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This chapter proposes a brief history of kinetic poetry as a transmedia and cross-artistic form. It connects the most relevant threads of a possible historiographic narrative of how kinetic poetry has been evolving since the beginning of the twentieth century at the intersection of literature, visual arts, cinema, animation, and technology, across various media. It argues for a transmedia approach because it does not place kinetic poetry at the heart of computational media and as a digital literature-specific genre, but rather as a temporal form that is media and language-specific, but also culturally and politically situated. Kinetic poetry is a form of poetry that relies on spatiotemporal transitions with expressive literary, visual and aural layers. Throughout the twentieth century, authors composed kinetic poems with varied media, such as motorized sculptures, celluloid film, video, holography, and computers. As it is unveiled, the origins of kinetic art and kinetic poetry can be traced back to the Constructivists' Realisticheskii Manifest and the Dadaists' praxis. When Marcel Duchamp staged puns via rotoreliefs in the 35 mm film Anémic Cinéma (1926), he opened up the way for hybrid works that can be experienced through the lenses of cinema, textual art in motion, and kinetic poetry. Later on, language went from projection to interaction, first with the investigations by the experimental poets in the 1950s-80s and then with the explorations by the digital poets from the 1980s onwards. Therefore, the discussion of kinetic poetry's cultural and technological history goes back to early abstract films, mechanical poetry, film poetry, videopoetry, holopoetry, to finally present algorithmically programmed animation. Because this narrative is heavily Euro- and American-centric, this chapter invites readers to contest the following historiographic version of kinetic poetry's trajectory, and to share knowledge about works created in other latitudes, especially by women and non-white authors.

This document registers the Q&A of the UCLA Information Studies Colloquium "The Art of Deleting: On Poetry and Erasure" by Álvaro Seiça. The talk presents recent outcomes connected to the research and book project "The Art of Deleting" (ARTDEL). ARTDEL is a 3-year project (2018-21) funded by the European Commission's Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellowship and the Norwegian Research Council, at the University of Bergen, the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of Coimbra. The use of material and graphic erasure in the composition and formal display of poems has a varied tradition during the 20th century and, most prominently, in the early 21st century. Marks of erasure in literary works can be traced back at least to Heinrich Heine's poetical narrative Reisebilder (1827), in which the author denounces and parodies state censorship by mimicking the censors' cuts. Yet, since then, are all writers, artists, and poets using erasure in the same way? An overview of this expanding visual and literary form suggests that there are often formalist or conceptual concerns with no political aims, but that a great number of poets and artists also highlight themes and practices of resistance and activism, by connecting erasure with censorship and surveillance. While the first part of the talk will contrast clusters of erasure poetics, the second part will present archival research related to how book censorship and erasure unfolded under the New State, the Portuguese corporatist and fascist regime of 1933-74. By searching the archives of the political police PIDE/DGS and the Censorship Commission, by inventorying, for the first time ever, the full card index of the Censorship Commission, and by unearthing part of the original books censored by the regime, it is now possible to better understand practices, motives, and objectives of material erasure that served the propaganda of Salazar and Caetano's regime. Having the knowledge of legal and political documents, it is appropriate to ask whether ...

This document registers the Q&A of the UCLA Information Studies Colloquium "The Art of Deleting: On Poetry and Erasure" by Álvaro Seiça. The talk presents recent outcomes connected to the research and book project "The Art of Deleting" (ARTDEL). ARTDEL is a 3-year project (2018-21) funded by the European Commission's Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellowship and the Research Council of Norway, at the University of Bergen, the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of Coimbra. The use of material and graphic erasure in the composition and formal display of poems has a varied tradition during the 20th century and, most prominently, in the early 21st century. Marks of erasure in literary works can be traced back at least to Heinrich Heine's poetical narrative Reisebilder (1827), in which the author denounces and parodies state censorship by mimicking the censors' cuts. Yet, since then, are all writers, artists, and poets using erasure in the same way? An overview of this expanding visual and literary form suggests that there are often formalist or conceptual concerns with no political aims, but that a great number of poets and artists also highlight themes and practices of resistance and activism, by connecting erasure with censorship and surveillance. While the first part of the talk will contrast clusters of erasure poetics, the second part will present archival research related to how book censorship and erasure unfolded under the New State, the Portuguese corporatist and fascist regime of 1933-74. By searching the archives of the political police PIDE/DGS and the Censorship Commission, by inventorying, for the first time ever, the full card index of the Censorship Commission, and by unearthing part of the original books censored by the regime, it is now possible to better understand practices, motives, and objectives of material erasure that served the propaganda of Salazar and Caetano's regime. Having the knowledge of legal and political documents, it is appropriate to ask whether ...

