This dissertation aims at comprehending interactivity in the digital work of art, through the perspective of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology. For such, I combine a general
objective – that of mapping mechanisms and strategies of interactivity in digital poetry – and
a specific objective – that of reading Rui Torres’ work Amor de Clarice – with the intention of better understanding both through their constant dialogue, on how they intercross, as to finally comprehend the process of interaction in digital work of art. For this purpose I return to
poems from the Iberian and Brazilian Baroque, Portuguese Experimentalism and French OuLiPo; being these, printed creations in which material construction and medium (physical support) are held as signifying elements of the work, as parts of the construction of meaning, which proposes to the reader a program to be understood for and in the act of reading, in which the procedural aspect of writing and reading become evident. To show how this occurs I utilized texts from writer-critics such as Ana Hatherly, Italo Calvino, Georges Perec, and Raymond Queneau, in whose works one may perceive this procedural aspect. In the final stage, I return to the digital medium and its techniques to examine, through phenomenology, the proximity between creation and interaction as expressive acts in the world, as the encountering of horizons, as acts that solicit us to inhabit the medium, allowing us to bring objects to our bodies and allowing them to participate in our being in the world.
(Source: Author's Abstract)