Kac's holopoetry and digital poetry: Critical
fragments
“Reflections on Intermedia Poetic Modes: Bartolome Ferrando and Eduardo Kac.” Contemporary Poetry from Europe and the Americas. FMLS Oxford Journal (2011) 47(4): 429-441.
Simanowski, Roberto. Digital Art and Meaning: Reading Kinetic Poetry, Text Machines, Mapping Art, and Interactive Installations (Minneapolis: Univ Of Minnesota Press, 2011), p. 30 (holopoetry); pp. 54-57 (Genesis).
Brownie, Barbara. “Fluid Typography: Construction, Metamorphosis and Revelation.” Writing Design: Words and Object. Ed. Lees-Maffei, Grace. London: Berg, 2011.
Ioana-Eliza Deac. “New Meanings of Poetry in Eduardo Kac’s Poems,” in: Cybertext Yearbook 2010, University of Jyväskylä (2010). Editors: Markku Eskelinen & Raine Koskimaa. <http://cybertext.hum.jyu.fi/index.php?browsebook=7>
Digital holopoetry – latest, provisional frontier – brings forth, beyond the page and the object, a third dimension that is exclusively kinetic and immaterial.
Matteo D’Ambrosio. “Le disavventure della parola. Dalle avanguardie storiche all´ambiente multimediale,” in: Il testo, l’analisi, l’interpretazione. Volume terzo: Studi di teoria e critica letteraria sul tema Letteratura, tecnologia, scienza, a cura di Matteo D’Ambrosio (Naples: Liguori Editore, 2009), p. 18.
Matteo D’Ambrosio insegna Storia della critica letteraria presso l’Università di Napoli “Federico II”. Semiologo e storico delle avanguardie.
Annalisa Dell’Annunziata. “La Poesia informatica. Teoria e critica del testo e della lettura,” in: Il testo, l’analisi, l’interpretazione. Volume terzo: Studi di teoria e critica letteraria sul tema Letteratura, tecnologia, scienza, a cura di Matteo D’Ambrosio (Naples: Liguori Editore, 2009), pp. 48-54.
"Friedrich W. Block: "Im Uebergang. Notizen zur Selbstbeschreibung der
Poesie". In: Christian Steinbacher (ed.): Fuer die Beweglichkeit.
Notizen, Raender, Nomaden. Linz: Stifterhaus 2009, pp 21-39.
Alors que l’épistémologie rationaliste
héritée de Bachelard décrit les progrès de
la science selon un modèle d’avancée historique
correspondant peu ou prou à la levée successive des
obstacles ou des préjugés subjectifs voilant ou faussant
la connaissance objective, et ceci de façon extrêmement
abstraite, sans se soucier des procédures et des gestes du
scientifique réel, réduit à un idéal-type
de raison, l’anthropologie des sciences, élaborée par
Bruno Latour, s’attache aux conditions concrètes qui
déterminent les opérations scientifiques, en
étudiant ce qui se joue quotidiennement dans les
activités d’un labo: multiplication des appareils de mesure et
chaîne d’inscripteurs orientés vers la production finale
d’un texte destiné à des revues
spécialisées formant le contexte de véridiction /
validation des énoncés. Que produit au juste la
science? De la nouveauté ontologique.
Des textes, certes, mais plus décisivement des êtres
inédits, de nouvelles entités qui désormais font
partie de notre univers commun: les vaccins, les microbes, les
gènes, les quarks - des hybrides complexes qui résultent
de décisions à la fois scientifiques, politiques,
technologiques et qui deviennent des enjeux collectifs.
Eduardo Kac est le poète par excellence de ces quasi-objets
mixtes et impurs produits par les sciences. Son travail consiste
à s’emparer de ces nouveaux êtres et à tester leur
possibilité de constituer des médias pour des
stratégies composition-nelles langagières: dans un
premier temps Kac s’empare d’appareils technologiques en
développement (l’hologramme , le minitel, l’ordinateur), puis,
avec la réflexion sur le codage ADN comme forme scripturale, va
tester des modes d’écritures biopoétiques
inédits: création d’un lapin fluorescent par
modification du génome, écriture avec des
bactéries dans un biotope, devenant à son tour
créateur de quasi-objets rejouant les données de la
science dans un sens ludique et politique.
Olivier Quintyn
"Hodibis Potax — Compte rendu", Cahier Critique de Poésie --
CCP 16, cipM, septembre 2008, p. 170.
"Eduardo Kac, one of the pioneers of Holopoetry, notes that
"holography and computer holography blur the frontier between words and
images and create an animated syntax that stretches words beyond their
meaning in ordinart discourse" (Kac). Computer animation techniques
create a new kind of poetic composition that challenges fixed visual
and verbal forms. In Holopoetry, the sequence of linear reading is
broken since the poem is either visually fluctuating or verbally
reonating; the reader cannot assume that there is a fixed beginning or
ending. This results in a changed reader, one who will generally "have
multiple and differentiated experiences of the text," with all of the
experiences being equally valid (Kac).
Angelica Huizar
Huizar, Angelica. Beyond the Page (Bethesda, Dublin, Palo Alto:
Academica Press, 2008), p. 11.
Block examines the question of how the computer media extend the
current spectrum of visual poetry. (...) A really new quality in the
Turing Galaxy he recognizes, similar to myself, is the inclusion of the
body. First examples he sees in the digital Holopoetry by Eduardo Kac,
and in the "currently most famous media artwork," "The Legible City"
(1989-91) by Jeffrey Shaw and Dirk Groeneveld.Volker Grassmuck"A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Turing Galaxy: On naming the age of the
networked digital computer", Contemporanea, vol. 5, nº 1 e 2. Dez.
2007.
Poet/artist Eduardo Kac (b. 1962) first gained international
recognition in the 1980s with his computer-generated holopoetry. Over
the past twenty years, he has more radically explored the possibilities
of contemporary media technology for artmaking, a development
documented in Telepresence & Bio Art: Networking Humans, Rabbits,
& Robots (2005), a collection of Kac’s essays . The most notorious
of his “bio art” creations is the “green fluorescent rabbit” (2000).
The first of his “transgenic” artworks, Genesis (1999), was also his
first “biopoem.” It was based on an artificial gene created out of a
phrase from the biblical Genesis represented in Morse code that was
then converted into a DNA sequence according to a special code. The
gene was mass-produced by a specialized firm and then introduced into
bacteria in a petri dish, which were genetically engineered to glow,
either blue or yellow: only the blue ones contained the artificial
gene. Mutations were externally stimulated. The gene was later
extracted in its mutated form, decoded and re-translated; the phrase
had changed.
Claus Clüver
Claus Clüver: “Transgenic Art: The Biopoetry of Eduardo Kac",
paper presented "Imagine Media! Media Borders and Intermediality",
Nordic Society for Interarts Studies eighth conference, Växjö
University, Sweden, 25–28 October 2007.
Belle exposition des oeuvres poétiques (holopoésie,
biopoésie, poésie numérique, poésie
interactive) d'Eduardo Kac en ouverture de la Biennale Internationale
des Poètes en Val-de-Marne à la toute nouvelle et
magnifique médiathèque de Villejuif. C'est la
première fois que l'on peut, en France, voir ces œuvres
singulières réunies en un seul endroit. Eduardo Kac
expose également le biopoème "Erratum I" qu'il a
réalisé dans le cadre de sa résidence à la
Biennale Internationale des Poètes.
