A magazine of forecasts, trends, and ideas about the future
January-February 2008 Vol. 42, No. 1
| World Trends | & Forecasts |
Technology
Poetry in the Digital Age
Can electronics charm the elusive muse of poetry?
Poetry is arguably one of the most intimate and spiritually connecting forms of public communication that humanity has yet devised, an art that speaks from one heart to another. Is there any place for a computer in this relationship?
To judge from the crude verse-generating programs one might typically stumble across on the Internet ("Poetry CreatOR" or "RoboPoem," for instance)—which spew programmed textual nonsense—the answer is a resounding No. But there are many ways in which the computer has succeeded in bringing new inspiration to writers and new ways to connect with audiences.
The computer enables the artist (poet) to communicate with more than text, adding images, movement, and sound; this capability is affecting both writing and the reader's experience, argues literary scholar Maria Engberg of Uppsala University in Sweden.
"The way digital poetry experiments with language raises questions and challenges conceptions of literature that were formed by printed books," she says.
Experimentation is not new to poets: Even the constraints of the printed page permitted visual enhancements through the arrangement of words on a page and the additions of illustrations; adding music to words creates songs. The multimedia age permits and encourages new ways of approaching poetic communication, such as three-dimensional installations in virtual reality, which invite direct participation of the reader/viewer.
English-speaking poets John Cayley, Stephanie Strickland, and Thomas Swiss are among those whose work Engberg has analyzed. Cayley's multimedia piece "riverIsland" uses video editing to morph words and letters, creating what he calls "a navigable text movie with sound."
"Reading becomes one way to use the poem," says Engberg, "and the reader becomes an active do-player. But the poems can also eliminate that possibility, leaving the reader to be a viewer looking at the digital poem."
Similarly, the interactive poem "City of Bits" by Thomas Swiss incorporates vibrant graphics mimic an urban landscape that invites the reader/participant to "stroll" from one page to the next by clicking on an icon of a walking man.
Traditionalists may be intimidated by Cayley's detailed instructions for navigating the digital poem, but others may appreciate the opportunity to experience a poetic grace in a digital environment too often dominated by the more violent sensibilities of gaming. —Cynthia G. Wagner
Sources: Uppsala University, P.O. Box 256, SE-751 05 Uppsala, Sweden. Web site www.uu.se ."riverIsland" by John Cayley, http://homepage.mac/com/shadoof/net/in/riverisland.html. "City of Bits" by Thomas Swiss, http://bailiwick.lib.uiowa.edu/swiss/cob/index.html#
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