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What makes a poem a poem? If a text is sung, does it become a song? When motion
graphics are involved, does that make it animation? If the images
are photographic, is it cinema?
In the age of "Post-media aesthetics," as Lev Manovitch has pointed
out, the blurring of traditional media genres makes it difficult, if not impossible,
to rigidly define media territories. Instead of struggling to draw these separations,
we freely let the arts mingle in a space we still dare to draw a circle around
and label "poetry."
Although we use the term "new media poetry" as
a genre of "electronic literature" to describe the
work included in Poems that Go, "literature"
itself proves to be a pesky term. Indeed, we have been accused
of devaluing the word at the expense of the image. Our goal
here is not to elevate one art above the rest, but to seek
an inclusive understanding of literature, one that goes beyond
written text-based works, to include visual, aural and media
literacy.
In this spirit, Poems that Go explores the intersections
between motion, sound, image, text, and code. The work we
feature explores how language is shaped in new media spaces,
how interactivity can change the meaning of a sign, how an
image can conflict with a sound, and how code exerts machine-order
on a text.
We'd like to think of this space on the Web as a creative
field for this generation's artists and writers to probe the
medium's potential and integrate these art forms to challenge
the definition of poetry. One which challenges you, the new
viewers, readers, writers and artists, to discover extraordinary
ways to make sense of language, art, and narrative in a way
that is both critical and entertaining.
Megan
Sapnar and Ingrid
Ankerson
Editors
Link to Poems that Go:
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