Jean-Pierre Balpe
Rédigé par Jean-Pierre Balpe le 23 mai 2007
<http://hyperfiction.blogs.liberation.fr/hyperfiction/2007/05/exposition_edua.html>
Que devient l'art ?
Eduardo Kac, l'artiste qui s'est fait connaître par son lapin
transgénique fluorescent, expose exceptionnellement du 22 mai au
2 juin 2007 à la Médiathèque de Villejuif une
série d'œuvres qui retrace une partie de son parcours artistique
dans le domaine spécifique de la poésie :
holopoèmes, biopoème, poèmes numériques…
Cet artiste ne cesse de remettre en cause les fondements de la
création artistique en utilisant dans ce champ les recherches
scientifiques les plus en pointe. Il redéfinit ainsi à la
fois ce qu'est l'art et ses domaines d'extension se demandant, par
exemple, ce que peut signifier la création artistique à
l'ère de la conquête spatiale.
A l'occasion de cette exposition, la Biennale Internationale des
Poètes en Val-de-Marne organisatrice de
l'événement publie également, aux éditions
Action Poétique, un ouvrage intitulé HODIBIS POTAX qui
présente l'essentiel de l'œuvre poétique
réalisée d'Eduardo Kac.
A noter qu'Eduardo Kac a été poète en
résidence de la Biennale Internationale des Poètes pour
l'année 2007 et que c'est dans ce cadre qu'il a
réalisé le biopoème Erratum I qui sera
exposé à Villejuif.
Rédigé par Jean-Pierre Balpe le 14 mai 2007
<http://hyperfiction.blogs.liberation.fr/hyperfiction/2007/05/que_devient_lar.html>
Christine Scheucher: Figuren des Unmittelbaren. Zur
Fortschreibung der Avantgarden im digitalen Raum. In: Anja Ohmer
(Hgn.), Aspekte der Avantgarde, Bd. 9, Berlin: Weidler-Verlag
2007, pp. 107-111.
Hypermedia for Kac provides the means to create poetry where “syntax
is organized in discontinuous space,” and where “it does not matter if
one is using phrasal, vocabular, syllabic or literal structures.” Here
the “performance” is intentionally shared: the artist creates a certain
number of enabling structures of meaning, while the lexical, semantic
or visual content or arrangement of the work of art is left up to each
subsequent viewer/reader. This is what the artist calls “a
viewer-activated text.” (...) In this case, since the creator
explicitly invites the viewer into an extended interpretive and
creative engagement with the existing piece, the viewer does not take
part in the process unconsciously, but is aware of her intentional
participation in creating a new whole.
Tatjana Chorney
Chorney, Tatjana. "Hypertexts and Reader-Engagement: Reading,
Writing, Adapting", EnterText, Volume 7 number 3 Winter 2007,
pp. 288-310, Brunel University, Uxbridge, London.
Eduardo Kac, qui a inventé le terme d'holopoème, le
définit ainsi : « Un poème holographique, ou
holopoème, est un poème conçu,
réalisé et montré par voie holographique. Ce
qui signifie, en tout premier lieu, qu’un tel poème est
agencé de façon non-linéaire dans un espace
immatériel tridimensionnel et, qu’en fonction de la façon
dont le lecteur ou le spectateur l’observe, il donne lieu à de
nouvelles significations ». Il faut effectuer une
différence entre un poème existant holographié et
l'holopoèsie qui tire partie des propriétés
mêmes du médium. Eduardo Kac réalisera des
holopoèmes à partir de 1983, date de création de Holo/Olho.
Il en publiera une vingtaine sur une période de 10 ans. L’une
d’elle, Quando, (1988) produit une image paradoxale : il faut
effectuer 2 tours pour la voir en entier. Cette œuvre montre clairement
que l’holopoésie ne consiste pas à introduire la
troisième dimension en poésie mais qu’elle introduit un
monde virtuel qui possède ses lois propres, un monde non
narratif qui ne se dévoile pas de lui-même, que seule
l’activité de lecture permet d’explorer, autant de
caractéristiques qui préfigurent les œuvres
programmées interactives. (…) La poésie holographique
préfigure les installations textuelles en réalité
virtuelle ainsi que la poésie animée en ajoutant au texte
la dimension virtuelle et le rôle actif de l’activité de
lecture : chaque mouvement physique du lecteur lui modifie les
caractéristiques esthétiques de l’œuvre.
Philippe Bootz
Bootz, Philippe. "Les Basiques : la littérature
numérique," Leonardo/Olats, décembre 2006.
<http://www.olats.org/>
I am reading through an interview with Eduardo Kac, just recently
published in the review Critique, the issue on “Mutants”
(June-July 2006, p. 533 and ff.), and I go straight to “Ce qui est
en cours” [“What is happening now”], where poetry is “mutating.”
What is the mutation? (And, by the way, the belated sympathizers of the
revolt against genetic engineering, behind the “eco-crowd” [“les
écolos”] in France, would do well to read this whole issue.
“Genetic engineering” is the “global”phenomenon, whether
José Bové understands it or not.)Here is what Kac has to say regarding “the artistic use of mutation:”“It is because of poetry that I started to use new media, starting
in the early 80s.”“…we are by nature genetically engineered beings.” (p.556)“Bio-art is an art in vivo.”“There are no norms. There are only mutants. What’s important is
that you feel alive.” (p.563)“Mutation is first of all a medium on the same order as oil
in painting.” (p.555)Etc.It is about nothing less than poetry’s exit from the sphere of the
logical, understood in the archaic Greek sense, of speech (logos),
of language and the linguistic (logikon), or even about what
Barthes (in his last course at the Collège de France)
called the sentence [“la phrase”]. In other words,
about the poem as proposition, judgment, grammatical and logical
articulation interested in truths and in truth. The sentence, the
stanza, the book (etc.) have become modalities of a “medium”… among
others! One could say, to (counter-) paraphrase Réne Char, the
earth is self-ejecting from its literate (literal, and “cultivated”)
parentheses.Michel Deguy
Michel Deguy, "Mutation," in Po&sie #116, 2006
Translated by André Spears
En 1996, Eduardo Kac écrivait un poème d’un type
particulier intitulé Secrets. Ce poème existe dans un
espace en trois dimensions. Chaque lettre est en continuité
spatile avec la lettre suivante composant ainsi les mots. Ce
poème spatial inaugurait ce que Jean Clément analysait
avec une grande acuité peu de temps auparavant: l’hypertexte,
par son dispositif, instaurait la predominance d’une spatialité
du texte au detriment de sa linearité. Secrets est à ce
titre exemplaire. La lecture de ce poème est soumise à
notre capacité de piloter un dispositif qui ressemble à
la conduite d’un vaisseau spatial à la recherché de
planetes (les letters des mots) et de galaxies (les mots du
poème).
Luc Dall'Armellina et Annick Lantenois
Dall'Armellina L. et Annick Lantenois, « Du voyage à
l'errance : une approche de l'hypertexte », in: « Art et
littérature - Le voyage entre texte et image », sous la
direction de Korzilius, Jean-Loup (Amsterdam / New-York: Éd.
Rodopi, 2006), p. 304.
Norbert Bachleitner. “The Virtual Muse.
Forms and Theory of Digital Poetry”, in: Eva Muller-Zettelmann and
Margarete Rubik (Editors). Theory into Poetry: New Approaches to the
Lyric (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005), pp. 308-310.
