ELO 2012 Media Show – I ❤️ E-Poetry

“Circle” by Caitlin Fisher

May 1, 2013 by Leonardo Flores

This augmented reality (AR) work tells the story of three generations of women through a series of short poetic videos organized spatially on a table top installation. In the version documented in the video, the work used a printed out marker system and a webcam connected to a computer to move from one marker to another. As the camera is able to identify the markers, the software replaces them with a short video with a voice recording of Fisher reading a poetic text. Beautifully produced, the videos visually engage the theme of memory by focusing on old photographs, photo albums and family heirlooms, and reinforcing this aurally through vignettes that breathe life into these objects.

“CityFish” by J. R. Carpenter

July 28, 2012 by Leonardo Flores

This poem is about displacement— a fish out of water story about a young woman named Lynne whose imposed migratory patterns are the opposite of what most people choose follow. Lynne’s adventures in New York City all draw attention to people, animals, and things displaced in time and place, the result of immigration, population shifts, fishing, and family visits.

“In Absentia” by J. R. Carpenter

July 27, 2012 by Leonardo Flores

This autobiographical narrative poem is mapped onto a Google satellite image of the Mile End neighborhood in Montreal, where J. R. Carpenter lived for 11 years. This lends the poem a sense of reality but from a physical distance, perhaps analogous to the speaker’s temporal distance from the neighborhood. And much like those satellite images are composed of multiple photographs taken at different times and combined to provide a clearer picture, this work has several writers, lending their voices in English and French as multiple perspectives on Mile End. The main voice belongs to Carpenter, whose previous work “Entre Ville” brought textures to life in this neighborhood.

“The ELO 2012 Media Arts Show: A Retrospect”

July 4, 2012 by Leonardo Flores

On the occasion of the Electronic Literature Organization 2012 conference— a biennial event that brings together some of the best scholars and artists in the field— curator Dene Grigar and co-curator (and conference chair) Sandy Baldwin put together a Media Arts Show worthy of the attention of the e-lit community and the rest of the world.

“i made this. you play this. we are enemies.” by Jason Nelson

June 25, 2012 by Leonardo Flores

This poetry game is a sequel (of sorts) to his popular “game, game, game and again game,” this time focusing his satirical voice on popular Internet sites. His strategy is reminiscent of Tom Phillips’ famous artist book A Humument, because Nelson is inscribing on the surface of these websites to create games that critique and invite reflection upon their content, politics, and curating/filtering strategies. The platform game interface allows readers to explore the heavily inscribed pages, revealing poetic texts, videos, and getting subtly unsettled by harmless game “threats,” teleports, and amusing non-sequiturs. The title and the dynamics of the game poem itself engage the adversarial rhetoric of player vs. game (designer) and reader (and critic) vs. poet, particularly the perception that the goal is to win/understand the game/poem. My advice is to let go of those preconceptions and simply experience the work.

“Birds Still Warm from Flying” by Jason Nelson

June 24, 2012 by Leonardo Flores

The energy of the looped music clip and the whimsically tactile image of its title set the tone for a poem (or 43 quintillion poems) composed of lines about human relationships, spaces in buildings, medical procedures, books, computers, and more.

“Superstitious Appliances” by Jason Nelson

June 23, 2012 by Leonardo Flores

This set of six thematically linked poems revolve around appliances and obsessions about the body. From the outset, the Nelson seeks to unsettle the reader by taking a medieval, religious kind of image and placing it over a layer of what seems to be digital static, while a couple of soft audio tracks play: one a barely audible person speaking, and a throaty voice repeating “I will eat you.” As the reader explores this surface and clicks on links to go to the poems, she will be unsettled further by entering environments that respond to their presence in various ways. There is a learning curve for each poem as the reader figures out the interface enough to be able to read the texts, which increases the exposure to the environments Nelson has crafted for each short poem.

As you progress through the sequence, think about the use of the word “appliances” in the title, thinking about some of the lesser known aspects of its definition. Also, just read the title out loud.

“Spine Sonnet” by Jody Zellen

June 14, 2012 by Leonardo Flores

This conceptual generative poem draws lines randomly from a set of 2500 images of book spines, all in the areas of art, theory, and architecture. The result is a stack of 14 books with titles that can be read as lines in a sonnet. The image above is from the Web version, which contains much more information than simply what appears in the titles: color, width, varied typography, author, press, logos, and other pictorial information. The image below is from the iOS version, which only presents the titles in plain, left justified, sans serif white text on a black background.

“Rememori” by Christine Wilks

June 13, 2012 by Leonardo Flores

This poem about dementia through Alzheimer’s disease is structured through the use of a memory game. There’s a series of tiles with question marks that flip when selected, displaying an iconic image, text, or brief animation, accompanied by a question, usually about the person’s identity. Whenever you match a counter with the right one, it disappears until you complete the level. The game mechanics serve the dual purpose of encouraging readers to pay more careful attention to the work, while performing an activity (timed, no less) that evokes Alzheimer’s memory tests. As the work progresses in its 6 levels, the user name you choose from the list of options becomes heartbreakingly visceral as you realize what is happening to relationships with the increasingly ill character.

In this, as in her other works, Wilks shows a talent for creating simple interfaces that enhance the meaning and emotional impact of her poems.

Featured in ELO 2012 Media Art Show, & Avenues of Access

“Takei, George” by Mark Sample

June 12, 2012 by Leonardo Flores

This generative poem uses Nick Montfort’s Taroko Gorge engine to produce a poem about Japanese American Hollywood actor, public figure, and gay-rights activist George Takei. Sample selects words for the generator that represent three aspects of Takei’s life: his time in a Japanese internment camp as a child, his role as Hikaru Sulu in Star Trek, and his work as a gay-rights activist. The poem generated from these three very different frames of reference creates humorous combinations of disparate elements that lead us to reflect upon the differences between the utopian Star Trek universe and the United States in which George Takei battles against homophobic and xenophobic attitudes. This poem shows how past and present, fiction and reality, gay and straight, Japanese and American, pop culture and politics all resonate in the cultural icon known as George Takei.

Featured in ELO 2012 Media Art Show