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.