From here it is only a short walk to the world of digital or, more
exactly, holographic poetry in which the poem is kinetic in the nature
of the case. In a holographic text the page is replaced by an
empty three-dimensional (actually four-dimensional) space in which
words float and reconfigure themselves as readers proceed through it,
perhaps reading but certainly experiencing the materiality of language
in a seemingly dematerialized way. The space of the poem is actually
four dimensional, because the reader moves temporally through the space
and so alters it (and its contents) as he or she proceeds. Here
is certainly a subject for further study.5
In: Gerald L. Bruns. The Material Of Poetry: Sketches For A
Philosophical Poetics (Athens GA: University of Georgia Press, 2005),
p. 74-75.
Gerald L. Bruns Professor of English, Department of English,
University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN.
Als der Künstler Eduardo Kac in den 80er Jahren die Holography
für sich entdeckte, begann er mit prinzipiellen Fragen: “It is
very important to emphasize that not all texts recorded on
holographic film are holopoems. It is technically possible, for
example, to record a symbolist sonnet on a hologram. Such a
sonnet does not become a holopoem simply because it is displayed
on holographic film. What defines a holopoem is not the fact that
a given text is recorded on holographic film. What matters is the
creation of a new syntax, exploring mobility, non-linearity,
interactivity, fluidity, discontinuity and dynamic behavior only
possible in holographic space-time.”[7]Kacs Ziel ist die Abgrenzung echter Holopoetry von solcher, die nur
alte Artefakte ins neue Medium bringt. Die Notwendigkeit dieser
Abgrenzung war begründet im Missverhältnis zwischen
technischen Fähigkeiten und künstlerischen Konzepten im
Einsatz der neuen Technologie, was damals ein generelles Problem
darstellte[8]. So unterscheidet die Holography- Künstlerin
Margaret Benyon zwischen dem bloßen Einsatz einer Technologie und
deren ästhetischer Nutzbarmachung: „The credit for exhibitions
arranged by artists of laser beams as purely physical phenomena, for
instance, should go to the inventor and manufacturers of the laser,
rather than to the ‘artist’.“[9] Im gleichen Sinne stellt der
Kunstkritiker Peter Fuller den Anteil des Künstlers an
holographischen Objekten in Frage: “the very process of making a
hologram does not allow for the admission of a human imaginative or
physical expressive element at any point. The representation is not
worked, it is posed and processed [&] hence the hologram remains a
particularly dead medium compared with painting.”[10] Genau dieser
Geringschätzung der Holography antwortet Kacs Forderung nach einer
Holopoesie, die aus dem Medium selbst entsteht und dessen technische
Möglichkeiten ästhetisch-konzeptuell nutzt.
Roberto Simanowski. “Close Reading und der Streit um Begriffe”,
<www.dichtung-digital.com/2005/1/Simanowski>
No campo da holografia, da holopoesia, a presença das
características citadas anteriormente, a saber, a fluidez e a
efemeridade material são acentudadas, como assinala Eduardo Kac
(2003). Assim, o fato dos signos não poderem ser apropriados,
supõe uma densidade material que nos lembra a
flutuação irregular e instável de sua
superfície. A poesia holográfica torna evidente, entre
outras coisas, a impossibilidade de uma estrutura textual absoluta. Ela
amplifica, por sua própria particularidade material, por sua
materialidade construída de fótons, a instabilidade de
sentidos a que o leitor normalmente está sujeito. O fato da
irradiação objetal se dar pela sua própia
instabilidade redunda na idéia ou conceito em que nosso estudo
se estrutura: a fluidez, a instabilidade textual, a
liquefação das estruturas significantes, enfim, a
materialidade que se recusa à imobilidade do olhar.
Luiz Antonio Garcia Diniz
“Arquitetura textual líquida: A
liquefação das textualidades no interior dos ambientes
imersivos”, In: I Encontro Nacional sobre Hipertexto: Desafios
Lingüísticos, Literários e Pedagógicos, 2005,
Recife/PE. Anais - Conferências, Mesas Temáticas,
Comunicações Orais. Recife : UFPE, 2005.
Eskelinen, Markku. “Towards Computer Game Studies”, in :
Wardrip-Fruin, Noah and Pat Harrigan (eds.). First Person: : New Media
as Story, Performance, and Game (MIT Press, 2004).
A convergence of reader and viewer can be observed in the “eletronic
poetry” produced by poet Eduardo Kac. Kac achieved fame for his
holopoetry and holopoems, new forms of electronic literature he
invented in 1983 to overcome the shortcomings of the two-dimensionality
and linearity of the printed page. Holopoems are textual
structures in three-dimensional holographic space which continually
change shape, color or position. It is difficult to decide if the
reader of a holopoem is a “reader”, a “viewer” or “participant”.
In his theoretical works, Kac constantly shifts between reading/reader
and viewer/viewing: “engagement on the part of the reader or
viewer,” “the viewer looks for words, “the reader has never
seen” or “the viewer has to read” Kac 1993). The holopoems
introduce changeability and temporality into the literary text, which
not only has consequences for the text but also for the reader. Kac
states: "By textual instability I mean precisely that condition
according to which a holographic text does not preserve a single visual
structure in time as it is read by the viewer, producing different
and transitory verbal configurations in response to the
beholder’s perceptual exploration."Jack Post, "Requiem for a Reader? A Semiotic Approach to Reader and
Text in Electronic Literature", in: Jan, Van Looy and Jan Baetens
(Editors). Close Reading New Media. Analyzing Electronic Literature
(Leuven University Press, 2003), p. 137.
If poetry stored and retrieved electronically marks one end of the
definitory spectrum, Eduardo Kac's near-equation of hyperpoetry with
unique and tangible artefacts marks the other. Kac's poetological
writings mostly deal with his own work as a poet in a form of art he
calls holopoetry; poems as physical artefacts that literally need to be
seen, even touched, to be understood. Kac writes texts that often are
as short as two words, three-dimensionally made to change into each
other as the viewer/reader moves the object that renders these poems
visible.
Klaus Stierstorfer. Beyond Postmodernism: Reassessments in Literature,
Theory, and Culture (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2003), p. 93.
If poetry stored and retrieved electronically marks one end of the
definitory spectrum, Eduardo Kac’s near-equation of hyperpoetry with
unique and tangible artefacts marks the other, Kac’s poetological
writings mostly deal with his own work as a poet in a form of art he
calls holopoetry; poems as physical artefacts that literally need
to be seen, even touched, to be understood. Kac writes texts that
often are as short as two words, three-dimensionally made to change
into each other as the viewer/reader moves the object that renders
these ‘poems’ visible.
Peter Paul Schnierer, “Modernist at Best: Poeticity and Tradition
in Hyperpoetry”, in: Beyond Postmodernism: Reassessments in Literature,
Theory, and Culture, Klaus Stierstorfer, ed. (Berlin ; New York :
Walter de Gruyter, 2003), p. 93.
Peter Paul Schnierer, Professor of English Literature, Universität
Heidelberg, English Department, Heidelberg, Germany.
Eduardo Kac’s work shows sensitivity to the different in-betweens in
which a sign loses its identity and becomes other. “Reversed Mirror”
(1997), a digital videopoem, deals with “the subtle dissolution and
reconfiguration of verbal particles”. These dilatory states are further
explored in Kac's holopoetry, for example in "Souvenir d'Andromeda" and
"Adhuc", which combines holography, film and digital animation. Here
textual motion and change are made dependent on the reader's movements
as a perceiver.”
