concepts.
media self reference
poetic interest in the "concrete material" of the language itself, in its use in perception and communication, or its acoustic or text-graphic/visual expressive side, as well as in its inventory of elements and rules, grammar and semantics. digital poetry is concerned especially with the observation of specific digital or hypermedial structures and processes by and with language. this has to include procedures that implement source codes, programming, and interfaces self-referentially, that is, using them as medium in order to refer to them as form. this happens most radically as "code work," when poetry is written in programming languages.
processuality
interest in the processes of the open work, the "work in movement." this had to do not only with the completion of the work through some action by the recipient, but also on the dynamic nature of linguistic or semiotic processes in a broader sense. this incompleteness and dynamics also play an important role for digital poetry: the relationship between the perceivable (movement as animation, as a material movement of text) and the processes that create it becomes essential. artistic interest is directed towards the changed aesthetic experience of time in the electronic language and symbol space. or artists focus on symbolic transformation processes.
interactivity
interest in the process in which not only the activity of the producer is conceptualized but also that of the audience. the expansion of the concept of art starting in the 1950s toward more open structures and processes generally brought aesthetic consideration of symbolic, cognitive, and communicative processes, and specifically, the direct involvement of the audience or recipient. this applied to intermedia and action or happening in art, Fluxus and concept art, as well as experimental poetry, which developed close contact with these approaches. the interactivity of digital poetry expands this program to the extent that the ideal can be technically illustrated or observed or "empiricized."
Camille Utterback's "Text Rain"
hypermediality
considered an expansion of hypertext, except that not only text files, but also audio, picture and video files are linked and presented as an integrated data work. the idea is not merely to link media formats into a multimedia show, but to observe the technological and thus cultural qualities of media. intermedia art and especially visual poetry have dealt with linking text and pictures such that their respective medial characteristics can be reflected. to that extent, hypermediality refers not only to a visual, acoustic integrated data work, but to the programming level needed to generate it, which enables the transformation and interaction of code.
networking
characterizes document linkage that is made possible through the networking of computers, as illustrated by the WWW; it also denotes interaction among people via computer networks, independent of space and time. poetic happenings, mail art, and artist cooperatives such as in Fluxus, which conceptualize the networking of "nodes" of personal, informative and medial art could be named as historical reference points of the last half a century. digital poetry reflects and illustrates how networks can be momentously technologized as social and communicative connections and as document links in computers and networks such as the Internet. the procedure of networking calls into question both the traditional concept of author and that of a work. aesthetic use of hyperlinks, browsers, and the structure of the internet, as well as participatory and collaborative projects and programs refer to cultural changes in global society, networked in terms of technology and data.
Dragen Espenschied's "Assoziations-Blaster"
hypertext
characterized by non-sequential writing -- text that branches and allows choices to the reader, best read at an interactive screen. as popularly conceived, this is a series of text chunks connected by links which offer the reader different pathways.
definitions from "p0es1s. The Aesthetics of Digital Poetry" and "from Homer to Hypertext."
