Since 1986, besides videopoetry, E. M. de Melo e Castro worked on a series of experiments with other computer media (suportes informáticos), coined by the author as “infopoesia” [infopoetry], in which he used image editor software. Once more – and this is a fact the analysis by Jorge Luiz Antonio (2001) does not highlight – the prevailing choice of image editors at the expense of word processors reveals the visual affiliation of Castrian poetics. The infopoems’ visual animations acknowledge pixel as the primary unit of meaning, in the perspective of an infopoetic language. Some of the resulting images were published in Finitos Mais Finitos: Ficção/Ficções [Finite Plus Finite: Fiction/Fictions] (1996) and Algorritmos: Infopoemas [Algorythms: Infopoems] (1998), whose initial essay develops “a pixel poetics” and explains the amalgams created in the title. The quest for transgression, which is underlined by the book’s title (1998), is followed by the quest for formal synthesis:
Open “Zig and Zag” by Sérgio Caparelli and Ana Cláudia Gruszynski.
“Zig and Zag” is one of ten ciberpoems created by the writer Sérgio Capparelli and the graphic designer Ana Cláudia Gruszynski for “Ciberpoesia” website that features a series of 28 visual poems created by the Brazilian duo. Like “Bembo’s Zoo,” this is more than just digital versions for visual poems also published in a printed book, the ciberpoems of Capparelli and Gruszynski has an important educational role, it catches the interest of children and youth for digital poetry through creative and stimulating presentation.
Minicontos Coloridos is a collaborative project conceived by Brazilian journalist, writer and teacher Marcelo Spalding in 2013. The short tales are structurally and conceptually associated with colors in a playful way. To access the stories, the reader should mix the primary RGB colors through a pull down menu available on the website in HTML which hosts the tales interface. The website offers three blending options for each of the three primary colors, totaling 27 short tales.
“Memory” is an interactive digital poem composed by kinetic texts and speech sound programmed in Flash by Brazilian researchers and digital poets Alckmar Luiz dos Santos and Gilberto Prado.
Take it (2013) is a digital videopoem created by the Brazilian digital poet Wilton Azevedo. Conceived originally in English, this videopoem consists of video images that intertwine the verses constantly moving across frame according to the soundtrack frequency through an interface with a Processing script.
“Ceci n’est pas un nike” (This is not a Nike) (2002) is a web interactive project created by Brazilian multimedia artist Giselle Beiguelman. The project proposes a pun inspired by the enigmatic phrase “Ceci n’est pas un pipe” (This is not a pipe) inscribed in the painting, “La trahison des images” (The Treachery of Images) created by the Belgian surrealist painter René Magritte in 1929. This Magritte painting is notorius to cause the viewer a weird dissociation, because it proposes a breakdown of meaning between text and image despite the obvious relationship between them.
“Ceci n’est pas un nike” allows the interactor two basic interaction forms: visual and textual. Through visual interaction is possible distort, in many ways, the image of a tennis shoe. The distortion effects is implemented through a Java application developed by Alex Rosen and renamed e-nike generator by Giselle Bielguelman. The interactor can save the result in a gallery of samples After making his intervention at the picture, and exhibit his work alongside interventions of digital poets as Komninos Zervos and Jim Andrews. The second interaction form is a textual experience that allows the interactor to edit new text on the original text of the author, adding their reflections the project.
One of the most eloquent expressive forms of poetry in digital media is inscribed in territory between the image and the written word. For centuries, the text was directly linked to speech and image associated with the representation, though poets like Mallarme and Apollinaire and other artists such as Magritte and following Cy Twonbly and Jean-Michel Basquiat challenge these limits.
Giselle Beiguelman invites the interactor to reflect about the word / image classical dichotomy through an ironic and provocative approach. In digital media, languages interacts one with each other. Texts transformed into images and vice versa. Words move from side to side of the screen. Objectivity becomes ambiguity. Poems are language distortions and new contexts created by semantic and syntactic provocations. By providing means to manipulate, distort and break the image of this capitalist icon Beiguelman offers to his interactor, the possibility to create new contexts from the forge of visual discourses.
Undoubtedly, Giselle Beiguelman’s “Ceci n’est pas un Nike” reveals to the interactor a new way to see and read the digital poem.
“Dois Palitos” (“Two matchsticks”) (2008) is the title of an e-poem by short story writer, Samir Mesquita based on “Two matchsticks,” a popular saying in Brazil. The origins of this Brazilian folk expression are difficult to determine, but its significance indicates the rapid execution of a task. The matchbox is a Brazilian’s old friend. Even with the absence of musical instruments several sambas have been created accompanied only by the cadenced rhythm of these improvised little rattles. Today, in the Internet and microblogging age, the matchboxes inspires new literary genres.
Ricardo Aleixo, Brazilian poet, musician and performer is one of those artists who do not fit into labels. Attentive to media art, poetry, music and performance transformations, Aleixo weaves his poetic textures with diverse elements that often converge in the digital media. Openly interested in the poiesis, his eclectic performances are not restricted to poem reading. In these performances poetry, dance, music and multimedia projection go scene with the performer’s body. As such performance presentations are ephemeral and unique, it need to be recorded on video, edited and expanded with the introduction of sound and visual inserts to be published later.
“Machine Gun Nest” (servilivres) by Erthos Albino de Souza
* Credits: servilivres, Musa Speculatrix series, published on “Qorpo Estranho” brazilian magazine nº 2, 1976
The Brazilian poet Erthos Albino de Souza (1932-2000) has a prominent role in the international digital poetry, but unfortunately the records of his work is scarce. Only recently an exhibition was held in his honor: Erthos Albino de Souza. Poetry: the Dactyl to the Digit displayed on the Instituto Moreira Salles, Rio de Janeiro collecting printed poems, letters and journals and other relevant documents, such as the rare copies of the magazine Code (1974 -1990) edited and funded by Erthos.
According to its author, Agnus Valente, “Uterus therefore Cosmos” is a kind of work in progress developed during the years 2003 to 2007. In this project, several e-poems created by Valente and his twin brother, Nardo Germano, explores the expressive and conceptual potential of the World Wide Web. “Uterus therefore Cosmos” brings together in one digital environment, works by visual artists, poets and musicians from different eras. Valente proposes a dialogue between his poems authored with his brother and the work of brazilian poets and visual artists.
