Kinetic/Interactive Poetry

Poems are to many a somewhat divisive literary medium. Many don't love them -personally I always get stuck in a limbo between not trying to read too deeply into things and missing the point entirely- and there are so many forms of poetry that it's fair to say it might be the most diverse form of literary art. 

This week I focused on In the White Darkness, and I made a point of not reading up on the piece before reading through it. The interactive elements let you click through strings of images and sounds; many are related or very similar to one another, but even following the visual strings does little to help differentiate a set path to take. After spending some time with the poem I read back about the authors' intentions with emulating the life of someone living with Alzheimer's. The disjointed images are meant to represent the lack of order or constancy in the memories of someone with the disorder. Now, the strings of thought that have very little reasoning to their placement except for a vague similarity in tone make sense as a reflection of the uncertainty I'm sure you'd feel when you can't fully trust your own memories. 

To touch on the 'medium becoming the metaphor' and the inverse, by fragmenting the story with disorderly images and sounds that retain a tangible similarity, the viewer is pushed into that same perspective of confusion and difficulty. I have a family member with Alzheimer's, and the moments of clarity interspersed with a displaced sense of time felt very accurate to my own experience. Poems are inherently empathetic pieces of literature. They're more open, honest, and often reflect as much as they can in as little text as possible. The empathy of In the White Darkness comes from stepping into the shoes of someone who can't fully trust their own recollection, and the medium of strings of memory delivers a pretty emotional punch. It's super intriguing to see an emotional outlet like poetry be recontextualized this way.   

 

Before I read this chapter I assumed that kinetic and interactive poetry were the same thing. Well they can be used together they are different things. Kinetic is using the movement of the poem as part of it. And interactive has the reader actually participating. I am a big fan of both of these forms. I think that including movement of a poem adds to the depth poetry can already go blending in a futuristic lens. I have had less experience with interactive poetry I enjoyed interactive games and I enjoy poetry so seems like best of both worlds. I find it cool bring poetry into the modern age by using technology and advancing it with us instead of just leaving it behind. I enjoy that poetry in a digital lens has its own specialities and its own place in the digital world. 

Reading dear e.e. I found it very interesting. It is cool how the poem is moving around and you have to actually put in work to read it. I enjoyed that as you were asleep the room was moving around fast and floating in an unreal like way. Putting poetry in a new fashion is a great way to deepen the meaning of a poem and I like the way this one was executed.  One of the awake lines about just hoping to find matching socks I found comical in a very real way. Compared to someone else perceived as more "put together" and the comical way of masking jealousy was very well done. 

 This week, the chapter was all about interactive and kinetic poetry. This form of electronic literature has sparked the most interest for me. I have (slowly) grown to love poetry after years of resenting it in school. However, I was mostly reading classic sonnets and limericks, where syntax and word placement are the most defining traits. Kinetic and interactive poetry completely dissolve this, using motion and user engagement as the main traits. This form of digital literature CANNOT exist in print, which I also find interesting. Since this is a digital literature class, that is to be expected. However, in previous chapters, there is typically some form of print media that can be easily translated to print, like choose-your-own-adventure books. I also enjoy this form of poetry because it is a lot more tactile for the viewer. Poetry (typically) evokes lots of emotions, and when reading it through this digital literature lens, there are more avenues to harp on. This can be done through auditory, visual, and spatially. 

I chose to explore "in the white darkness" by Reiner Strassar. I first clicked on and "played" with no information. It was a bit difficult to understand, with sounds and pictures phasing in and out. After my first run through, I read more about it. It was created to simulate memory and its fragility. A lot of the photos are loosely related to eachother, with little to no "connecting" piece. This is bound to leave the reader confused. However, that is the intention. It was written to mirror a person living with Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease, with disappearing words and unclear meanings demonstrating memory lapses. 

interactive and kinetic poetry

 Before I read this chapter I had little knowledge about interactive poetry and even lesser knowledge on kinetic poetry. Kinetic poetry is when the text moves on the screen while blending with other aspects of the poem. I think this way of poetry is more helpful for people who might not understand what traditional poetry is trying to say. Personally, nine times out of ten I get confused on what the author is trying to say in poems. After looking at some of the different kinetic poems, some were easier to understand and grasp. Although, when I read Because I Love You) Last Night, I was having trouble trying to figure out what he means. I don't know if it was because I was tired when I read it or if it was the word choice and grammar, but at times I didn't know what it was trying to say. I knew it was about love and the relationship that's talked about but I thought there might've been more. After reading it a few times I saw that the author was talking about a women's body. Which made me realize the poems format is in the shape of a women's breast. I might be reading too far into this but it was an observation that I thought might have some relevance. 

