This work is a kind of hypertext edition of Langston Hughes’ poem “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” contextualizes the poem by placing it in conversation with historical and biographical events, culture, music, poetry, visual arts, and its publication history.
(Source: Leonardo Flores, I ♥ E-Poetry)
This work is published as a video documentation of a simultaneously analog and digital poem— an instance of extreme inscription as described by Matthew Kirschenbaum. Written on a semiconductor alloy with “a focus GA ion beam” at font sizes much smaller than a pixel, requiring an electron microscope with magnification “ranges from 400x all the way to 10000x.” The naked eye cannot read this poem unaided, so the video takes us through an edited journey into the poem’s text reminiscent of Prezi, but much cooler in its materiality. (Source: Leonardo Flores, I ♥ E-Poetry)
This suite of four poems based on W. C. Handy’s “St. Louis Blues” was written using GTR Language Workbench— a kind of textual Photoshop that allows users to algorithmically select and transform a text.
(Source: Leonardo Flores, I ♥ E-Poetry)
This minimalist scheduled poem engages our ability to hold language in memory in order to act upon it. The text is displayed on two spaces simultaneously, though the header stream begins first before the second one in the box begins to compete for our attention. Each text is displayed one word at a time at a rapid rate, faster than we have grown used to with works by Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries or William Poundstone’s “Project for Tachitoscope.” In those cases the texts are synchronized to music, and potentially accompanied by other graphical elements, but Hatcher’s poem strips away all distractions from the text, which allows attentive readers to focus most of their consciousness on one of two textual streams, since it is virtually impossible to actually read both and make sense of them. You have to choose a track or risk having your train of thought derailed, so to speak, because of the speed at which they are displayed— 170 miliseconds per word (over 5 words per second).
The text written for this extreme kind of presentation has to be powerfully expressive with minimalist materials. Because the words are center justified, their length variations create visual rhythms that could be understood as a kind of meter. A slightly longer pause garners great attention for the words immediately preceding and following it, since it can be read as a line break after a very long line. Repetitions of words and phrases, even with minor variations, amplify their message dramatically under these conditions. And easily apprehensible juxtapositions between the two streaming lines can resonate powerfully for a reader attuned to them.
(Source: Leonardo Flores, I ♥ E-Poetry)
This poem may seem like a simple slideshow that combines text and images but it is built with born-digital materials that have little to do with print culture. The background images are taken from sprites—graphical objects that form part of a program visual design and contain programmed behaviors. Both in its choice of sprites and fonts, the work favors an 8 and 16 bit videogame aesthetic, evidenced by its pixellation and bold fonts. And even though by turning these materials into images, their programmed behaviors are stripped, they retain cultural impact, particularly for those familiar with their provenance. One doesn’t have to be videogame aficionado to appreciate their aesthetics, since a few decades of exposure to these videogame graphics has caused some cultural burn-in, to the point that they’ve become part of our visual and computational vocabulary.
(Source: Leonardo Flores, I ♥ E-Poetry)
“Clone-ing God & Ange-Lz” is graphical and scheduled in its presentation, transforming language and images in over time in ways that subvert traditional ways of portraying such figures. Short sound loops, animated images, and animated images of text with formatting and language changes enhance her mezangelle language practice with visual information, as can be seen in words like “prayah” (emphasis added 2.high[lite] the you.z of Y.t tXt in “ah”). (Source: Leonardo Flores, I ♥ E-Poetry)
“Birdfall” deconstructs a single narrative sentence written in conventional English and slowly transforming it into mezangelle. As you scroll down the window to read each line and prose poetry paragraph, the language becomes stranger as she inserts extended passages in brackets inside of words, shifts spelling to homophones with different meanings, adds self-referential metatext that suggests links, and more. She uses animated GIFs in the background and foreground to signal to readers that there there are shifting intentions, language, and narrative— as if the ground on which this text is placed is unstable.
