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