This document registers the Q&A of the UCLA Information Studies Colloquium "The Art of Deleting: On Poetry and Erasure" by Álvaro Seiça. The talk presents recent outcomes connected to the research and book project "The Art of Deleting" (ARTDEL). ARTDEL is a 3-year project (2018-21) funded by the European Commission's Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellowship and the Norwegian Research Council, at the University of Bergen, the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of Coimbra. The use of material and graphic erasure in the composition and formal display of poems has a varied tradition during the 20th century and, most prominently, in the early 21st century. Marks of erasure in literary works can be traced back at least to Heinrich Heine's poetical narrative Reisebilder (1827), in which the author denounces and parodies state censorship by mimicking the censors' cuts. Yet, since then, are all writers, artists, and poets using erasure in the same way? An overview of this expanding visual and literary form suggests that there are often formalist or conceptual concerns with no political aims, but that a great number of poets and artists also highlight themes and practices of resistance and activism, by connecting erasure with censorship and surveillance. While the first part of the talk will contrast clusters of erasure poetics, the second part will present archival research related to how book censorship and erasure unfolded under the New State, the Portuguese corporatist and fascist regime of 1933-74. By searching the archives of the political police PIDE/DGS and the Censorship Commission, by inventorying, for the first time ever, the full card index of the Censorship Commission, and by unearthing part of the original books censored by the regime, it is now possible to better understand practices, motives, and objectives of material erasure that served the propaganda of Salazar and Caetano's regime. Having the knowledge of legal and political documents, it is appropriate to ask whether ...

This slide presentation is an extract of the talk "The Art of Deleting: On Poetry and Erasure" at the UCLA Information Studies Colloquium, on December 3, 2020: https://youtu.be/ZiOMRsCGGOs It shows the documentation, classification, typology, and visualization of a set of 400 creative works that use erasure techniques and methods. This file is a complementary resource to the book chapter: "The Erasing Impulse: Veiling and Unveiling the Poetic and the Political." In Global Perspectives on Digital Literature, edited by Torsa Ghosal. New York: Routledge (forthcoming 2022).

This slide presentation is an extract of the talk "The Art of Deleting: On Poetry and Erasure" at the UCLA Information Studies Colloquium, on December 3, 2020: https://youtu.be/ZiOMRsCGGOs Here, I filter a dataset of 400 creative works that employ erasure techniques and propose three different types of constellations of practices: Constellation Blackout Constellation Covering Constellation Redaction This file is a complementary resource to the book chapter: "The Erasing Impulse: Veiling and Unveiling the Poetic and the Political." In Global Perspectives on Digital Literature, edited by Torsa Ghosal. New York: Routledge (forthcoming 2022).

