ABOUT THIS BOOK

Po.Ex: Essays from Portugal on Cyberliterature and Intermedia is a crucial addition to the bookshelf for scholars and students of new media, digital literature, and experimental writing. Available for the first time outside of Portuguese, these essays are crucial primary texts of experimental literature. Po.Ex shows a long history of procedural composition and expressive intermedial writing, leading directly to the latest computer and network-based artworks. Collecting essays by Pedro Barbosa, Ana Hatherly, and E. M. de Melo e Castro, along with framing essays by the editors and extensive bibliographical materials,this book situates today’s digital and online texts in a rich tradition of European literature. New forms of writing appear in the encounter of literature and digital media, just as old forms are renewed. Po.Ex is an archive of the past, present, and future of cyberliterature and intermedia writing.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Rui Torres is Associate Professor of the Faculty of Human and Social Sciences at University Fernando Pessoa (UFP-Oporto), Portugal, where he coordinates the Project 'PO.EX'70-80 - Digital Archive of Portuguese Experimental Literature. Sandy Baldwin is Director of the Center for Literary Computing and Associate Professor of English at West Virginia University.

REVIEWS

“This exciting collection will explode our understanding of Portuguese experimental poets by making their longstanding engagement with cyberliterature, generative aesthetics, and visual poetry available in English. Until now, the richness of the Portuguese scene has been known outside of Portugal only through a handful of translations of its most vital practitioners. This superbly edited volume gives us a whole new insight into the ways writers in Portugal were - and are - thinking about the dimensions of poetic activity that contribute to the history of programmatic and generative production, as well as a foundation for our current and future work. For those unfamiliar with the writings of Ana Hatherly, E.M. de Melo e Castro, and Pedro Barbosa, this will be a revelation in the history and theory of the experimental dimensions of material poetics.”
Johanna Drucker, UCLA

TABLE OF CONTENTS

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

1. Introduction by the editors

2. Prelude 1 - "The H2 Robot" - Ana Hatherly

Prelude 2 - “Contribution Towards a Quantum Theory of the Cybertext” - Pedro Barbosa

3. VISUALITY AND INTERMEDIALITY IN EXPERIMENTAL LITERATURE

3.1. “Preface” - Ana Hatherly

3.2. “The New Presence of the Past in the Present: A Critical Re-reading of Tradition” - Ana Hatherly

3.3. "The Critical Experience of Poetry - 1, 2 and 3" - Ana Hatherly

3.4. "Short Essay" - Ana Hatherly

3.5. "Excursus A - Experimental Poetry” - E. M. de Melo e Castro

4. COMBINATION AND GENERATIVITY IN CYBERLITERATURE

4.1. "Numerology and Programmatic Poetry” - E. M. de Melo e Castro

4.2. "An Intersemiotic Network” - E. M. de Melo e Castro

4.3. "Perspectives and Virtualities of the Virtual Text” - Pedro Barbosa

4.4. "Towards a Theory of Computer Generated Texts” - Pedro Barbosa

4.5. "The Machine or the Inside of a Void Thought” - Pedro Barbosa

4.6. "Generative Aesthetics and Standard Models for Computer Generated Texts” - Pedro Barbosa

4.7. "A New Concept of Production” - Pedro Barbosa

5. Postlude: Poem - E. M. de Melo e Castro

6. Rui Torres, "The Dead Must be Killed Once Again": Plagiotropy as Critical Practice

7. Pedro Reis, Portuguese Experimental Poetry—Revisited and Recreated versão para impressão

8. Manuel Porteal, Flash Script Po.Ex: digital recoding of the experimental poem

9. About the Authors

10. Bibliography