In the simplest terms Digital Poems are born from the combination of technology and poetry, with writers using all multi-media elements as critical texts. Sounds, images, movement, video, interface/interactivity and words are combined to create new poetic forms and experiences. And when a piece like “game, game…” attracts millions of readers while a “successful” print poem might attract a hundred, I think the digital truly is the future of poetry. …..

Heliozoa.com is designed as a stable of sorts, for the these poetic digital horses to sleep.  Readers can play within the possibilities of the electronic poem, to inspire and frighten, to allure and repel. An introduction to what poetry has become, and the imaginary lands I build to keep them in hay and away from the rain. So click and sway and read and post-ponder these works, spread them to others and send me a lovely note here……contact.

A brief story might help:

Shortly before one of my first digital poetry readings at the U of Maryland, I was asked to describe how I generated ideas for my digital poems. Initially, I stormed into a discussion about not being satisfied with the limitations of print, and the need to find a format that satiated a curious and scattered mind. And while those points are entirely valid and contribute to my creative process/direction, they didn’t really answer the question of where the kernel, the initial spark for each digital poem lives.I stumbled through half-jokes and comments about the food and weather, until someone across from me said they loved my interfaces. At the time I hadn’t really, formally, considered the idea of an interface, the notion that digital poems have an engine, an architecture that structurally, thematically, cultural surrounds the poem, holds the poem, shelters and nurtures and indeed conceives (procreation digitally) the poem.

Later after the reading/talk, the topic of “where are my digital poems born” came up again. And with the aid of a few drinks and the pressures of “big crowd talk” past, I raised my voice and commanded (rather dramatically) “look around at the bar”. With my half-drunk audience now confused, I continued. “Everything around us has an organization, a geography, a pattern, an interface”, I uttered. I pointed out how poems could be formed from the way drinking glasses stack on the bar top, or how the pool tables and their colored and sequential billiard balls are an interactive and generative poem. Soon we began playing games, creating new digital poems from what we saw (and heard) around us at the bar. There were sound poems created from the mixing of conversations and music, game poems from the pinball machine, self-destroying poems from the way alcohol slid us deeper into one-dimensional thought. For that evening at least, the world, like a movie’s representation of the idiot savant mathematician, was filled with numbers and equations floating above everything on the screen. And instead of digits, interactive texts were the filter and footnotes to our sensory experiences.

It is overly simplistic to state that my digital poems come entirely from building/discovering interfaces. Any artist’s creative practice is a merging/melding mix of fluid events and inspirations. But with all my digital poems there is one commonality, the emphasis on interface. Rarely do I even reuse interfaces, and when I do it is only as one section of a larger work. This continual drive to create new ways to rethink the structure, organization and interactive functionality of my digital poems comes from a variety of internal influences. Most importantly is how these interfaces are not just vessels for content, they are poems in themselves. In the same way digital poetry might be best defined by the experience, rather than a description. Or similar to a digital poet and their works being described by the events and stories surrounding the creation and building process, an interface is the life, the body, and a poetic construction in itself.

secrettechnology.com/artgames.html

Detail: Game interfaces where reader’s movements trigger hand-drawn and poetic elements.

Video games are a language, a grammar or linguistics of various texts. The sounds, the movement, the graphics, the rules or lack of rules, everything about a video game is a component of language. …..

A digital poetry game must combine all these elements, strange and interactive stanzas, crossed out and obstructed lines, sounds and texts triggered and lost during the play. Indeed the game interface becomes a road to inhabiting the digital poem, to coaxing the reader/player into living and creating within the game/poetry space.

GGGAG (http://www.secrettechnology.com/gamegame/gamegame.html) is a digital poem, game, and anti-design statement. The western world’s surroundings, belief systems, designed culture-games, create the built illusion of clean lines and definitive choice, cold narrow pathways of five colors, three body sizes and capsule philosophy. Within new media art the techno-filter extends these straight lines into exacting geometries and smooth bit rates. This game attempts to re-introduce the hand-drawn, the messy and illogical into the digital, via a retro-game. Hovering above and attached to the poorly drawn aesthetic is a personal examination of how we/I continually switch and un-switch our dominate belief systems. Moving from faith to real estate, from chemistry to capitalism, triggering corrected poetry, jittering creatures and death and deathless noises.

