[-empyre-] A Panorama of Brazilian New Media Poetry

"Jorge Luiz Antonio" <jlantonio@uol.com.br> · Wed, 10 Mar 2004 13:55:07 -0300

Dear members of Empyre

First of all I should thank the moderator Melinda Rackham, Jim Andrews,
Christina McPhee, Felix Stattler and Michael Arnold Mages, for the
opportunity to be participating of Empyre, and a special thanks to Jim
Andrews who encouraged me and the other members to gather ideas about new
media poetry and art from South America.

To our first participant, aLe, my many thanks for a good presentation of
himself and of his good artwork.

My personal experiencies with verbal, visual and electronic poetry are not
so great as the other participants, because I also like to study poetry and
write essays about it. So I'm putting some comments about Brazilian New
Media Poetry and invite people from the list to access some sites among the
many I indicated and start asking questions and comments.

I am very glad to participate in this electronic meeting and it will be very
pleasant and of course will help me in my PhD thesis on poetry and
technology which I am writing since last year.

    Best regards from Brazil

    Jorge Luiz Antonio
    http://vispo.com/misc/BrazilianDigitalPoetry.htm
    jlantonio@uol.com.br

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The Phenomenological and the Fantastic in Brazilian New Meda Poetry

The point of departure of these concerns is poetry, instead of narrative or
art, due to the especialization I have been making. It is still a wide theme
to present in few pages, as required for Empyre.

My study of new media poetry is strictly related with my own experiences
since the time I started studying Modern Poetry, Concrete Poetry, Post
Modern Poetry, Visual Poetry and Electronic Poetry, especially on the web.

Poetic language has the skillfulness of dialoguing with other languages and,
even being verbal, points to other languages (visual, sound, animated,
etc.). This is what Roland Barthes says is the utopic function of
literature: though literature is unidimensional (language) it has the
necessity of being pluridimensional, that is, tries to be reality itself.

The poet is very curious and likes, in a general sense, to experiment with
different materials to make poetry. He/She makes negotiations with
technology, for example, in order to get a different poetry. This
negotiation can be divided into two phases: the interaction, that is, the
moment the poet starts learning technology; and intervention, when he/she
decides to intervene in technology and makes a poetic use of it.

There are insteresting interviews involving these questions:

Regina Vater
http://arteonline.arq.br/museu/interviews/reginavaterenglish.htm ,

Ana Maria Uribe
http://www.officinadopensamento.com.br/officina/entre-vistas/entre-vistas_an
a_maria_uribe.htm ,

and others.

In a comparison with other South America countries, Brazilian new media
poetry has different directions, though we are neighbors and friend
countries. The way to come to new media poetry (as the term used by Kac and
others in Visble Language 30.2, 1996), in Brazil, was modern poetry (The
Week of Art in 1922),  Concrete Poetry (1950's), Visual Poetry (1970's),
Holopoetry (1983), Videopoetry, and what we can say as computer poetry (from
1970's to 1980's) and electronic poetry (from 1990's to nowadays).

Under the general theme of experimental poetry, Clemente Padin, from
Uruguay, has made excellent studies envolving South America new media
poetry. His work as a poet and essayist is vast, but I can suggest the
reading of La Poesia Experimental Latinoamericana, 1950-2000 (The
Experimental Poetry in Latin America: 1950-2000):
http://boek861.com/padin/indice.htm .

Regina Vater curated, in Austin, Texas, em 2002, the exhibition Poesia
Visual Brasileira (or, Brazilian Visual Poetry), with 53 Brazilian visual
poets (www.imediata.com/BVP/).

My page Brazilian Digital Art and Poetry on the Web -
www.vispo.com/misc/BrazilianDigitalPoetry.htm - is a panorama of what has
been made in Brazil and is on the web. This map lead me to write an essay
about digital poetry genre, trying to present the main traces of this new
media poetry: www.geocities.com/rogelsamuel/poesiadigital2.html.

