the letter P. Bruno Ministro assisted by changing 'slides.'

The aim of this article is to highlight the dialogue established by Herberto Helder, in his poem Húmus – Poema Montagem, with the narrative Húmus by Raul Brandão, through examples of collage and textual combination processes carried out in the poem. Further description is provided, in an exploratory way, about the way by which Húmus – Poema Contínuo, a recombinational experience with both works carried out in the field of Cyberliterature using the textual engine Poemário, promotes a continuous textual metamorphosis of these creations, questioning the materiality of language and the uninterruptible metamorphoses of meaning.

(Source: Authors' Abstract)