Short form scholarship on born digital poetry and poetics.
Open “Face the Facts” by Dan Waber
This poem is built on a two dimensional array with a simple interface that allows people to read the text horizontally and vertically. The position of the pointer (or a contact point on a touchscreen device) triggers which line or column of text is highlighted for readability. Extracted from an ambitious work titled Unbound, this interface illustrates some of the reading strategies necessary for the larger work, which is implemented in a printable form.
This series of spatially combinatorial poems are built by arranging words on a five by five three-dimensional grid, using the same engine as in “I, You, We.” Readers can manipulate the object in several ways, zooming in and out and rotating the cube to allow certain phrases to come to the foreground and be read. There is always a word around which the rest of the cube rotates, giving it special meaning within the potential phrases the cube can produce.
This generative poem produces more sestinas than the known universe. To be precise, it can produce 910,251,623,407,960,787,539,543,324,904,089,233, 758,905,973,536,329,779,381,000,049,443,843,029,464,779,513,168,359,606, 194,209,951,426,108,247,244,800,000,000,000,000,000 possible variations (as calculated by Waber). It’s a heck of a lot more than Queneau’s Cent Mille Milliards de Poèmes (100,000,000,000,000 poems), which would require more time to read than is possible in a lifetime. After a certain point, one would have to wonder what is the point of reading a poem that is impossible to read fully?
Perhaps that is not the point.
Este poema generativo produce más sestinas que el universo conocido. Para ser precisos, puede producir 910,251,623,407,960,787,539,543,324,904,089,233, 758,905,973,536,329,779,381,000,049,443,843,029,464,779,513,168,359,606, 194,209,951,426,108,247,244,800,000,000,000,000,000 variaciones posibles (según lo calculado por Waber). Es mucho más que el Cent Mille Milliards de Poèmes de Queneau (100.000.000.000.000 de poemas), lo que requeriría más tiempo para leer de lo que es posible en una vida. Después de cierto punto, uno debería preguntarse ¿cuál es el punto de leer un poema que es imposible de leer por completo?
Quizás ese no es el punto.
This generative sequence of poems are based on a carefully scheduled sequence of changes: words fade in and out, letters fade in and out to transform words, spacing changes in words to produce different meanings or direct our attention to the etymology of words, alternate spellings, homophones, and puns replace words to subvert traditional meanings, and much more happens in this sequence of 105 poems.
Esta secuencia generativa de poemas se basa en una secuencia de cambios cuidadosamente programada: las palabras se desvanecen, las letras se desvanecen para transformar las palabras, espacian los cambios en las palabras para producir diferentes significados o dirigen nuestra atención a la etimología de las palabras, deletreos alternativos, los homófonos y los juegos de palabras reemplazan las palabras para subvertir los significados tradicionales, y sucede mucho más en esta secuencia de 105 poemas.
(suggestion: zoom in on the letter…)
This delightful sequence of minimalist concrete poetry is an homage to Bembo’s Zoo and Anipoemas is the result of a creative collaboration in which the technical and the conceptual become truly interconnected. Its minimalist aesthetic includes technical aspects like producing it with animated GIFs— an early Web technology for animation— and keeping font sizes close to 12 points, and using the Courier New font, which is simpler and Web-friendlier than Bembo. These creative choices are designed to make readers pay attention to the text, as well as emphasizing the minimalist graphics in which just a few pixels can make a huge difference.
Open “I, You, We” by Dan Waber and Jason Pimble
This piece places you (as the “I”) in the middle of a vast cube made up of words in rows. Whether you wish to control the rotation of the cube or allow the program to rotate it along different axes for you, you are in for a dizzyingly fascinating ride. Choose lines to read along horizontal, vertical, diagonal, or inward planes or focus on the phrases that emerge from the combinations of I, you, we and different verbs and the combinations of the phrases. You could spend a very long time inside this cube, losing yourself in its spaces and exploring its visually arranged permutations, and it would be time well spent.
Featured in The Electronic Collection, Volume 1.
