ELECTRONIC POETRY
Two Latin-American Precursors: Eduardo Kac and Ladislao Pablo Gyori
by
Clemente Padin
One of the infallible methods of transgressing the codes of any language,
that is to say, its mechanisms of emission, transmission and reception of
messages (writing/support/reading) and, therefore, to generate a greater
number of bits of information -because of the unpredictability of the
contents they involve- is to use new supports or channels. Generally, the
action of the new medium contributes immensely to the form of the
expression, the genuine producer of the poetic as long as there are
"readjustments of content" (Umberto Eco, 1977). On the contrary, the mere
transposition of one language into another, without great changes nor
informative increases, occurs when the new medium takes place only in the
form of content.
As we know, aesthetic information was and will be bound to the physical
properties of the support, and the supports, in themselves, are
(in)significant. However, something happens when a significant unites
itself to a support. Something causes the original meaning of the sign to
be transformed by that conjunction; thus their semantic expression would be
impossible to obtain with any other media or channels.
For example: the book-poem "A Ave" by Wlademir Dias-Pino (Rio de Janeiro,
1956) is a book-object without which the poem would die out, since it could
not be registered in other supports without altering its sense (even they
were more versatile or modern, like the magnetic tape of the audio or video
or the disk of the computer) since the algorithms of reading could not be
reproduced, that is to say, the turning of the pages and the covers, the
texture, the opacity, the color, the perforations, etc., elements that,
appraised as a whole, are going to display the aesthetic information
contained in the book through the process of reading or manipulating or
paginating the object-book.
It is also asserted that it is not the same "to write" poems that adapt
the new medium to the forms already effective or foreseen by the official
literary system in a mere transposition, to create new forms starting from
the languages which characterize the new channels or supports. The same
approach governs the new electronic media: it is not only necessary to make
use of their communicational possibilities, those that will be discovered
via experimentation, as long as modifiers or enrichers of the form of the
expression, but, also, like possible transmitters of concepts for which
verbal language has been overcome, for instance, the concept of "field" or
"infinite," among others.
At this point we are tempted to chronicle all the facts through which
this situation has been reached: from Stephane Mallarme and Guillaume
Apollinaire to Hugo Ball and Kurt Schwitters, from E.E.Cummings and James
Joyce to the Concretists, from N.H.Werkmann and Raoul Hausmann to the
Letrism by Isidore Isou, from the phonic poems by Henri Chopin and Arrigo
Lora-Totino to the Hypertext by Theodor Nelson, but, limitations of space
hinder us. New media, mainly electronic, bring forth the program,
envisioned by Mallarme, about synthetical forms of thought and expression,
ideogrammarian and synchronous, causing, of course, new formulations and
new facts and discoveries which, in their turn, generate other facts in an
endless development, similar to semiosis (although this could be frozen, in
any moment, for the option of any receiver).
The works of two Latin American poets stand out in this sense: the
Brazilian Eduardo Kac, creator of holographic poetry (toward 1983, together
with the holographical technician Fernando Catta-Petra) and the Argentinean
Ladislao Pablo Gyori, creator of virtual poetry (toward 1994, though he has
elaborated computer projects since 1984).
HOLOGRAPHIC POETRY
Holography was born in 1948 when the Hungarian scientist Dennis Gabor
(later Nobel Prize of Physics), trying to improve the range of the
electronic microscope, devised the possibility of three-dimensional
reproduction. Only after the invention of the laser (Light Amplification by
Stimulated Emission of Radiation) the North Americans E.Leith and
J.Upatnieks and the Russian Y.Denisyuk achieved the first three-dimensional
holographic images (holos = everything). The holographic image not only
transmits the visual characteristics of the objects but, also, their
spatiality. This occurs because the hologram indicates each point of the
object' surface showing them at the same time from several points of view.
On the other hand the hologram is conditioned by binocular parallax and,
also, by the relative position of the spectator with regard to it. For this
reason to create poetic texts, luminously structured in space, honors the
human physiology much more than those written in a bidimensional space,
since it takes advantage of binocular vision and the mental powers
associated with the perception of objects, not in a plane, but in space.
Also, orbital, ellipsoidal, curved, etc. syntaxes could be configured
-necessarily, in order with what we have said above- in the creative
process, that break with the monoscopic tradition of poetry. As we will
already find out, virtual poetry is not so far from this achievement. As an
unavoidable complement we present here some important paragraphs of the
text "Holographic Poetry: 3 Dimensions of the Verbal Sign" by Eduardo Kac,
included in the catalog of the VII National Salon of Visual Arts, 1984,
Modern Art Museum of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil:
"Holographic images could be virtual (behind the hologram) or real (in
front of the hologram); or still, part real, part virtual, as if the
holographic film would section the image. This allows that the reader could
open a book of holographic poems and that the very poem fluctuate in the
air at 50 centimeters of distance from the page. Moreover, the hologram
could be printed in large inexpensive editions, and for this reason will
be, undoubtedly, the printing method of the future.
At the moment of the poem's conception, the poet should study all the
combining possibilities among letters (three-dimensional objects) and
angles of vision of the spectator (parallax) that are organized vertically
and horizontally. That is to say, the layout of a hologram is constituted
with the formulation of the diverse ways of perception the spectator will
have, keeping in mind the degree of the hologram's parallax.
