[-empyre-] Thank you

["Jim Andrews" <jim@vispo.com>]

Many thanks to Christina, Melinda, Michael, and those who posted during the last two weeks. It
has been a pleasure to talk about the challenges and edges of contemporary poetry and language
in the digital soup. I'm particularly happy to have this discussion on a list composed not
solely of writers but of artists, critics, and others with, collectively, a wide range of focus
in various digital arts. That is rare and beautiful.

The question of the role of software art in deconstructing war machines was brought up in the
April discussion on empyre. Perhaps if the culture of software art comes to have an influence on
the culture of programming, software art can help deconstruct war machines via its concerns and
atmospheres. Software art is concerned, in part, with discovering/creating the human dimensions
of programming technology, the generous and kind dimensions, the dimensions of personality.
which tend to oppose the notion of computer programming as war machine.

Programming and mathematics and language--and therefore poetry--have been brought into new
relation via the digital. Now to bring the cultures of art and science into more progressive
relation.

I've been thinking of Simon's last post. Thanks, Simon--it's been great to meet you. I also
don't know what poetry is and find I'm at my best when I know I don't know what poetry is.
Possibilities open up, then.

I also enjoyed Christina's post of Mirjam Struppek's sense of the blur of language apart from
the digital.

The last two weeks have helped me toward the piece I posted part of, 'Poetry and Programming',
or possibly 'The Roles of Programming in Digital Art' if it gets to be a more general and
ambitious essay. We'll see. I didn't finish it, but the discussion has helped me think about it.

Thanks again to all. I look forward to what Hazel, Roger, Marjorie, and Jenny have to say about
'electronic poetry'.

ja
http://vispo.com