“Blue Hyacinth” by Pauline Masurel and Jim Andrews

Screen capture of Blue Hyacinth:  M M M M  Blue Hyacinth Pauline Masurel Jim Andrews  V I S P O Stir Frys Tabitha flexes against the collar . I try to sound as though I know what I'm talking about. in the alleyway. I just like the look of the grey mare; the bookie can tell, it was probably obvious from the moment I walked in. the hyacinth itself or secreted  When it happens the noise insists before,  ...it goes on for months  another in the corner is smoking. She's watching the race . Rather, it's a subtle matter of class, . when she can't gain entry, Across the road clubbers spill out on to the pavements - he comes. he goes. she waits  for weeks.  after all.  she picks her way back across the landing  - Do you want this,  I could report it  slowly, sadly who would care? and begins to stroke it through the sticky tangle of her hair.
Open “Blue Hyacinth” by Pauline Masurel and Jim Andrews

Slightly modifying the “cut-up” technique of Dadaist and Modernist writers in her digital work, “Blue Hyacinth,” Pauline Masurel encourages her readers not to destroy the original four poems, but rather jumble them together, stir them up, and weave them in a way that shares in the creative process of generating an individualized text. By presenting “Blue Hyacinth” as a stir-fry work (using Jim Andrews’ “Stir Fry Texts” framework) that allows readers to reflect on the original poems, Masurel is changing the author-reader relationship. Masurel ensures that readers become extensions of herself by encouraging readers to manipulate her writings and fashion a text that becomes less a traditional example of poetry and more a collaborative piece shared between individual reader and writer. With “Blue Hyacinth,” Masurel crafts a space where traditional print culture roles fade and are replaced by their mutable digital counterparts. Never once just a reader or an author, those that encounter “Blue Hyacinth” are able to exercise a semblance of autonomy that is novel to texts within the digital medium.

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“Blue Hyacinth” por Pauline Masurel y Jim Andrews

Screen capture of Blue Hyacinth: M M M M Blue Hyacinth Pauline Masurel Jim Andrews V I S P O Stir Frys Tabitha flexes against the collar . I try to sound as though I know what I'm talking about. in the alleyway. I just like the look of the grey mare; the bookie can tell, it was probably obvious from the moment I walked in. the hyacinth itself or secreted When it happens the noise insists before, ...it goes on for months another in the corner is smoking. She's watching the race . Rather, it's a subtle matter of class, . when she can't gain entry, Across the road clubbers spill out on to the pavements - he comes. he goes. she waits for weeks. after all. she picks her way back across the landing - Do you want this, I could report it slowly, sadly who would care? and begins to stroke it through the sticky tangle of her hair.
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Modificando ligeramente la técnica de “corte” de escritores dadaístas y modernistas en su obra digital, “Blue Hyacinth“, Pauline Masurel anima a sus lectores a no destruir los cuatro poemas originales, sino mezclarlos, agitarlos y tejerlos de una manera que comparte en el proceso creativo de generar un texto individualizado. Al presentar “Blue Hyacinth” como un trabajo de salteado (utilizando el marco “Stir Fry Texts” de Jim Andrews) que permite a los lectores reflexionar sobre los poemas originales, Masurel está cambiando la relación entre el autor y el lector. Masurel asegura que los lectores se conviertan en extensiones de sí misma al alentar a los lectores a manipular sus escritos y crear un texto que se vuelva menos un ejemplo tradicional de poesía y más una pieza de colaboración compartida entre lectores y escritores individuales. Con “Blue Hyacinth”, Masurel crea un espacio en el que los roles de la cultura de impresión tradicional se desvanecen y son reemplazados por sus contrapartes digitales mutables. Nunca solo un lector o un autor, aquellos que se encuentran con “Blue Hyacinth” son capaces de ejercer una apariencia de autonomía que es novedosa para los textos dentro del medio digital.

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“Speak Poems” by Jason Edward Lewis, Bruno Nadeau, Jim Andrews, David Jhave Johnston, J.R. Carpenter, and Aya Karpinska

"Speak App" by Jason Edward Lewis and Bruno Nadeau
“Speak App” by Jason Edward Lewis and Bruno Nadeau

Speak Poems” by Jason Edward Lewis, Bruno Nadeau, Jim Andrews, David Jhave Johnston, J.R. Carpenter, and Aya Karpinska

This suite of poems by several prominent writers in the e-lit community was written using the Speak app, an authoring system developed by Lewis and Nadeau. This is the first in the P.o.E.M.M series (Poems for Excitable Mobile Media), a series of apps designed to explore the expressive, artistic, and publication potential of Apple’s iOS computational environment, Store, and touchscreen devices. The app opens to “What They Speak When They Speak to Me,” Lewis & Nadeau’s original touchscreen poem for large installations. The app offers other poems as well as the option for readers to explore the system by entering texts. Considering the effort that goes into creating computational frameworks for e-lit works, it is a great idea to open them up for further writerly interventions. It is therefore worthwhile to see what four talented writers have done and how their own poetics and thematic concerns are expressed through this framework. The main observable variables are font and lines of text, which readers access in different portions and sequences.

  • In “Character,”Jim Andrews writes meta textual lines from the personified poem’s voice that focus the reader’s attention on the interface.
  • Jhave’s “Let Me Tell You What Happened” reveals fragments of a situation that most people would find difficult to speak about.
  • Carpenter juxtaposes two very different conceptual frames evoked by her poem’s title, “Muddy Mouth.”
  • Karpinska’s “The Color of Your Hair Is Dangerous” explores linguistic slippages resulting from speaking multiple languages.

It is worth noting that all five poets (including Lewis) engage the theme of speech, structuring their lines to allow readers to intuit their structure. They help map out the framework’s rhetorical potential.

Featured in ELO 2013: Chercher le Texte Virtual Gallery

“Rude Little Song” by Jim Andrews

Open “Rude Little Song” by Jim Andrews

“Enigma n” and “Seattle Drift” by Jim Andrews: The Cauldron & Net Editions

Screen capture from “Enigma n” and “Seattle Drift” by Jim Andrews: The Cauldron & Net Editions. Title screen displaying 3 geometrical figures, each circled by text, against a black background. Text: "Enigma n, Language and image as objects in a field, Seattle."
Open “Enigma n” and “Seattle Drift” by Jim Andrews: The Cauldron & Net Editions

When Jim Andrews published these poems in Cauldron& Net, Volume 1 in 1999, their original DHTML and JavaScript codes were compatible with the two main Web browsers of their time: Netscape Navigator 4 and Internet Explorer 4 (IE). This was during the peak of what is known as the “first browser war” in which IE became the dominant browser in the market. At the time, each browser was implementing code differently, creating code incompatibilities that led to the practice of detecting browsers to redirect readers to different versions of the document, or determining what part of the code was executed in a specific session. Some writers opted to pick a browser and directed readers to view the work on that one, while others sought cross-browser compatibility.

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“Moment” by Joe Keenan

Screen capture from "Moment" by Joe Keenan. White background with curved lines of letters
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“Aleph Null” por Jim Andrews

“Aleph Null” by Jim Andrews

“Arteroids” por Jim Andrews

“Arteroids” by Jim Andrews