Another reference I did was Dear E.E. which was an interesting piece. At first when pictures started to show up in the montage of what looks like a living room, it just kept going and going. I thought it was going to stop so I let it sit there for a few minutes and nothing was happening. I figured out how to read the words when they went by super fast by accident. I clicked on the screen and I was able to slow it down which was a lot easier than trying to read it when it was going super fast. I like this piece cause the illustrations and the words were easier to read and see. I think that the idea is really creative and a fun way to read poetry without feeling like you are. 

Interactive Poetry

 I enjoyed Cruising and Dear E.E. a lot, and think they are great examples of using the medium of a piece as part of the piece itself. When I first opened Cruising I was confused on how I was supposed to read it since the text and images were going way too fast to read. Once I figured out how to control it I was surprised by how sensitive it was and how it was quite difficult to keep the poem moving in a way that I  could easily digest it. Thinking about it more though, I think it works really well since the story of the piece is about young people wanting to experience more of the world the aspect of learning to control the piece evokes that same feeling in the reader. I also think the images that move on the bottom of the screen reinforce the aspect of driving in the piece since it feels like looking out of the window of a speeding car. 

 I think Dear E.E.'s use of medium is even more impressive and well executed than that of Cruising. I mainly think this because the themes of dreaming and memory in Dear E.E. lends themselves better to interactive poetry. The constant shaking and moving of the elements on the story, as well as the random letters that shoot through the background, do a great job in evoking the sense of being in a dream. They also evoke the feeling of trying to recall something you can't quite remember. I also think the simple, almost child-like drawings is a good way of getting these feelings since dreams and memories are something so important to being humans that they are things we start to do as kids. 

 For my bring it I looked at First Screening: Computer Poems by bpNichol, It was a collection of 12 poems made in BASIC. I found the poems to be very entertaining and impressive, but I did find too much deeper meaning in them. My favorite of them: After the Storm features words and letters moving around the screen to create the line "This is the sentence that the wind blew here" I thought it was very clever and a great way to use the movement that is available in digital poetry to create something that could not be made on paper. I also really liked Construction one which sees "TOWER" appear on the bottom of the screen and another "TOWER" appears on top of it until it reaches the top where "BABLE" begins to flood the screen. I liked this one because it was interesting to see the Tower of Bable story portrayed in such a unique way.

 

Kinetic and Interactive Poetry

    This week, I enjoyed exploring dear e.e., Cruising, and ii in the white darkness. These digital poems were rooted in movement and animation - their meanings were derived from the reader's interaction with the text, which I thought was impactful. I liked how arguably all three of these digital poems explored memory and feeling through the text's animations. I was especially drawn to the chaotic animation of dear e.e and how the drawings would seem to move away even after you hovered over them - much like a fleeting memory. 

    I also chose to explore the dreamlife of letters by Brian Kim Stefans, which is a Flash animation that uses the "chance meeting of words" to respond to a colleague of Kim Stefans in a poetry roundtable event. The words and letters move all over the screen (so much so that there is something new to look at every few seconds) and it moves in a seemingly random, chaotic manner. The text itself is almost a performance - a play on language - and I liked how it made me associate words differently due to the manner of the animation. It caused me to think more deeply about language because of the non-linear fashion of the piece. 

    

    I think the dreamlife of letters is a perfect example of how the medium can create metaphor. The medium (the text's animation) moves chaotically, which allows words to be connected / associated with one another that otherwise would not of. The meaning of this poem lies not only from the text itself (the literal definition of the words), but from the way the words move across the screen - the randomness of the language is what creates meaning.  

