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

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

Hi Jorge,

I liked what the Argentine digital poet Ana Maria Uribe said in your
interview
http://www.officinadopensamento.com.br/officina/entre-vistas/entre-vistas_an
a_maria_uribe.htm  with her about collaboration, inspiration, and influence:

"Rather than being a source of inspiration, getting to know other digital
poets via the Internet has helped me a lot in many ways. My source of
inspiration - as I say elsewhere - are the letters themselves. I never
participated in a collaborative work, although I made pieces for certain
websites, like "Zoo", for "The Banner Art Collective"
(http://www.bannerart.org), and "Deseo - Desejo - Desire"
(http://www.ce.canberra.edu.au/inflect/01/uribe/eroticos.swf), for Muriel
Frega, who was putting up a page on desire. Exchanges in sites like
Webartery taught me many things I might otherwise have missed or never
tried..."

To me also it is not so much a matter of wanting to collaborate that is the
root of wanting to get to know other digital poets and artists and their
work, but what Ana Maria mentions, ie, a desire to see what other people are
doing, how they're doing it, why they're doing it, where they're publishing
it, why they publish where they publish, what they say is the phenomenology
of the media/um they use, what role the activity of making art occupies in
their life, where their work 'comes from' in relation to other art or
whatever, what sort of synthesis of arts, media, and whatever else they are
attempting...in other words, how they live it, their poetics, and what that
says not only about who they are and their art, but the larger contexts in
which they feel their work is operative.

Ana Maria says her source of inspiration is the letters themselves. That
attitude seems to be evident in her work, ie, the sense of language that I
get from her work, though it is concrete in influence, arises mainly from
the geometry of the letters themselves, the secret life of letters in
relation to actions and characters from this world. I wonder whether "the
letters themselves" is literal or an indication of artistic/intellectual
independence from any group or 'school' or whatever? Probably both, as it
should be. It is important to have one's artistic and intellectual
independence, whatever associations we may have. Also, this concentration on
the letters themselves, coincidentally, is part of what makes her work
accessible to an international audience.

Among the links you gave us, some of which I happen to have visited already,
was http://www.andrevallias.com/site/poemas and
http://www.refazenda.com.br/aleer , by André Vallias, which I had not
visited before. These 'poems' map poetry, the page, the verse, and the
'metric foot' into a more deformed space, and with no explanation but simple
actions. They are an interesting experience of poetry as other than it is
commonly realized.

I also enjoyed http://www.imediata.com/BVP , which has a pretty good
interface into a fairly large collection of works, although the central
space in which we view the work itself is a bit small for much of the work,
ie, the work is sacrificed to the interface, somewhat. Not so in the case of
http://www.desvirtual.com/recycled , which is part of the show. And this is
part of Giselle Beiguelman's http://www.desvirtual.com which is a pretty
significant site in digital poetry.

I also revisited http://www.popbox.hpg.ig.com.br by Elson Fróes, which has
been up on the Web for many years and keeps changing, ie, it is an active
site by someone who treats their site as an important part of their artistic
publication.

And I revisited http://www2.uol.com.br/augustodecampos/poemas.htm by Augusto
de Campos, a granddaddy of concrete poetry, a page which has poetry by him
dating from 1953 to 1997. It is interesting to sample different times and
compare them.

Thanks for the links and the introduction to your concerns, Jorge. I wonder
if others have questions or comments for Jorge?

ja