Teemu Ikonen
Teemu Ikonen, “Moving text in avant-garde poetry. Towards a
poetics of textual motion, in: Dichtung-Digital, Vol. 4/2003, Markku
Eskelinen (editor) <www.dichtung-digital.com/2003/4-ikonen.htm>
Eduardo Kac's hologram "Adhuc" from 1991 is a startling event. His
HOLOPOEM -- materialized in object form instead of in print -- is
developed in the tradition of visual poetry. Its fleeting presence is
only attainable for an instant. This immediacy, which is the essence of
art, can only ever be experienced, but certainly not calculated, in the
here and now. Kac's hologram "Adhuc" shows combinations disintegrating
and making way for newly combinable modes of understanding. Converging
deferentially, words mix together and disintegrate into
inter-penetrating, self-charging and self-extinguishing fragments of
letters, writhing and dancing (cf. Kac's holopoem "Amalgam" from 1990).
In cognitively effective experimentation "Adhuc" plays with closeness
and distance, interpretative interest and arbitrary indifference, sense
and nonsense, committed enlightenment and cryptic riddles. Recognizable
words such as EVE, FAR, FOUR, YEARS, WHENEVER, NEVER suddenly mutate,
disclosing other hidden readings and meanings, merging and surpassing
themselves in limitless incomprehension or abandoning themselves to
total dissolution, immersing themselves in the void of the conceptless
and virtually inconceivable dimension of holographic light space. From
the inside a rolling movement, at once binding and disbanding,
questions linguistic definition with letters that combine at random and
then separate anew with the movement of the spectator. Contradictory
interpretations become reasonable, familiar combinations revert to
nebulous enigma -- until they "dawn" again, bringing light to darkness
as alternative renderings
Christian Schneegass, "Enlightening Images in Thin Air". In: Jung,
Dieter. Holographic Network (Bramsche, Germany: Rasch Verlag, 2003), p.
219. Christian Schneegass is professor of art at the Berlin Akademie
der Künste.
Read the complete excerpt from:
“Perspective in experimental shaped poetry: A semiotic approach”, John
J. White, in: From Sign to Signing, Wolfgang G. Müller and Olga
Fischer, eds. (Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2003), p.
120-121.
John J. White is Professor of German and Comparative Literature at
King's College London.
Eduardo Kac began writing through the process of holography in 1983.
As well as assuming a critical standpoint in relation to linear text,
Kac's holopoems, concerned with time and movement, border on the
cinematic. A conventional movie is a series of recorded shots projected
in quick succession onto a single screen in front of a seated audience.
The different shots within each holopoem are not projected sequentially
onto a screen but through a singular filmic surface, a surface that
simultaneously records a series of different images (of words) from
different points of view. Each holopoem thus compresses a substantial
amount of recorded time in the form of different sequences of letters,
a time which can be reread only when one moves around it. As the reader
moves in relation to the holopoem included in this exhibition, Ad Huc,
different words appear and disappear: whenever, four years, or never,
far eve, forever, evening (all of which refer to the measure of time).Isobel WhiteleggIn: “Writing Space”, included in the catalogue Transit published
by the University of Essex in 2002 to accompany the exhibition of the
same name.
Beaucoup de contributions critiques ne distinguent pas parmi de
typologies textuelles : celles qui présentent un statut
discursif communicationnel, celles d’ordre narratif (fictionnel) et
celles qui rappellent une idée, même si renouvelée,
de poésie. Il faudrait plutôt signaler, au
préalable, les spécificités et les
différences qu’on peut relever. Le cas le plus
éclatant est bien sûr celui de l’holopoésie
quadridimensionnelle, capable de simuler la matérialité
linguistique, qui impose des remarques spécifiques. A ce propos
cf. au moins Eduardo Kac, Recent Experiments in Holopoetry and Computer
Holopoetry, in Ouvrage collectif, Display Holography, edited by T. H.
Jeong, SPIE, Bellingham (Wa.) 1991, pp. 229-36.
Matteo d'Ambrosio
Matteo d'Ambrosio: Une semiotique à venir pour la
cyberpoésie,
<http://www.olats.org/projetpart/artmedia/2002/t_mAmbrosio.html>
Hija de la cibercultura, la Holopoesía es la máxima
expresión artística de la era digital computacional.
Poesía producida gracias a la realidad tecno-virtual y realizada
en el espacio inmaterial tridimensional en constante
transformación. Según el brasileño Eduardo Kac, la
Holopoesía, en contraste con la poesía visual, “pretende
expresar la discontinuidad del pensamiento; en otras palabras, la
percepción del holograma no tiene lugar ni lineal ni
simultáneamente, sino en fragmentos que el observador ve en
función de las decisiones que toma, es decir, dependiendo de la
posición que adopte respecto al poema” ( Catálogo
Exposición… 20). Aquí los fractales son los integrantes
mayores del Holopoema. Son creaciones de sintaxis nuevas,
discontínuas, irregulares, indescifrables, no medibles por las
tres dimensiones no euclidianas y cuya morfología posee el
carácter estético de lo maravilloso. Los Holopoemas,
igual que las figuras neobarrocas posmodernas, están dotados de
dinamismo, inestabilidad y metamorfosis rítmicas graduales. “La
percepción espacial de los colores, los volúmenes, los
grados de transparencia, las transformaciones de la forma, la
posición relativa de las letras y las palabras, y la
aparición y desaparición de formas es inseparable de la
percepción sintáctica y semántica del texto”
(Catálogo..20). Poesía virtual. Poemas
cuatridimensionales que integran no sólo lo espacial, sino lo
temporal. De allí su fluidez, su fugaz percepción y la no
permanencia en el tiempo. Poesía para la memoria
instantánea global, promocionada e impulsada por la
cibercultura. (Véase,por ejemplo, los Holopoemas de Eduardo Kac,
Zero, 1991; Havoc, 1992; Holo/Olho, 1983).
http://www.ekac.org/holosp.html
Carlos Fajardo, "Poesía y posmodernidad" in: Espéculo.
Revista de estudios literarios, N. 20, 2002. Universidad Complutense de
Madrid.
Carlos Fajardo es poeta, investigador y ensayista. Filósofo de
la Universidad del Cauca. Magíster en Literatura de la
Pontificia Universidad Javeriana y candidato a Doctor en Literatura de
la UNED (España). Es profesor en las Universidades Distrital
Francisco José de Caldas, La Salle de Bogotá y en la
Maestría en Filosofía de la Universidad INCCA de Colombia.
The most radical experimental poems today are probably the holographic
and fractal poems by Eduardo Kac. These poems are multilinear,
interactive, open-ended, incomplete, and can not be translated or
printed completely into paper because of their multiple dimensions. In
order to define these new experiments as poetry we need to have a very
inclusive notion of poetry. In the new electronic era there is a
potential for a bigger complexity of interrelations than ever before.
The subject, the author, the reader, and the poem are related in a
multiple, immediate, and unfinished chain of textuality where the
context of impermanence is the dominant way of reading and composing.
Laura López Fernández. "Experimental Poetry in Spain",
Corner, N. 5, Fall 2001--Spring 2002.
<http://www.cornermag.org/corner05/page08.htm>
Laura López Fernández is Assistant Professor of Spanish,
Foreign Languages Department, Georgetown College, Kentucky.