This article analyzes Ian Hatcher's online and kinetic poem "⌰ (Total Runout)" (2015) from a point of view of a critique of corporate and governmental black boxing, at the level of its code, text, visual output, sound, and live performance. The multimodal poem is part of the Drone Pilot suite, and it is presented in different versions: as a web-based work, sound piece, and performance. It remixes appropriated text from a WikiLeaked manual by the UK Ministry of Defence, essays on artificial intelligence, and Hatcher's own text. The overall versions of the work, understood as variable events, boldly problematize communication and cognitive processes in networks—whether they are implemented in computer systems by secret agencies or corporations. Hatcher's critique of black boxes entails recreating issues of security, control and surveillance, as digital systems are increasingly paving the way for less privacy and less knowledge about their inner workings. As a result, the poem questions the essence of privacy, redaction, and systemic violence, when access is a privileged asset of agents with security clearances or those with a deep knowledge of programming. This article presents "⌰ (Total Runout)" in the scope of the poet's aesthetic program. Then, it analyzes its Web version's interface and source code. The kinetic poem's spatial and temporal dimensions are discussed via experiments that modify the source code. The methods here presented deform the poem's temporal display, by means of modifications, or what I call lit mods. Thus, the article proposes an approach for a more informed reading and understanding of digital kinetic poems, since they are ever-changing events. Finally, it locates the work's aural and performative versions in cultural and political context.

A Coleção de Literatura Eletrónica Portuguesa (CLEP), na base de dados ELMCIP, pretende abordar e recolher as obras criativas e teóricas mais relevantes produzidas por autores portugueses no campo da literatura eletrónica, durante os últimos quarenta e cinco anos. A coleção agrega também autores, eventos, organizações, editoras, periódicos, publicações, conferências, performances, instalações e exposições que estejam relacionadas com o contexto português. O presente ensaio analisa criticamente a CLEP, em torno de elementos literários, políticos, históricos, estéticos e tecnológicos, através de um fio condutor representado por um "feixe luminoso", que pretende dar conta da transição e continuidade temática e medial, mas também da transgressão e ruptura, produzidas pela vanguarda do movimento de Poesia Experimental dos anos 1960 até aos ambientes computacionais de criação literária do século 21. Ao longo desta leitura, analisa-se igualmente várias obras de Pedro Barbosa, E. M. de Melo e Castro, Silvestre Pestana, Manuel Portela e Rui Torres. ; The Portuguese Electronic Literature Collection (PELC) at the ELMCIP KB aims to address and collect the most relevant creative and critical works produced by Portuguese authors in the field of electronic literature during the past forty-five years. The collection also brings together authors, events, organizations, publishers, journals, publications, conferences, performances and exhibitions related to the Portuguese context. This paper critically examines PELC by focusing on literary, political, historical, aesthetic and technological elements through a common thread represented by a "luminous beam." It intends to highlight not only the thematic and medial transition and continuity, but also the transgression and rupture, that runs from the Portuguese avant-garde movement of Experimental Poetry from the 1960s to current electronic literature environments. Throughout the paper there is an analysis of several works by Pedro Barbosa, E. M. de Melo e Castro, Silvestre Pestana, Manuel Portela and Rui Torres. ; publishedVersion

Today, where information is continually transferred in the form of data, the word "information" has all but been exchanged for the word "data." This shift of terms has aided in effectively transforming the world into a network-world of data. In many areas, and for many professionals, condensing information has become an almost exclusive preoccupation. This need to condense information through selecting and summarizing events—via the use of statistics, infography, visualization software, reports, databases, and animations—has dominated our mental landscape; it dominates the way we structure our perception of reality. Therefore, it is important to rethink what this phenomenon represents and how artists are responding to it. In this network-world of data, spam (which is unsolicited e-mail or electronic data sent en mass) has become one of the symbols representing the flux of disinformation, and/or unsolicited, information. Anti-spam is, therefore, a method of eliminating and screening the source data, a tool I call impedance. If we apply this point of view to contemporary art, we could consider the works of Pavel Braila, R. Luke DuBois and André Sier as anti-spam filters that allow the detection, screening, elimination, and subsequent reinvention of existing or non-existent data. In this essay, I propose considering the fundamental aspects of data mining, data visualization, projection mapping. From such considerations emerges the ability to generate, process, and recreate data from the work of these three artists. Finally, I introduce the perspective of the artist as a data miner, this reinvents its source in the new visual, social and political datascape.