experimental poetry

Although This work was presented by Scott as being located in the library at the opening of the End(s) of Electronic Literature Festival Exhibition at The Arts Library. Its was in fact not a part of the official Electronic Literature Organization 2015: The End(s) of Electronic Literature festival, and yet it was there.
The meta-story of this "space-hack" should be seen in relation to the history of the physical object itself (TV), (Taroko-remix),e-poetry as well as Foucault work Discipline and Punish, Panopticism and the power institutions.

The digita part of the Take Gonzo was hosted on the secret sub folder together with to the rest of the digital works presented in the End(s) of Electronic Literature Festival Exhibition Kiosk.

Hours of the Night, a collaboration between M.D. Coverley and Stephanie Strickland, is the most recent of their joint explorations. It arose from a concern for the portability of software in the current platform-rich e-lit environment, particularly because many of the tools they used in the past (Director, Flash) are no longer supported or have limited reach. Wishing to make use of a widely available and easily managed tool, they chose PowerPoint, believing it to be a popular, standard, authoring system, the products of which could be read on any desktop computer, tablet, or smart phone. Making and porting PowerPoint work turned out to be more difficult than anticipated. Fortunately the latest version of PowerPoint allows one to export MP4s from the PowerPoint file. Thus available in this exhibit is the truly portable MP4 and as well the PowerPoint file itself (as a slideshow). The latter is viewable only on a Windows machine equipped with PowerPoint for Windows and with the requisite fonts downloaded on it. The aesthetics of the piece are of course not those of a bit of a film but of a series of slides. Hours of the Night, an experimental poem, addresses subjects often avoided—age and aging, sleep and the night. (Source: ELO 2016, Artist's statement)

This is a presentation with commentary of two experimental original, collaborative digital poems: one with variora in two voices; and the other somewhere between a translation and a multilingual composition in English, Italian and French. “Digital Poetry” is understood to be language-based, formally structured art to which the digital dimension is indispensable in at least one of the following elements: composition, performance, or reception. We are two published poets who have worked for many years with translation in literature. This collaboration takes us into an exploration of the continuous re-invention of the speaking Subject through traversing languages in digital space. It breaks new ground in opening on to potential poetic conversations across cultures, even where interlocutors are far from fluent in each others’ languages. It is potentially an immediate way in to the kinds of discovery that can make translation so rewarding, but that are not generally easy to access without relatively long experience, especially in a literary context. The poems in our presentation were/are being composed through an email version of the corps exquis, where we agreed some simple ground rules, and then sent each other a couple of lines at a time. The ground rules were not rigid, and we soon loosened our initial attempts to include formal frameworks such as poetic meter. The most enduring agreed rule was not to open an email until ready to read and respond, and then responding immediately. These poems form the source texts. They are being programmed by Penny in close consultation with Paolo by means of digital Readers, part of the Readers Project with which the ELO will be familiar, and within which Penny has presented several times with John Cayley. John describes the digital Readers that are the basis of the Project as “distributed, performative, quasi-autonomous poetic ‘readers’ – active, procedural entities with distinct reading behaviors and strategies”. “Inextrinsix” is the nominal form of the epithet Penny coined to characterize how she programmes the Readers. The reason we have called these digital poems “inextrinsix” is that the idea of the “inextrinsic” embodies a contradiction, or tension (“in-ex”). This is because it concerns an essential property of digital poetry, that of its capacity to go deeper into poetic language, and translation, than was possible before it (intrinsic), but also because it then moves to foreground associative, or metonymic, traces (extrinsic). To give an example of a related linguistic element: paranomasia, or punning, is a feature of much digital poetry. Punning is an inextrinsic figure because it works by taking the reader into a figure of language, the direction of which then goes outward. It is also useful as an example because it has a visual element that transposes to sound, an attribute much more foregrounded in digital poetry than in the generality of printed poetry. Lastly, it is right on the edge of consciousness, which is perhaps the most important when it comes to digital Subjectivity. To elaborate a little: innovative language is necessarily oblique in terms of what is currently known. The joke work, like the dream work, can enable perception of the unconscious or preconscious, or that in which reason or the Symbolic is embedded. This is the terrain of the speaking Subject in process, and this is where moving between natural languages in digital form opens on to new potential. The electronic, inextrinsic Readers work on this threshold. The “completed” texts on screen start with a static version of the poem, which serves as a frame, part of which remains on screen throughout. The human reader then interacts with the digital Reader by pressing specific number keys on whatever device s/he is using. These works take my earlier collaborations with John forward mainly in the following ways: they are original poems, composed collaboratively via email; translation is treated almost as part of syntax in the programming; and the same goes for multiple voices. That is, the analytic strategies according to which the movements and “Readings” traverse the source texts are treated as if there were no distinction between a change of speaker, a change of language and the kind of grammatical or structural move native to poetry. The effect, however, is to expose where they overlap and where they do not, thereby revealing a differential comparable to a partial palimpsest. Digital Reading is what creates and opens this space. (Source: ELO 2015 Catalog)

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)

In Small poetic interfaces we will explore a series of four interactive and experimental poems written by José Aburto during 15 years of poetic work. Each of these proposes a form of special navigation not based in the use of a mouse or a keyboard. The poems are the following: Badly wrapped: It reflects upon the language as a construct where the cell is the written letter. The interface is based on a thread linked to a screen. As the reader pulls the thread, the poem unwraps. http://test1.phantasia.pe/entalpia/_dig/envuelto.swf Scream: If the reader wishes to read, then he/she must scream. The digital poem thus seeks to take the reader’s breath in order to ride the strength of the human voice turned into a scream. The interface is a microphone linked to a screen. http://test1.phantasia.pe/entalpia/_dig/grita.swf Conception of the dragon: We witness the entire process of poetry writing. We may see each of the poetic “bursts,” from the first to the last one, thanks to an automatic technique of saving in each pause. The interface consists of a screen connected to a dial that the reader may twirl in order to move forward or backward during the analysis of the poem. http://test1.phantasia.pe/entalpia/_dig/dragon.swf Returning is a place: Spherical poem which allows a physical, manual navigation. Working with the physical layout of the connections this textual surface was generated completely contained in a spherical format. A computer or screen will no longer be necessary for navigation. In this case, a 3D printout of the poem will be displayed. http://test1.phantasia.pe/entalpia/_coc/esfera/esfericas.htm

“My Own Alphabet” is a motion poem about disorder, learning new things, forgetting details and seeing from new and different perspectives. The poetry may look jumbled to you, but the author does not see it that way. Aleatory Funkhouser is a ten year old student from the USA who is interested in experimental poetry.