With the emergence of electronic writing, perceptions of the possibilities and limitations of the artistic medium and the mechanisms of reception have taken the form of varying narratives of space. These narratives focus on all facets of electronic writing: the physical space in which the writing is stored, the virtual space in which the writing is often said to reside, the textual space in which the elements of the writing are inscribed, the literary space in which form and meaning relate, the personal space in which perception takes place, and the cultural space in which texts and readers interact. As an example of the intersection of these narratives, the holopoetry of Eduardo Kac employs the novel space of computer-generated holography to create visual poetry that calls for the reconfiguration of narratives of electronic, artistic, and poetic space. Kac’s works also offer an example of the possible benefits of constraint on the expanding and extending medium of electronic writing since the ideas and methods of restricting these new spaces will determine the future techniques and processes of artistic/literary signification, as well as influence ensuing narratives of space.Wayne Kobylinski, West Chester University of PennsylvaniaWayne Kobylinski, “Intimations of Immateriality: Narratives of Electronic Literary Space,” TEXT Technology 11.2 (Celina, Ohio: Wright State University), Winter 2002: 31-51.
To read and to see is to attempt to impose a certain performance on the
system; it is to engage with the system such that it performs and
produces a coherent and legible output. In this sense, and in that it
contains at least two mutually exclusive pictures and perspectival
positions within its frame (e.g., Hans Holbein's painting The
Ambassadors
<http://www.artchive.com/artchive/H/holbein/ambassadors.jpg.html>
contains a "correct" picture of the ambassadors or of the skull, but
not both simultaneously), the anamorphic has a strong connection to
Eduardo Kac's holopoetry. Kac identifies the primary formal quality of
his holopoetry as "textual instability," "the condition according to
which a text does not preserve a single visual structure in time as it
is read by the viewer, producing different and transitory verbal
configurations in response to the beholder's perceptual exploration"
("Holopoetry" 193).40 Such visual and verbal instability, whereby "the
linguistic ordering factor of surfaces is disregarded in favor of an
irregular fluctuation of signs that can never be grasped at once by the
reader," is achieved through what Kac terms the "fluid sign," which
resembles the anamorphic in the description of its operation: "[A]
fluid sign is perceptually relative.... [it is] essentially a verbal
sign that changes its overall visual configuration in time, therefore
escaping the constancy of meaning a printed sign would have" (193-4).
The perceptual change for Kac, however, is one achieved through time
rather than dimension. Holopoetry strives for temporal mutability, so
it is not a true anamorphic, but Kac's theorizing of fluidity and the
impossibility of a stable perceptual position does speak to the
hypertextual process of construction, making, and interactive
performance.
Rita Raley. "Reveal Codes: Hypertext and Performance". Postmodern
Culture (Johns Hopkins University Press), Volume 12, Number 1,
September 2001. <http://muse.jhu.edu/demo/pmc/12.1raley.html>
Rita Raley is assistant professor of English at the University of
California, Santa Barbara, where she teaches courses in the digital
humanities and transnational literary studies.
La question du mouvement et de la "mise en film" des textes trouve une
illustration intéressante chez le poète Eduardo Kac, auteur d'une théorie sur la poésie
holographique. On verra aussi comment, avec Genesis, à partir de
l'informatique et du réseau, l'artiste et écrivain a
inscrit une phrase de la bible dans le patrimoine
génétique d'une bactérie.Hugues Marchal. " Une histoire e-littéraire?", Histoires
littéraires, N. 6, 2001, Paris.
<http://www.histoires-litteraires.org/les%20articles/artmarchal6.htm>
“Holopoems, which have no beginning or end and which create new reading possibilities each time the reader changes position, bring visual poetry into the twenty-first century and indicate that this truly multidisciplinary art will survive well into the future.”O'Neil, Mary Anne. “The Fortunes of Avant-Garde Poetry”, Philosophy and Literature, Volume 25, Number 1, April 2001, pp. 142-154 (Review). Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press, p. 153.
Eduardo Kac, brillant théoricien de la poésie
holographique.
"Écrire à l'âge de l'Internet", Hugues Marchal,
Magazine littéraire n°392, Paris, Novembre 2000
Posted to the webartery list, Message #773
From: Eric Vos <ericvos@xxxxxxx.xxx
Date: Wed Dec 31, 1999 9:59 pm
Subject: Re: Kac
[On re-reading the promised review, I found that some passages were too
much concerned with the 1995 *book* to be worth re-typing in a more
general context. Here are the more relevant ones, focusing only on
Eduardo Kac's holopoetry, not his hypertexts, telematic and biogenetic
installations, etc.:]
---------
[...] In [Eduardo] Kac's conception of holographic art there is no such
thing as *the* holographic image. This should not be taken in the
latter-day vein of liberal theories of interpretation, emphasizing the
legitimacy of rival readings of any art work, its essential
poly-interpretabiblity, and so on. It should be taken much more
literally. The hologram stores an image of an object (whether a 'real'
object or another image), but as Kac explains: "Every point on the
surface of the hologram 'sees' and records the object from a different
viewpoint." Consequently, to see the entire image, as recorded on the
entire hologram, the spectator would have to be able to observe all
points on its surface, to see from all viewpoints. When used for
scientific, industrial, or commercial purposes (e.g. laser scanning of
a
product code at supermarket registers), the holographic image
ordinarily
enables the viewer - whether human or mechanic - to do just that. In
such
cases, the image ususally aims at reproducing a virtual environment or
object with visual stability. The image is manipulated in such a way
that
it allows the viewer to probe a space that remains constant for the
duration of the experience. But holograms *need* not be oriented
towards
this simultaneity. Especially when used as an artistic medium,
discontinuity may become a much more prevalent feature of holography.
And
Kac's holography is discontinuous throughout, shattering
three-dimensional space into discrete viewing zones.
[...] Whereas every point on the surface of Kac's holograms stores a
different image, or stores an image differently, the spectator can only
perceive specific points, depending on relative position and
corresponding angle of perception. Here, space (not the space of the
image, but the space of the recipient) and particularly time enter the
scene of holographic art. To see the holographic image in its
'entirety',
the spectator must move through time and space, with the obvious result
that the image is (dis)continuously changing. Images become temporal
things; holography, says Kac, is "an art of time." This temporalization
of spatial structure opens up a magnitude of new possibilities,
including
perceptual non-linearity, time-reversability (while the observer
necessarily moves 'ahead' in time, the image changes 'back' to its
original state, then changes again, etc., eliminating notions of
'beginning' and 'end'), and, the crown jewel, ordinary stereoscopy
turned
into 'retinal rivalry,' whereby each eye perceives a totally different
slice of the holographic space-time (dis)continuum.
Or a totally different text, for Kac - holopoet - always fills his
spatio-temporal holographic images with words. Visualized, animated
words, appearing and disappearing, springing together and sliding
apart;
exploding words, with word fragments combining into new words, with
word
and letter traces remaining, then suddenly becoming part of still new
words, or merging with the background colors. In a Kac holopoem,
anything
can *happen*. Yet for all animation, motion, and other time-effects,
holopoetry is no video poetry. The difference between the two lies not
in
technical means primarily, but in the self-imposed absence of
poet-orchestrated sequence in holopoetry. The sequential structure of a
Kac holopoem entirely depends on the way in which the actions and
movements of individual readers turn the holographic text environment
offered by the poet into a space-time event.
[...] For Kac, the core of visual poetry lies in the Futurist invention
of a typographically dissolved syntax, which leaves decisions regarding
the composition of a 'message' to the reader. [...] But being limited
by
the possibilities of printing techniques, Futurist visual poetry and
its
later Concrete and Neo-Concrete successors could never break through
the
barrier of presenting a stationary, constant and monoplanar
constellation
of signs. This connotes a view on language according to which we, the
language users, are in control. According to Kac, we are not: "When I
defend a model of language as fluctuating, oscillating turbulent and so
forth, I am not talking about ambiguity in a stable model of language
that can be interpreted in one way or another. I am talking about [...]
the realization that language has its own dynamic, and no matter how
much
one tries to grasp it, how much one tries to arrest it, how much one
tries to condense and objectify it, it's going to continue to spill
off,
and spill out, and blend and merge and dissolve." That dynamic,
time-oriented, open and uncontrollable realm is the environment
reflected
in Kac's holopoetry [...].