I started this week's readings with some of the e-lit pieces and the three works (dear e.e, Cruising, and ii-in the white darkness) all had the same sort of vibe to them. It honestly took me a little bit to even be able and understand what I was reading or looking at. They are very interactive pieces and require a lot of precision with where you place your cursor. I feel like the piece “dear e.e” was the most emotional one to me. This is because it seemed to be the most chaotic one and hard to understand what you were reading. I was pretty confused and honestly still am when it comes to the reading content, but I feel like it doesn’t even matter because I felt so much just by trying to place my cursor in the right spots, etc. The ways that these works would speed up or slow down, zoom in and out, or just simply have no sense of direction was very intentional and meaningful to their overall messages. Even the use of sound was a big game changer. I feel like these works are all great examples of how the medium creates the metaphor. They are so full of feeling just by the ways that they are laid out on the screen (their medium). In Chapter 5 of the textbook I really enjoyed reading about all of the poetry and what you can do to make it a work of e-lit. I love poetry and literature so this was a very easy read for me. Interactive poetry is super interesting to learn and read about. This chapter was full of ways I didn’t even know could be added to poems, like the visuals and letterism. For the “bring it in” I wanted to reference one of the earlier poems that show ways to create interactive poems. “Easter Wings” by George Herbert was referenced in the Chapter as an example of concrete poetry. This was interesting to me because it was published in 1633 and was written in a way where the words are structured to create wings and look a certain way which adds to the symbolism of the title and poem overall.

Kinetic Poetry; the medium is the metaphor

 

I am a huge fan of poetry and enjoy reading it frequently. This chapter and the works for this week were a testament to how much I really love poetry. The beauty of "Dear e.e." by Lori Janis and Ingrid Ankerson was a very interesting, chaotic form of kinetic poetry. Between the music and the fast pace of the imagery flying by, though it may be hard to absorb all of its contents with how fast the main portion of the piece is, it's a beautiful idea with the use of furniture and poems attached. It is basically put together and taken apart, and put together and taken apart again; as Rettberg says, it is manipulated. 

The kinetic poem, "In the white darkness" by Reiner Strasser, was a beautiful poem, but it was difficult for me to understand where it was going or establish a pattern. The idea of it being about the fragility of memory is very beautiful to me, and it is set up as memories being shown in fragments. The fifth chapter in Rettberg's "Electronic Literature" notes, "Words and letters are not only carriers of meaning but material objects that themselves have variable properties." (pg. 118) Kinetic poetry goes beyond the functions of hypertext, as digital poetry is not only generative. 

"Cruising" by Ingrid Ankerson and Megan Sapner, uses multiple mediums like voiceover, music, visuals, words to capture this interesting piece. It appears to me to be a coming of age piece, with a young voiceover. It's very fast which emulates the idea of "cruising". It shows a young woman putting on makeup in between a series of cars. Its a very interesting poem to view and interact with. As the line of what looks like, film, begins extremely fast and gets slower and then speeds up and then slows back down. 

Kinetic and Interactive Poetry

 

Before reading this chapter, I didn't really know about interactive poetry let alone Kinetic Poetry. It was fun to read about the more aspects of poetry, seeing if they were easier to understand because I found myself usually getting confused with what poetry was trying to say. Although these readings gave me more insight about the deep meaning behind poetry. For example, Because I love you (last night) written by e.e Cummings is easy to gather the meaning. It's dream-like feeling goes perfectly with the fleeting manner of love. Also it shows the person you love coming through intimating, creating a beautiful and sensual poem that she writes. I think I understood this one because it is written in a light tone manner while having some heavy feelings behind it. 

Dear e.e written Lori Janis is another story about understanding. It was confusing at first, I didn't understand what to read and what to look at. It was hard to follow along with because of the images and words combining together. I do think that it something to do home intrusion maybe? That's what I gathered from the first opening and when they went through the entire house. It was difficult to navigate because the words are hidden until you see them. I didn't really like Cruising written by Ingrid Anderson and Meghan Sapner because I couldn't understand how to stop the words from moving. It was moving to fast with the images, and I just couldn't read what was written. I don't know if that was the point of the poem, to have it like you are in a car zooming past things, but the images were too small and slow or big images with fast motion. While I bet these were investing poems, I don't think they were the ones for me. The only one I liked was e.e Cummings. It was easy to understand and flowed very smoothly.