practice

As new ways of sharing stories emerge, how does this impact on our writing processes, the ways in which they are informed by previous practices, and the development of new possibilities? Technologies shape stories (Zipes, 2012, p. 21), yet as digital texts take on ever more varied forms – multimedia, sensor-driven, embedded in objects and located in landscapes – contemporary writing practices remain linked to the production of the printed book (Bolter, 1991, p. 5). This paper considers opportunities and challenges in shifting from using only chirographic and typographic tools in writing practice to utilising methods from the oral tradition and other practices.

(Source: Abstract ICDMT 2016)

Poetry is a field of writing/programming that presently finds itself disorganized in its sense of relation to digital practice. This is uncharacteristic for a literary genre that has been at the forefront of innovation in the 20th century. What is instructive at this point is an inventory of innovative poetic practice in the digital media. This paper offers a catalog of poetic practice from hypertext through new media to programmable media. The inventory also considers the tropes & materiality of such practices before offering a prospectus for e-poetry in an attempt to demarcate a field of practice for the work of innovative poets in the digital media.

Poetry's Digital Presence

Poetry's entrance into digital culture has been in fits and starts, at times stunted, ironically, by technology itself. What signs are there that the innovative poetries have not developed a clear sense of place in digital textual production? There is the dearth of any mention of digital poetries in most teaching anthologies. A distrust of the validity of digital practice is also reflected in the present lack of stature accorded electronic publication, particularly in academic circles. Finally, there is e-poetry's divided audience. Text generation programs evidence the same climate of disarray. Finally, we are faced with an inadequacy of vocabulary for discussing e-poetries.

An Inventory of E-Poetic Practice

A working definition of e-poetries can be extended by an inventory of present practice.

Hypertext/s

• Closed-system or "classical" hypertext. 
• Open-system. 
• Polysemous hypertexts.
• Disorderly links concept.

New Media

• Sound works.
• Works for three-dimensional performance. 
• Video works. 

Programmable Media

• Visual/kinetic works.
• Programmed texts.

Tropes & Materiality

Any writing/programming practice chooses specific positions and dynamics, tropes, and various approaches to engage the material qualities of the texts that are produced.

• Rhetoric. 
• Programming elements.
• Imaging systems.
• Performance engines.
• Code horizon.

A Prospectus for E-Poetry

One must accept the fact that an absolute common ground will never be precisely laid out and that divergent proprietary programs will repeatedly plague access to various e-poetries. Nonetheless, one can look to the existing common ground, the Web, and begin to develop an action plan that can be effected in that shared space.

• For link-based hypertext, what is the future beyond the link?
• Metabrowser technologies; which of these will prevail?
• What will programmed texts contribute?
• What will be the status of code as writing?

This prospectus calls for a collecting of writing/programming practices in a shared terrain where diverse performances may be witnessed. The word must circulate and must be viewable regardless of platform, corporate interest, or national boundary. Though the Web will not necessarily be a permanent medium, it is, like the book, a temporarily stable delivery medium for writing/programming -- and use of a shared space is called for. The Web and the writing/programming presently on it barely begin to explore the multi-faceted possibilities of its materiality; this locus for e-poetry is rich with the potentials of a practice that is multiple.

(Source: 1998 DAC Conference website, author's abstract)

This paper is proposed as the second part of an essay, the first part of which was presented at DAC'98, having the overall title 'Performances of Writing in the Age of Digital Transliteration'. Part one of this essay raised questions -- contextualized by reference to Walter Benjamin and Friedrich Kittler, amongst others -- concerning the intrinsically digital characteristics of text, along with certain implications of these characteristics (and what they have entailed, specifically and especially: the Net) for traditional literary culture, for the latter's critique, and for textual, especially artistic textual practices.

Whereas the first part engaged digital characteristics of textuality, this second is more concerned with practices themselves and theories of those practices. The first part argued that although inscribed textuality provides a, perhaps 'the,' paradigm of 'the digital,' it has, in traditional literary culture, been less susceptible to the varieties of (algorithmic) programming which works in digital media invite (because of their very structure). Despite this, 'programming' is proposed as both a more comprehensive and more accurate term, compared with, for example, 'authorship' or 'composition,' when setting out to indicate and characterize existing, potential and even traditional textual practices.

'Programming' operates here in the sense of an intrinsically provisional practice of inscription, prior to publication in whatever media; it is the detailed announcement of a performance which may soon take place (on the screen, in the mind); it is an indication of what to read and how. This sense of programming is poised to reconfigure the process of writing and *incorporate* programming in its technical sense, making it an inalienable part of textual practice. In fact, programming has subsumed writing *progressively*, as the paratextual features of textual art have become increasingly programmable by writers:- from the arrangement of programmatological atoms (letters) in syntactic sequences, to their layout (as in generalized page design), to more specialized spatial arrangements (as in visual poetry); through hypertextual orderings; algorithmic text generation; and kinetic textual performance. Writers are always already programmers.

(Source: DAC 1999 Author's abstract)

"Dovetailing Details Fly Apart - All Over, Again, In Code, In Poetry, In Chreods" by Strickland and Lawson Jaramillo carries the debate into the analysis of specific poems and poetic practices, both written and spoken, graphic and sonic, alphabetically and digitally coded. The essay also introduces a new reference for the debate - namely, the work of Gregory Bateson, who is cited not just as a supporting 'theory' or philosphical framework, but in the spirit of differential discourse that distinguishes Bateson's work.

(Source: introduction at electronic book review)