“Deal with it” is a meme based on a popular phrase or expression that uses image macros and/or animated GIFs as a snarky response when someone else notes disapproval, most frequently used online forums or social networks. This meme is characterized by an image of an iconic person, celebrity, or event, accompanied by the descending of sunglasses upon the subject’s face and revealing a caption which says “Deal with it.”
2008
“Dois palitos” (Two matchsticks) by Samir Mesquita
“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.
“Mobilestabile” by Ricardo Aleixo
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.
António Aragão’s “Found Poem” by Rui Torres and Nuno F. Ferreira
In 1964, poets António Aragão (1924-2008) and Herberto Helder launched in Portugal the first number of the “Experimental Poetry Journals“, an experimental poetry magazine that presented vanguard poems created by a generation of poets attentive to new visual poetry tendencies and concrete poetry. 44 years later, a researchers staff headed by Rui Torres launches the project Experimental Poetry: Digital Archive of Portuguese Experimental Literature rescuing and spreading in the digital environment, the published poems and some proposes of its interactive digital versions.
“@everyword” by Allison Parrish
This bot has been on deceptively simple mission since it was launched in 2007: it is tweeting the English language, one word every 30 minutes, in alphabetical order. This work of conceptual poetry is delightfully absurd because it claims to be “twittering every word” and even offers a termination date in which such a project would be complete— when even the concept of what constitutes the English language is subject to debate, even if it wasn’t changing on a daily basis. To make such a feat even possible (unless you’re Wowbagger The Infinitely Prolonged) requires setting constraints—such as a choice of dictionary— though it is to Parrish’s credit that she doesn’t disclose the source, because it enhances the project’s conceptual claim.
“Twitterwurking” by Mez Breeze
![Screen capture from “Twitterwurking” by Mez Breeze. White background with various lines of black text written on it. Text: "-Twitterwurking Transcript" "1:go To [to+Doro.thee+Wiicked.White(t{e})ches(s)]. / dop[p]wn.the.ra[bbitten].hole.we.go || twitter_set[tlers,all]." "2. shiver[me.tym(panies)burrs]ing.s[t[l]one arms t.witching granite / blo.od[d?].r[sh]iver.me + t[oxic]all[Ice].tale.u=...." "3. ...=_allIce_[born.of.gra(vity)nite].AllIce mewls+slTl+we[s]igh.ts//all l fLes[ion]h_grAve[L.rashed]. + [user]Pine.like..." "4. i spy_Wh[n]ite.Which_.Sug[l]arings.i aSP+gr[K]oan; u c+ / [+]d[ice]rink.me. up[per+AllIce.Downer].." "5. AllIce.s[epia]tinks: c[sh]aving.bromidal. @if = @then [u:kno:u:want.2]; @u / fade_in+fLip[.out]." "6. i s t [h] u m b l e U p [on] + f l i c k_r_i n g > < o f f . / soniKal[l]i_scr[sandstone_h]atching in_the @keyofnite."](http://academic.uprm.edu/flores/images/twitterwurking.png)
_Twitterwurking_comprised of sequential “tweets” posted via a microblogging platform called Twitter. The work itself was written in my mezangelle language- a type of merging of programming languages/code with poetic elements. The Twitterwurk sought to incorporate specific users into the narrative by typing the “@” symbol before their name. The users were then made aware of this focused reply and thus deliberately enfolded into the tweetstream/project.
“Frequency [Snowball, Doubling]” by Scott Rettberg and the Machine (part 4 of 5)
![Screen capture from ""Frequency [Snowball, Doubling]" by Scott Rettberg and the Machine (part 4 of 5)" black text on a gray background.Sample text: ".... but were generated by the program. The program can arrange lines by a number of different constraints, including rhyme scheme, syllable count, and character count. I have set the program to output according to Shakesperian, Spenserian, Petrarchan, and Terza Rima rhyme schemes..."](http://academic.uprm.edu/flores/images/frequency4.png)
This entire project was inspired by the OULIPO, and how they created new poetic and literary forms based on mathematical and other constraints. Not only did they create a great number of fascinating constraints— such as the n+7, the snowball, and all manner of permutational works— they also helped us rethink traditional poetic forms as constraints that led to creativity. From this perspective, a sonnet or a haiku are little rhetorical machines, and to write one is to shape’s one’s thoughts and language choices to capitalize upon their affordances and constraints.
“Frequency [Terza Rima and Sonnets]” by Scott Rettberg and the Machine (part 3 of 5)
The terza rima and sonnets generated by the “Frequency” program have two main challenges: coherence over a greater number of lines and the rhetorical expectations that come with the form. The easiest part of all this is rhyme, since Rettberg created 12 arrays according to line endings and up to 7 rhyming variables that draw from them to create poems with the necessary rhyme schemes..
“Frequency [Tanka, Haiku]” by Scott Rettberg and the machine (part 2 of 5)
![Screen capture from "Frequency [Tanka, Haiku]" by Scott Rettberg and the machine (part 2 of 5)"Frequency [Tanka, Haiku]" by Scott Rettberg and the machine (part 2 of 5). Word cloud in black and grey against a white background. Sample text: "Frequency, you, the, to, is, need, not, come, could, now, place, it, again, this, another, me, will, do, that."](http://academic.uprm.edu/flores/images/frequencywordle.png)
The Japanese Tanka (which literally means “short poem”) is represented here as a 5-line poem in which the first and third lines are selected from the 5-syllable line array, and the second fourth and fifth are selected from the 7-syllable array. A title is selected randomly from among all the lines in the data set and displayed in upper case. In a short poem like this, the title is probably the most important line because it sets up the conceptual frame by which the whole poem will be interpreted. Take for example, Tanka number 30:
END OF US
house is not the same
way different than before
ask them to end it
old men just want it to end
that you will take to the air
“Frequency” by Scott Rettberg and the machine (part 1 of 5)
The “Frequency” project is an investigation into Oulipian constraint-based writing in several levels:
- A linguistically determined lexicon of the 200 most frequently used words in the English language— an endeavor that is already built upon the constraint of the corpus that analysis is based upon: Oxford Online and Google have both famously made such analyses, with massive and different data sets.
- Rettberg then wrote 10 lines of verse beginning with each word, using only the words on the list, for a total of 2000 lines of verse. This alone is a massive creative endeavor which he describes as “painstaking work.”
- He analyzed these lines to develop a data set, organized in arrays based on the following variables: frequency rank of initial word, rhyming end words, number of syllables per word, number of syllables per line, number of words per line, and lines per string length (number of characters, including spaces).
- The analysis embedded in these arrays allowed Rettberg to write algorithms to generate 200 instances of 10 different kinds of formally constrained poems, some from well established poetic traditions, one developed by the OULIPO, and three he developed himself.