During two postgraduated courses at Pontifical Catholic University of São
Paulo, the Portuguese poet Melo e Castro, who lived in Brazil for many
years, joined some students and organized some venues with infopoetries, in
1997. Part of his own experiences with infopoetry is in his site:
http://hosts.nmd.com.br/users/meloecastro/.

Since 1987, Dimensão Revista Internacional de Poesia (Dimension
International Poetry Magazine), in Uberaba, State of Minas Gerais, Brazil,
edited by Guido Bilharinho, published visual poetries from Brazil and other
countries. Among these various productions there a good essay by Ladislao
Pablo Györi, from Argentina, about his virtual poetry in 1995. In 1998 Melo
e Castro published a manifesto and the results of his experiences: Uma
transpoética Tridimensional (A Tridimensional Tranpoetics 3D).  Melo e
Castro and some other Brazilian poets organized comments about infopoetry,
with the title of "Novos Infopoetas de São Paulo" (New Infopoets from São
Paulo, 1999).

There are other printed and electronic magazines which publish visual and
electronic poetry: Arte Visual: Poesia Visual e Arte Digital (or, Visual
Art: Visual Poetry and Digital Art, 1995), edited by Hugo Pontes and Victor
Hugo Manata Pontes; Estúdio de Poesia Experimental (Studio of Experimental
Poetry), an international collection which was coordinated by Prof.
Philadelpho Menezes Neto (1996-2000)
(http://www.pucsp.br/pos/cos/epe/epe1i.htm); Artéria 8 (Artery 8), edited by
Omar Khouri and Fábio Oliveira Nunes (www.arteria8.net); Cortex: Revista de
Poesia Digital (or, Cortex : Digital Poetry Magazine), edited by Lucio Agra
and Thiago Rodrigues and web design by Guilherme Ranoya, in CD-ROM
(http://www.darkside.com.br/cortex).

Among several articles and essays in printed and electronic magazines, we
can point out Brazilian books which especifically treat digital poetry: O
Fim Visual do Século XX (or, The Visual Aim of 20th Century, 1993), by E. M.
de Melo e Castro, which presents a good panorama of experimental poetry,
visual poetry, videopoetry, infopoetry and holopoetry; (Processos Criativos
com os Meios Eletrônicos: Poéticas Digitais (or, Creative Processes with
Electronic Media: Digital Poetics, 1998), by Julio Plaza and Monica Tavares,
which mapes the relationship between Art and Science, digital images, and a
good study of Art and Poetry in the Time of Technology, oferring many
examples; Ensaio sobre o texto poético em contexto digital (or, Essay on the
Poetic Text in Digital Context, 1998), by Antonio Risério, which presents a
good panorama of the electronic text, poetry and, especially, electronic
poetry; Poesia Visual Vídeo Poesia (or, Visual Poetry Videopoetry, 1999), by
Ricardo Araújo, a study about experiences with concrete poetry and
videopoetry made by Augusto de Campos, Haroldo de Campos, Décio Pignatari,
Arnaldo Antunes, Julio Plaza.

Brazilian electronic poetry is not exactly closed in our country: many poets
have foreign contact, especially from the time of mail art, nowadays easier
due to the Internet, egroups and web.

It is quite difficult to select poets. The list below is just an example
among many poets from Brazil. My Brazilian Digital Art and Poetry has more
names, and they are also very important:

Augusto de CAMPOS - Biografia/Obras/Poemas/Sons/Textos/Links
(or, Biography/Works/Poems/Sounds/Texts/Links):
http://www.uol.com.br/augustodecampos

Elson Fróes - Pop Box: Visual, Sound and Verse Poetry:
http://planeta.terra.com.br/arte/PopBox

André Vallias -
Antilogia Laboríntica [poema em expansão]
http://www.refazenda.com.br/aleer/

The phenomenological in Brazilian new media poetry is the variety of
experiments and results. And the fantastic is that poetry is growing very
well in a new media, and even the verbal poetry has taken the oportunity to
be divulgated better by means of Internet and web.