[...]
Exploring the possibilities of these works, Kac's goal is inspired by
Baudrillard: "The artist [should] restore the responsibility of the
media, in the sense that the media must allow people to respond. The
media must bring people closer, not keep them apart, as television
does.
The media must allow for people to interact, to share, to discover
together, rather than be at the end as consumers." These words brought
to
mind a personal recollection. On August 16, 1993, Carleton University
Art
Gallery (Ottawa, Canada) hosted a reception for the participants in a
congress of the International Association of Word and Image Studies. In
the main hall, visual poems and other word/image works were mounted on
the walls, with the spectators all standing quietly, by themselves,
contemplating a work for a while, then moving to a position in front of
the next work on display, occasionally moving forward for a better
look,
and so on. In a side room, people were rushing to and fro a couple of
holograms, not just bending backwards, forwards and sideways, crawling
on
hands and knees and climbing chairs, but suggesting positions to each
other and directing others to certain positions - all in order to read
poetry, to make poetry *happen*. In the corner of that room stood
Eduardo
Kac, observing the crowd, looking happy.
--------------
best,
Eric
Speaking of perspective, I was wondering about the link many
historians make between perspective and humanism (age of the world
picture). Post-humanism, post-self of electracy, changing
subjectivation in the digital apparatus. We were speaking of Kac
recently. Thinking of holopoetry therefore. Hologrammatology. Using
holographic technology, it allows 4-D relationships to letters and
words. Reader moves around in the writing (words liberated from any
surface); same for pictures (word-image difference reduced). Possible
to view-read from any perspective (hence any point of view? does that
follow?). The end of the paragraph, the irrelevance of syntax (replaced
by animation).Greg Ulmer, Professor, Department of English, University of Florida,
Gainesville. Posted on 24 Nov 1999 to the "Invention list", hosted by
the Florida Media Arts Center. University of Florida, Gainesville.
Archived at: http://www.lists.ufl.edu/archives/invent-l.html.
The ultimate strength of Kac's work does not necessarily lie in the
conceptual structure on which it is based or the source of the artist's
inspiration (which are not the starting point for the viewer-reader),
but rather the impact of the intrinsic poetic dimension. In the final
analysis, the objective is not to explain, but to present an
infrastructure that generates a multiplicity of experiences and
interpretations. Wittgenstein believed that language was only useful in
allowing us to realize how inefficient it was in describing the world:
"I am only describing language, I am not explaining anything." In Kac's
case, too, language is not definitive, but neither is it useless: its
usefulness lies in its ability to be many different things as we use it
to navigate through the seductive labyrinth of his works.Pablo Helguera, Director of Education of the Guggenheim Museum, New
York. "Restless Words", originally published in Art Nexus, No. 31,
February – April 1999, page 119 and 120.
Dans la mesure où, contrairement à celles qui
sollicitent le toucher et l'odorat, les oeuvres acoustiques et surtout
visuelles sont accessibles au-delà du seul contact direct avec
le "spectateur", celui-ci -- et, en amont, le créateur de
l'oeuvre -- peuvent et doivent s'appuyer sur une organisation
spécifique de l'espace. Les contraintes qu'imposent encore
l'utilisation de l'outil informatique font que cet espace demeure
essentiellement bidimensionnel (mais les effets de relief peuvent
déjà être gérés de façon assez
satisfaisante). Il faut noter ici le travail remarquable d'Eduardo Kac
qui, à l'Art Institute" de Chicago, développe une forme
artistique nouvelle qu'il a baptisée Holopoetry et produit ainsi
des images et des fragments de textes qui évoluent dans un
espace tridimensionnel "virtuel" (on pourra consulter ses publications
et explorer certaines de ses réalisations sur son site :
www.ekac.org). Mais les deux dimensions qui s'imposent à nous
dans la plupart des créations "spatiales", celles de
l'écran comme celles de la page (ou de la toile !), sont
à ce point prégnantes qu'elles imposent une sorte
d'ontologie plate" qu'étudient épistémologues et
linguistes. Je songe ici à deux ouvrages qui ont pratiquement le
même titre : Il mondo di carta d'Enrico Bellone (Mondadori
1976, paru en traduction anglaise sous le titre A World on Paper, MIT
Press, 1980) et The World on Paper de David Olson (Cambridge University
Press, 1994).Paul Braffort, writer, member of ALAMO (Atelier de
Littérature Assistée par la Mathématique et les
Ordinateurs). "arts @ ?", originally published in the annals of
the symposium "Que ne peut l'informatique ?", 27-29 octobre 1999,
realized at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers,
Paris. Also published online:
http://cazes.cnam.fr/QNPI/Actes/Braffort.html.
There has been some tentative interest in 3-D textuality within the
new media arts community, perhaps most notably on the part of
multimedia artist Eduardo Kac. Since 1983, Kac has been refining a
technique he calls "holopoetry," which uses holographic imaging to
situate arrangements of words and phrases in a 3-D text-space. These
constructions, or "holopoems," are highly suggestive, not only for the
creative effects derived from their third-dimension, but also for their
evocation of "fluid signs" (Kac's phrase), a phenomenon that is
temporal as well as spatial as words and letterforms mutate and migrate
over the course of the viewer's engagement with a piece.Matthew Kirschenbaum, independent writer, in "Lucid Mapping:
Information Landscaping and 3D Writing Spaces", Leonardo, Vol. 32, N.
4, 1999, p. 263.
Una nueva estética comienza a asomarse en el horizonte como
resultado de investigaciones realizadas por artistas integrados a los
medios electrónicos y fotónicos y la coexistencia de los
espacios rales y virtuales. Eduardo Kac, poeta y artista
brasileño, autor de varios holopoemas que son esencialmente
hologramas digitales lleva al lenguaje a su objetivo primordial tanto
en lo material como en lo subjetivo para decirnos que sus holopoemas:
"definen una experiencia linguística que tiene lugar fuera de la
sintaxis y conceptualizan la inestabilidad como la clave del agente
significante." Kac usa la holografía y la holografía
computarizada para borrar la frontera entre las palabras y las
imágenes y para crear, al mismo tiempo, una sintaxis animada que
amplia las palabras más allá de sus significados durante
un discurso ordinario.Matilde Daviu, Professor, Facultad de Ciencias y Artes, Unimet,
Caracas, "La Escritura Espacial a partir de un Holograma", paper
presented at I Congreso de Investigación y Creación
Intelectual de la UNIMET, Venezuela, 1998.
Poetry has a long history of challenging language norms. Since
Mallarmé and Apollinaire, poetry has been challenging
typographic and visible language presentation norms as well. Eduardo
Kac is a contemporary poet who follows in that tradition by exploring
new media poetry. His holopoetry is at the leading edge of interactive
media. The viewer/reader sees the poem in space and time responsive to
his or her movement and position. The poem reveals itself not linearly
or simultaneously but through fragments. According to the poet, "what
matters is the creation of a new syntax, exploring mobility,
non-linearity, interactivity, fluidity, discontinuity and dynamic
behavior only possible in holographic space-time." Poetry is about
pushing limits, aesthetics, transcendence -- even communication. Our
attention is thus drwan to poetic exploration that uses technology
positively, not for translation of past conventions, but to open new
language transactions.Sharon Helmer Poggenpohl, Professor, Illinois Institute of
Technology, "Twenty-Six-Not-So-Easy-Pieces", Visible Language, Vol. 32,
N. 1, 1998, p. 22-23.
"The spectacular qualities his inventions posses are unmistakable.
