Fertile Synthesis: Emotion in online digital poetry

Candidate: William David (Jhave) Johnston
Type: Master of Arts (MA), School of Interactive Arts and Technology
Date: July 20, 2007
Senior Supervisor: Dr. Diane Gromala, Associate Professor
Thesis: Download Thesis Document

Abstract

Computation and networking are changing language, the art of reading, and the act of writing. Multimedia digital poetry allows for the creation and simultaneous display of visual, sonic and textual patterns with unprecedented mobility and typographic capacities. This interdisciplinary form encourages an exploratory art-research practice-based investigation using a blend of theoretical knowledge ranging from literary criticism, phenomenology, aesthetics, affective computation and neurological research. In contrast to software-centric theory and/or materiality analysis, this thesis argues for the continuing relevance of the lyric, expressive affect and aesthetics in contemporary digital poetics. It examines the evolution of digital poetry with a specific emphasis on online poetry. In the context of this thesis, poetry is considered to be an ancestor of computer code. Poetry is also considered as information visualization of emotions. Emotions are considered to be complex embodied patterns; poetry expresses those patterns in language.

Keywords: digital poetics; art-research; web-art; affective computation

Subject Terms: Poetry Computer Network Resources; Art And Technology; Art and the Internet; Digital Poetics