In this sense a new visual syntax arises that, in opposition to
Mallarme's white, articulates the poem starting from invisible volumes,
three-dimensional black holes. It is for this reason that the poem acquires
independence from the support and, thinking in terms of real image, permits
that the spectator move the hand between the page and its holographic
projection. I say "spectator" instead of "reader" because the poem
generates an unusual perceptual decoding. The poet neither "writes", but
creates the design, sculpts the die and makes the hologram of the object.
Instead of the pen or the typewriter or the Letraset, the laser."
Even faced with the evidence, there are critics that reject
systematically the electronic art and who believe that holography is merely
an idiom. But the poet of the XXI century elaborates a holographic language
and inquires. What he/she wants nobody knows. Poetry is a three-dimensional
enigma.
VIRTUAL POETRY
Unfortunately, there is no way to appreciate what a virtual poem is other
than in a virtual space. The picture, or rather the "electronic image"
registered with virtual cameras, is a pale reflection of the poem,
excessively insufficient. Virtual poetry is possible due to two intrinsic
characteristics of computing: 1) it could engender three-dimensional signs
inside a virtual space and 2) it could program their behaviors. That is to
say, a design in three dimensions is needed in order to facilitate what we
normally carry out with an object when we want to know it: to manipulate it
in all directions and under all possible viewpoints.
Therefore, it is mentioned as "(virtual) reality" since the "virtual
object", likewise the "real object" will ever respond in the same way,
because it itself contains the whole necessary information about itself.
However, we are not discussing here the "real object" but a group of data
loaded in a memory to which it is able to apply the "physics" that we want.
Even algorithms of behavior that work oppositely to the classical physics
of Newton or to the most versatile of Einstein.
So, the virtual poem could not only move and transform itself according
to precise programs but, also, respond to certain situations occasioned by
the observer who, could even touch them and operate with them as if they
were real objects. With the appropriate equipment it is possible to insert
himself/herself into that virtual space and interact with texts and signs.
In short: the three-dimensional representation simulated on a computer,
able to create their sense of reality and to perform competently the
sensations characteristic of the objects, applied to cause a correct
although not real perception in the observer, aside from the possibility of
its virtual manipulation due to previously developed programs.
This section is finished with an extract of the basic text "Criteria for
a Virtual Poetry" by Ladislao Pablo Gyori published as a broadsheet by the
author in May of 1995 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and launched later in the
magazine Dimensao No24 (Uberaba, Brazil) during the same year:
" VIRTUAL POEMS or VPOEMS are interactive digital entities, capable of:
(i) taking part in -or being generated within- a virtual world (here called
VPD or "Virtual Poetry Domain") through software or routines (for the
development of virtual reality applications and real time explorations)
which confer diverse manner to manipulation, navigation, behavior and
alternative properties (in presence of environmental constraints and
interactions), evolution, sound emission, animated morphing, etc.; (ii)
being "experimented" by means of partially or fully immersive interface
devices (vpoems support "walkthroughs" and "flybys"); (iii) assuming an
aesthetic dimension (in accordance with the semiotic and entropic concept
of information), not reducing themselves to a simple phenomenon of
communication (like a pure data stream) and (iv) being defined about a
hypertext structure (circulation of open and multiple digital information)
but principally producing hyperdiscourses (with a strong semantic
non-linearity).
The VPD is a substitutive field -with respect to its quality of
"support"- for that traditional printed page which only establishes a
"surface and static" contact, which is very restricted in relation to the
requirements of large versatility and global artificiality that also
dominate contemporary poetic productions and, especially, those of the
future. VPD also exceeds all the more or less established techniques of
"channeling" of poetic messages, because it breaks in a definitive way with
the first support that produces and maintains them: real physical space.
Vpoems and the VPD have a logical existence, so that, they bear no
resemblance to anything, becoming entities with an actuational power
(related to the quantity of resources at work) as has never been seen or
experimented before.
The opening of the VPD to the computer networks will facilitate the
realization of virtual teleportations of "explorer" subjects to "VP-base
computers" (anywhere in the world or in the physical space), obtaining an
absolutely new remote experience of simulated run and exploratory
"reading", which is still difficult to value today in its most
extraordinary dimension and possibilities."
CONCLUSION
In spite of everything, unbelief and postmodernism, creation is still
going on in Latin America. It also continues the research and
experimentation, not only of new materials and communication media (fax,
Internet, etc.) but, also, of new ways for the poetic expression. Not
simply accompanying the advances of electronic technology (computers,
laser, etc.) but still more impelling (as Walter Benjamin has pointed out)
the media by highlighting, through the artistic experimentation, their
"productive" possibilities, either aesthetic or scientific or technical.
"Do not expect but poison of stagnant water", William Blake warned us
and, closer, Karl Popper declares that major advances in any field of the
human activity are achieved upon questioning that already known and
effective for each system; not only what the "word" or the "verb" has
consecrated, by means of power or what the system has legitimated, via
ideology, but even everything connoted as "unalterable," "necessary" or
"essential" by the Establishment.
Only, the irrepressible empiria, the experimentation aided by creative
negation will bring us fresh and luminous airs like these.
Montevideo, Uruguay, October 1995