Kac's ideas and ingenuity, without question, show that he is an
adventurous visionary."
Christopher T. Funkhouser, "Chapter Two: Hypertext & Hypermedia",
in his Ph.D. dissertation CYBERTEXT POETRY: EFFECTS OF DIGITAL MEDIA ON
THE CREATION OF POETIC LITERATURE, University at Albany, State
University of New York, College of Arts & Sciences, Department of
English, 1997.
Eduardo Kac, le principal théoricien de la poésie
holographique, vit actuellement aux Etats-Unis où il enseigne.
Il est né à Rio en 1962 et vient de la poésie
visuelle, auteur notamment d'un "sonnet pictogramme" en 1982. Pour son
travail, il utilise les termes d'"holopoème" et
d'"holopoésie". Il a travaillé à Sao Paulo avec
l'holographe Fernando Eugenio Catta-Preta, et réalisera, avec sa
collaboration et dans son laboratoire à Sao Paulo, l'hologramme
poétique "HOLO/OLHO" ("HOLO/OEIL", 1983), anagramme en miroir
qu'il exposera au Salon National des Arts Plastiques au Musée
d'Art Moderne de Rio en 1984, hologramme paronomastique qu'il a
holographié plusieurs fois avec des lettres de
différentes tailles. Il va réaliser d'autres hologrammes
avec Fernando Catta-Preta, dont "ABRACADABRA", "OCO" et "ZYX", et il
montera, avec 4 holopoèmes, l'exposition "HOLOPOESIA",
"Holopoésie", au Musée de l'Image et du Son à Sao
Paulo en août 1985. En 1986, artiste en résidence au
Musée de l'Holographie à New York, il réalise 3
nouveaux holopoèmes, "WORDSL 1", "WORDSL 2" (jeu
sémantique entre les mots WORDS et WORLD, ou le monde comme
signe linguistique) et "CHAOS", combinant néon et holographie,
qu'il montrera à l'exposition "HOLOPOESIA 2" en 1986 à la
galerie Espace Alternatif de la Funarte à Rio.En 1987, il réalise "QUANDO?", un holopoème fractal
créé avec Ormeo Botelho dans un cylindre de plexiglas en
utilisant l'ordinateur, parlant de "fractales holographiques" ou
d'"hologrammes fractals". C'est en 1989 aussi qu'il s'installe aux
Etats-Unis. Il co-réalisera, avec Richard Kostelanetz,
l'hologramme "LILITH" en 1987/89, à partir de mots en anglais et
en français, de "EL" (Elohim) à "ELLE" et "HELL". Il
commencera à travailler sur les "Holopoèmes-ordinateur"
à partir de 1987 ("Quando?"). Le deuxième fut
créé à Chicago en 1989, "MULTIPLE", à
partir de "3309" et de "POEM". De 1990 date "AMALGAM", composé
de 2 groupes de 2 mots, "FLOWER-VOID" et VORTEX-FLOW" qui glissent de
l'un à l'autre chaque fois que le spectateur essaie de lire le
texte. C'est aussi en 1990 qu'il aura une expositionpersonnelle
à New York (Museum of Holography), où Kostelanetz
viendra, puis en 1991 à Rio, sous le titre "Holopoemas". Il a
à ce jour réalisé 23 holopoèmes.Selon Eduardo Kac, l'espace holographique est immatériel, et
l'on peut créer des espaces paradoxaux. Les deux premiers textes
théoriques qu'il a publié s'intitulent "Les 3 dimensions
du signe verbal" (1984, catalogue du Musée d'Art Moderne de Rio)
et "La rupture photonique" (revue Modulo n°86, juillet 1985, Rio).
Eduardo Kac travaille aussi sur l'interactivité du regard, sur
l'apparition/disparition du texte en fonction du déplacement du
spectateur et développe le concept d'"instabilité
textuelle" et de "signe fluide", qui ne serait ni un mot ni une image
mais quelque chose en état permanent de mutation, un espace
instable, relatif à la position de l'observateur, par opposition
à la page, qui est fixe. Eduardo Kac travaille sur la
fragmentation de la lettre. Il utilisera aussi l'ordinateur, qui permet
de manipuler des formes mathématiques de grande
complexité. Il est intéressé par le "langage
animé qui fuit et réfléchit (deflects)
l'interprétation".Jacques Donguy, Professor, Université Paris 1, "Poesie et
Nouvelles Technologie a L'Aube du XXIème Siecle", published in
Portuguese in the book A Arte no Século XXI, Diana Domingues,
ed., Edusp, São Paulo, 1997, p. 260.
Das erste Beispiel ist die digitale Holopoetry von Eduardo Kac. In
diesen Arbeiten werden animierte Modulationen von sprachlichen und
graphischen Formen auf das Endmedium eines Hologramms übertragen,
das in weißem Licht betrachtet werden kann. Je nach
körperlicher Bewegung des Betrachters können er oder sie
unterschiedliche Fragmente des Textes, Veränderungen der Position
und Form von Buchstaben und Wörtern, von Farben,
Größenverhältnissen, Graden der Transparenz in einem
virtuellen dreidimensionalen Raum wahrnehmen. [...] Die Rezeption
verbraucht einerseits kontinuierlich Zeit, andererseits wird die Zeit
in der Veränderung als diskontinuierlich erfahrbar, als reversibel
durch das Hin und Her des Körpers, dem ein Vor und Rücklauf
der Bewegungen im virtuellen Raum entspricht.
DiesesðOszillierenÐ veranschaulicht eine Syntax
fließender Differenz, des Changierens zwischen Präsenz und
Appräsenz, Auflösung und Zusammensetzung, Medium und Form der
Signifikanten. Das Dazwischen ermöglicht in einer Weise, wie sie
im Printmedium nicht möglich wäre, die exemplarische
Beobachtung semantischer Konstruktion und Dekonstruktion [...]Friedrich W. Block, Kassel-based writer, "Auf hoher Seh in der
Turing-Galaxis; Visuelle Poesie und Hypermedia," in Text+Kritik, N. 9,
München, 1997, p. 196-197.
[In his essays] Kac describes the basic principles and practices of
his ground breaking work in holographic poetry, in which communicative
procedures and possibilities of sign constitution unique to that medium
are investigated.Eric Vos, independent critic, Amsterdam,
Experimental-Visual-Concrete: Avant-Garde Poetry Since the 1960s, K.
David Jackosn, Eric Vos & Johanna Drucker, editors, (Amsterdam,
Atlanta: Rodopi, 1996), p.31.
At another extreme of technological production would be the
holographic poems of Eduardo Kac, for whom the spatialized dynamics of
the page are transcended through a medium which allows dimensionality
to be factored into the linguistic production. Kac's explorations
extend the use of the computer as a tool in poetic composition employed
by Max bense, among others, in the 1960s, while also engaging with the
sort of visual manipulation of surface appearance which characterized
the work of Raymond Hains, also in the 1960s. However, in Kac's works
as in Hains', the distortions introduced into the final form of the
language through light projection, surface manipulation, or computer
processing are not additions or supplements to the text. Instead, they
are intended to be integral to its linguistic function, to extend the
definition of what comprises linguisticfunction, to include the
potential of material to signify.Johanna Drucker, Artist and Art Historian, Art History Department,
Yale University. Experimental-Visual-Concrete: Avant-Garde Poetry Since
the 1960s, K. David Jackosn, Eric Vos & Johanna Drucker, editors,
(Amsterdam, Atlanta: Rodopi, 1996), p. 56-57. Reprinted in : Johanna
Drucker. Figuring the Word: Essays on Books, Writing and Visual
Projects (New York : Granary Books, 2002).