(Source: Leonardo Flores, I ♥ E-Poetry)
An thorough encyclopedia to the future city of Copenhagen, as it is fictively evolving with nature, volcano outbreaks, extensive population and urban development. See Christian Yde Frostholms extended report on Radiant Copenhagen: http://cyf.dk/klumme/etvirkeligtparal.html
"Klokken fem samme morgen havde en organisation ved navn Radiant Copenhagen udsendt en pressemeddelelse, hvori de udgav sig for at være en nystartet underafdeling af selvsamme Wonderful Copenhagen og bekendtgjorde, at en replika i overstørrelse af den tidligst kendte udgave af arten homo sapiens, Jing Chang-kraniet fra Kina, skulle vikariere for havfruen, mens hun var nede hos kineserne. »En fantastisk idé, som måske kunne skabe lidt røre i andedammen,« som en talsmand fra Radiant Copenhagen formulerede det. Er det billedkunst? Litteratur? Performance? Det er gudskelov det hele på en gang og med garanti noget fjerde. At ville skelne er fuldstændig at overse hybridens potentiale. Men allerede som elektronisk kunst og litteratur repræsenterer det, takket være sit kæmpe omfang og sin gennemarbejdede form, et meget ambitiøst forsøg i dansk sammenhæng. " -Sitert fra Christian Yde Frostholms rapport on Radiant Copenhagen: http://cyf.dk/klumme/etvirkeligtparal.html Medvirkende: Maja Zander, Kaspar Bonnen, Stig W Jørgensen, Palle R. Jensen, Ida Marie Hede Bertelsen, Peter rasmussen, Kasper Hesselbjerg, David Rex, Ulrik Nørgaard, Daphne Bidstrup, Andreas Pallisgaard and Kristin Haarløv.
Collaborative artists: Maja Zander, Kaspar Bonnen, Stig W Jørgensen, Palle R. Jensen, Ida Marie Hede Bertelsen, Peter rasmussen, Kasper Hesselbjerg, David Rex, Ulrik Nørgaard, Daphne Bidstrup, Andreas Pallisgaard and Kristin Haarløv.
Seven accomplices with different backgrounds, from academical to performative to critical, is granted the opportunity to go amok in Goetrians poetry collection Risperdalsonetterne (The Risperdal Sonnets). Their starting points are different: be associative, go philosophical, give into, trying to interpret. Video, print, quotations and pictures supplements each other in a mosaic where the seven voices comment upon the poems and direct them in connection to other interpretations and collections.
Syv deltagere med vidt forskellig faglig baggrund har fået chancen for at gå amok i Simon Grotrians seneste digtsamling, Risperdalsonetterne. De har hver især valgt en sonet at tage udgangspunkt i: undre sig over, give sig hen til, fare vild i, associere ud fra, fortolke, aktualisere, irriteres eller begejstres over. Videoer, udskrifter, citater, billeder og stills supplerer hinanden i en mosaik, hvor de syv stemmer kommenterer digtene og rækker ud efter andre værker og fortolkninger. Den grafiske præsentation bringer de enkelte stemmer i dialog. Sitets læser kan vælge sin egen rute gennem vildnisset: der er mulighed for at bevæge sig gennem hver enkelt læsning i den rækkefølge, den er blevet til i, eller man kan forfølge temaer og associationer og springe på kryds og tværs i tekstdiagrammet.
"Jeg tror, det er vigtigt, at man læser Simon Grotrian fra kl. 5-9 om morgenen. Jeg er sådan virkelig A - eller AA-menneske og har sådan to store stirrende øjne på det tidspunkt, og det, føler jeg, er meget rigtigt, når man læser Grotrian." -Lars Bukdahl "Der er steder, der kan tolkes på ufattelig mange måder, og det er det, der gør den så enormt irriterende, denne her digtsamling." -Søren E. Jensen "Jeg er jo dybt fordomsfuld, jeg har jo for eksempel den fordom, at noget skal have en mening." -Kitte Wagner
This responsive (or “reactive” work as described in Megan Sapnar’s essay “Reactive Media Meets E-Poetry”) is a great example of a work that reacts to user input, though I’m not sure there’s enough of a language base to connect it to poetic tradition. Translated as “In the lion’s mouth” (though I feel “In the wolf’s mouth” is more accurate) this feels more like a visual art piece than a poem and I suspect Clauss would agree, since he describes his works in Flying Puppet as “tableaux interactifs” (interactive tableau). Regardless of classification, this is an engagingly atmospheric piece that invites interaction with a surreal payoff. Move the pointer and play with this work to discover what lies above and beneath the image and interface, considering all the layers involved. And don’t forget that you are one of those layers… (Source: Leonardo Flores, I ♥ E-Poetry)
