Logical Coding & Emotional Poetry: An exploration of poetic expression in the digital

Abstract

This practice-oriented design research investigates opportunities for meaningful poetic expression within a digital medium. It hypothesises that the digital medium offers more opportunities for personal expression than in traditional print as poetry can become dynamic with animation, interactivity, and discovery. However, these come with added complexities. This project sits within digital poetry but borrows ideas from other realms of knowledge and practice, such as aesthetic expressivism (Collingwood, 2017) and hypertext (Landow, 2006). The practice focuses on testing, reflecting, and articulating the poetic expression present in three distinct characteristics of the digital environment: ephemerality, hidden content, and non-linearity. These characteristics are further investigated through prototypes, where the research tests techniques that reflect their qualities to create poetic experiences. Within this project, the researcher takes on two roles: the poet and the designer. The former brings expressive and subjective lenses, while the latter introduces objectivity and attention to technical skills. At times, these artistic and technical voices felt dissonant, however there were glimpses of their symbiosis during the practice. Arguably, finding ways to encourage this symbiosis can ensure greater synergy and meaningful connections between the poem and its form. To investigate this further, the research explores when poetic writing occurs in relation to choosing techniques of the medium. Within this presentation, I will map and discuss explored workflows used for approaching digital poetry that consider both the outlined characteristics of the medium and the relationship between artistic and technical voices in practice. It is believed that without a clear understanding of what the digital space could offer, a poem could have no difference in its reading experience from its traditional form, or it could become jarring and meaningless.