Kac's work takes experimental poetry into a new area. He has created
"Holopoetry", words and images imbedded in lasered holograms, a medium
whose flexibility allows for numerous manifestations from a single
work. Kac has created Secret, the first VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling
Language) poem on the Web, "the words are dispersed in the semantic
darkness of a potential space."
Christopher Funkhouser
Christopher Funkhouser, editor. “Toward a Literature Moving Outside
Itself: The Beginnings of Hypermedia Poetry” (1996)
<http://web.njit.edu/~funkhous/web/inside.html>
Read-time may determine text-time: in all of Kac’s holopoems, the
duration of momentary configurations of the texts and the tempo of
their transition depend on the (eye-) movements of the reader through
time as well as space. (page 224)
Kac’s orientation is towards “motion, displacement, and
metamorphosis”. This is particularly clear in holopoems such as Adhuc,
in which the constituent letters of a fairly limited number of “basic
words” float through holographic space, generating a realm of
morphologic possibilities.Now, as one word turns into another on the
computer screen or within the holographic space, the most intriguing
question is: what happens in between? Merely to state this question, to
suggest that this notion of ‘in between’ could be imported into the
framework of linguistic organization means to reconsider much of what
we thought we knew about the language we are accustomed to use. (page
224-225)
In Kac’s holopoetry, the reception process required for the
production of a readable text involves a range of physical and
sensorial activities. What text the reader/viewer sees depends entirely
on his/her physical position relative to the hologram and, especially,
on his/her body and eye movement. [...] Undermining the concept of the
text or even the verbal sign as something given, something preordained,
such works exemplify the reader’s part in bringing the poem, its text,
and its meaning into existence. (page 230)
Eric Vos
Eric Vos, "New Media Poetry: Theories and Strategies", in: Kac,
Eduardo (editor). New Media Poetry: Poetic Innovation and New
Technologies, special issue of Visible Language Vol. 30, No. 2, 1996.
Eduardo Kac uses a special property of holography to include several
images on a single plate. These images become visible one by one,
according to the position of the viewer. Kac's holograms are like small
animations in which words turn into other words as the viewer moves in
front of the work. In Kac's work the semantic space is visually
metamorphed, and unexpected associations flash before the viewer beyond
grammatically correct interpretations.Janne Koski, Curator, Rauma Art Museum, Rauma, Finland
Sähköinen Taide 95, catalogue of the exhibition, Rauma Art
Museum, Finland, 1995, p. 4.
He went through poetic revolutions so quickly that there was barely
time to see him reciting naked on Ipanema Beach before he had plunged
into a computer McLuhan style. Holography allows him to make visible
what words say and what they sometimes silence. He works on the context
and on the content with the same enthusiasm; Kac's writing begins in
his mind and ends in our desire.Maria Victoria Infantes, writer, Karas Magazine, N. 7, Madrid, July
1994, p. 4.
Eduardo Kac investigates the fluid meaning of words and phrases with
holopoetry. Words change entirely and change color with just the
slightest movement by the viewer. An intelligent deconstructive and
poetic use of the now commonplace hologram.David O'Halloran, Director, Australian Network for Art and
Technology ANAT Newsletter, December/January 1993-4, Adelaide,
Australia, p. 2.
A first approximation to Mallarmé's dream could be found in
the holopoem, the poem constructed with the collimated light of a laser
beam in a tridimensional virtual space. We must consider that most of
the poems sculpted into a hologram, as it normally happens with all new
technologies, are nothing but tridimensional adaptations of poems that
already worked well on the planar surface. Depth adds nothing essential
to these poems. That is what happens, for example, in some holographic
works by the German Dieter Jung, which only exhibit a new spacial
arrangement for lines of verse –– conventional, at that –– by Hans
Magnus Enzensberger. But when the holopoem actually explores a truly
tridimensional form of writing, the results can be exhilarating,
because the holopoem places the reader before a paradoxical text. In
this text, words are no longer organized according to linear and
absolute links, and their syntactic relationships are found in
permanent transformation.Arlindo Machado, Professor, University of São Paulo
Máquina e Imaginário, Edusp, São Paulo, Brazil,
1993, p. 167.
Eduardo Kac's computer-generated holography, coupled as it is with
his visualization of word ideas to form what he calls Holopoetry,
places him at the leading edge of holography's artistic expressions.
Computers allow holographers to create and breathe life into elegant
color fields of totally imaginary objects or lightscapes, worlds
totally created by the artist. Kac carries forward this ability and
concept and incorporates it into language as a fourth dimension. On a
computer he plays with and arranges and rearranges words, both
syntactically and graphically, and through holography transforms poetry
in a space whose laws are different from either the printed page or the
surrounding world.Loren Billings, Director, Museum of Holography/Chicago Pamphlet of
the exhibition Artistic States of Light, Energy and Matter, October 30,
1992 –– May 2, 1993.
'Visual Literature' –– no doubt an arguable term, employed for want
of a better one –– generally comprises not only visual poetry and prose
but also includes concrete, semiotic, and holographic poetry,
text-objects and text-environments, at least in some of their respects,
and bears upon aspects of found poetry, aleatoric writing, artist's
books and various other types of word/image works. The differentiation
between these "genres" –– if they are to be regarded as such –– as well
as their general differentiation from "ordinary" literature has often
been discussed in terms of the various characteristic features or
properties that they appear to adopt from the realm of the graphic,
pictorial, sculptural or performance arts. As a result, "visual
literature" is commonly regarded as an "intermedial" art form which
challenges or even rejects all or most of the semiotic conventions
usually associated with literary communication.Eric Vos, independent critic, Amsterdam, Program of the Third
International Congress on Word and Image Studies, Carleton University,
Ottawa, Canada, 1993, p. 95.
An experimental poet since his teens, Kac was among the first
writers to realize that holography, a visual technology new to our
times, could be a medium for language. In the 1980s, he created
holograms in which, among other clever constructions, words from two
languages meld into one another, the same letters are reorganized to
create different words, a cylinder reveals a series of words, seen only
in parts, that reads differently clockwise from counterclockwise
("Quando?" ["When?" 1987]). For art such as this Kac coined the epithet
"holopoetry", whose significance he has explained in several
manifestos: "The perception of a holopoem takes place neither linearly
nor simultaneously, but rather through fragments seen at random by the
observer, depending upon his or her [physical] position relative to the
poem." Originally from Rio de Janeiro, Kac moved to Chicago in 1989.Richard Kostelanetz, New York-based independent writer and poet,
Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes, A Cappella Books, Pennington, NJ, 1993,
p. 116.
Eduardo Kac's holopoems should be understood in the context of
visual poetry expressed with the holographic technique. Kac's work
conveys the idea of universal knowledge, since it is based on the
enourmous capacity the hologram has to store information. Holograms
will one day be found inside computers. The verbal fragments in Kac's
holograms remind us of the residues of the Babilonic library, where all
of the knowledge of the world is concentrated.Jörg Schepers, German independent curator, Avanguardia
dell'Arte Olografica, exhibition catalogue, Perugia, Italy, 1992, p. 28.
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