Poetic Transformations in(to) the Digital
Friedrich W. Block*
Rui Torres**


INTRODUCTION

In our contribution we will discuss some projects in the field of digital poetics which
transform or recreate poetic pre-texts that were not conceived for the electronic space.
Our interest is to focus on the question of the site of digital poetics, i.e., on its discursive
or systemic affiliation. These projects of transformation imply a justification: We derive
digital poetics not primarily from theories or discourses of information and
communication technology or the digital media culture, but from theories and histories
of poetry and “language art” itself. While doing so, we do not ignore that electronic or
computer poetry is turning problems of the actual media and technological culture, as
well as its theoretical description, into poetological and artistic categories and
categorization. The perspective on art itself means, quoting from Loss Glazier (2004),1
“Siting the ‘poetry’ in e-poetry, which means to read digital poetics against its
poetological and historical background.”
The examples that will be discussed refer to the tradition and evolution of
language art by means of intertextuality. We will be looking at an art which puts on
stage, above all, language itself, in a self-referential way. Ever since, poetry has been art
with language in all its dimensions. The conceptual concentration on special linguistic
aspects has lead to specific forms of language art throughout the history of poetics: the
poetization of the graphemic aspect in visual poetry, the phonetic aspect in sound
poetry, or the poetization of the grammatical aspect in combinatory and algorithmic
poetry.

* Dr. Friedrich Block is the Director of the Brueckner-Kuehner Foundation, the Poeticum and the
Kunsttempel Gallery in Kassel, Germany. Since 1992 he has organized the p0es1s digital poetry project
(www.p0es1s.net).
** Dr. Rui Torres is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Human and Social Sciences of Fernando
Pessoa University, Porto, Portugal. He is the Coordinator of CETIC-Centre for Computer-generated Texts
and Cyberliterature Studies (http://cetic.ufp.pt).
1 Loss P. Glazer, “The Conditional Text. Siting the “poetry” in e-poetry,” in: Friedrich Block, Christiane
Heibach & Karin Wenz (eds.): Ästhetik digitaler Poesie / The Aesthetics of Digital Poetry, Ostfildern-
Ruit, Hatje-Cantz, 2004, p. 58-77.

The connection with such “traditional” lines of language art has been recently
emphasized by the digital poetics’ discourse. This especially counts for the linking to
concrete poetry, thus involving the question of whether continuity or difference and
innovation can be registered here. Focusing on the aspect of continuity, Roberto
Simanowski (2004)2 asks whether certain – in his view questionable – tendencies would
have survived such as the tendency to an aesthetics of the spectacle when the pure
visual, and in analogy the pure code, would be followed by a loss of meaning. This
skepticism towards the spectacle should perhaps be addressed not to codework, but
rather to some mulitmedia interactive installations. Anna Schaffner (2006, p. 17)3
follows the short circuit between poetics and the innovation of technology, stating that
“concrete poetry seems to have anticipated the new digital medium, where many of its
conceptual premises can be literally effectuated and realised.” On the other hand, it is
interesting how Manuel Portela (2006),4 for example, describes concrete poetry with
concepts and terminology of digital poetics, by examining this embracing of electronic
media by concrete poets. For more than a decade Florian Cramer has also developed his
studies about poetic calculations and the imagination of the self-executing text in this
direction from the present back to ancient time.5
By selecting transformations which interpret the language art of predecessors,
we understand them as a contribution and a reflection of the aesthetic program of
experimental writing as it has developed since the 1950s. This is a period of time that
has witnessed the beginning of poetic movements such as Lettrism, Concrete Poetry,
and Oulipo, as well as the time of a new era of sound and visual poetry or intermedial
poetry.
Framing digital poetics within the program of experimental writing of this period
is methodologically starting with poetological semantics. Aesthetic programs consist of
certain strategies, principles, values, working attitudes, questions and objectives which
single artistic events and manifestations orient and control with pre or post interventions

2 Roberto Simanowski, Concrete Poetry in Digital Media. Its Predecessors, its Presence and its Future,
2004 <http://www.dichtung-digital.org/2004/3-Simanowski.htm>.
3 Anna Katharina Schaffner, From Concrete to Digital: The Reconceptualisation fo Poetic Space, 2006
<www http://www.netzliteratur.net/schaffner/concrete_to_digital.pdf.>.
4 Manuel Portela, : “Concrete and Digital Poetics,” in: “New Media Poetry and Poetics” Special Issue,
Leonardo Electronic Almanac Vol 14, No. 5 - 6 (2006). 25 Sep. 2006, <http://leoalmanac.org/journal/
vol_14/lea_v14_n05-06/mportela.asp >.
5 See Cramer´s excellent compilations of his studies: Words Made Flesh. Culture, Code, Imagination,
2006 <http://www.netzliteratur.net/cramer/wordsmadefleshpdf.pdf>; Exe.cut[up]able statements.
Poetische Kalküle und Phantasmen des selbstausführenden Texts, Dissertation, Freie Universität Berlin,
2006.