In tracing the history of computer-generated poetry, Klobucar identifies the agreed-upon earliest computer poetry as Theo Lutz's 1959 "Stochastiche Text"; the first machine-written book as William Chamberlain's 1984 "The Policeman's Beard is Half Constructed".
In the same issue of TCR, Jim Andrews in his essay "The Body of Net Art" writes "I do think that the edge of net art will continue to be strongly involved with trying to do funky shit with an internet connection. Why? That's a crucial distinguishing characteristic of net art versus other types of art..." (p.99)
Jim accurately describes this practice as the 'edge' of net-art. What of the other contours? It is my feeling that investigations of the medium dominate the early phase of art's relationship with a new technology. Since the web continues to change, these conceptual investigations of the media/technology itself continue to have relevance. But there is a significant portion of the technological infrastructure of the web (the basic network structure, URLs, html, Flash) which have matured and now offer what constitutes normative service. No one is amazed by their email anymore, or blogs, we read them for their content; and every other technological innovation will follow a similar path. A spike of interest in the device in-and-of-itself followed by a dissipation of that interest as interest in 'what it can do' and 'what it delivers' becomes ascendant. Eventually media become invisible, as the technology of language has for the most part become. Investigations of network media as media will still play a role in net-art. From Jodi to the Electronic literature Organization, engagement with networks as networks and code as material is a core aspect of the digital aspect of art practice. I feel however, it should not and is not exclusively the only path that interesting net-art will take. A substantial space exists for the exploration of lyric and mythological artistic practice in digital poetry. The metabolism of humanity, our neurological inheritance is tuned to feed on lyric and myth which transduce emotion and cosmological questioning into language. Incorporating these venerable traditions into contemporary net-art constitutes an enormous opportunity for a digital poetry.
Labels: digital poetics, emotions, net-art, orality