Using a top down, platform engine (without gravity) Evidence of Everything Exploding (http://www.secrettechnology.com/explode/evidence2.html)is a game driven digital poem exploring various historical and contemporary texts. Each level’s poetic content is built from the document’s sub-sub texts and curious consequences. With Bill Gates’ letter to the Computer Brew Club about monetizing hobby computing, we find the seeds of an empire, James Joyce is caught in an infinite loop of changing texts, Fidel Castro’s boyhood letter to the US president praising America and asking for money signals an opportunistic future.

Each day the internet is humming wi th a million small interventions. From the humoresque mocking of community content sites like Fark, to the net gate keepers Yahoo and Google, partisan political portals like Huffington Post or the open source/file sharing ‘priates’ of  Mininova, the web is an easy tool/weapon for meddling/influencing and sharing/forcing/alluring your opinion on whomever clicks. And yet this digiscape is a deceiving and uneasy place, with continual streams of generic expression/content, cute dogs and accident clips, knocking against an incredible range of political/social beliefs hidden beneath the screen. Even short sequences of words, titled links or blinking ads can reveal the strange, wondrous and treacherous.

“i made this. you play this. we are enemies.” (http://www.secrettechnology.com/madethis/enemy6.html) is an art game, interactive digital poem which uses game levels built on screen shots from influential community based websites/portals. And using messy hand drawn elements, strange texts, sounds and multimedia layering, the artwork lets users play in the worlds hovering over and beneath what we browse, to exist outside/over their controlling constraints.  Your arrow keys and space bar will guide you, with the occasional mouse click begging for attention.

Title: Sydney’s Siberia

secrettechnology.com/sydney/sibera.html

Detail: Infinitely builds interactive mosaics from poetic tiles.

It is not technology making our wires, nodes and swimming data streams, our ever growing networks, beautiful. Instead it is the stories/poetics, the forever coalescing narratives that form the inter/intranet into a vitally compelling mosaic. ……

To explore, simply mouse-over/navigate to an appealing square, click and click, read, contemplate connections and repeat.

Sydney’s Siberia recreates how networks build exploratory story-scapes through an interactive zooming/clicking interface. Using 121 poetic/story image tiles, the artwork dynamically generates mosaics, infinitely recombining to build new connections/collections based on the users movements.  The images/texts come from exploring Newcastle, Australia as a patchwork, a complex mix of architectural tendrils, whose stories extend to and are strained by the overshadowing behemoth of Sydney to the West. And as each new grid is formed, the reader must search for what they haven’t seen, mining in a digital Siberia.

secrettechnology.com/ausco/poecubic2.html

Detail: Interactive poetry cubes allowing multi-linear/dimensional play and reconfiguration.

One possible reading is as 3-dimensional concrete poetry sculpture generator. ….. The cube interface allows the reader to move the interface in 3-dimesional space, with the all elements placed on the cube transforming in proportion to the cube’s movement, perspective and warping is reasonably maintained as the cube is moved.  Furthermore, each of the rows and columns can be moved to further recreate the placement and graphical nature of the poem. Each of the sides of the poem are colour coded to give the reader a reference point for the initial configuration of the interface, so changes become more apparent.

My earlier version is an interactive database driven tool:

T: The Poetry Cube

secrettechnology.com/poem_cube/poem_cube.html

A learning tool designed by myself and programmer Rory Hering. The Cube allows users/poets to enter a 16 line poem, with those lines automatically placed within the multi-layered sections. Use the buttons to move in and out, recombining the poems by turning the Cube upwards, downwards and inwards. Built to act as a bridge between the print and digital worlds.

Why a cube?

Why are these elements of dimensionality/multimedia/interactivity important in a digital poem? And also does the newest Cube version make the previous creations (like updated versions of software) failures and delete-able?  As for the later question, I would love to wax romantic about how all creations are important, either within a historical context or because they hold together as digital poems despite their shortcomings. And while this might be true for scholars or readers of my work, as an artist I see the first two cubes as experiments, trial runs, explorations of a form. I suppose an argument could be made about how all creations are experiments leading to the next generation of poets. And while this is something I will revisit later, I can say my intentions with the first two were firmly as playgrounds. While the last cube is an attempt at a complete work, or rather a complete interface. I make the distinction between work and interface, because most of the digital poems I create are in flux, in constant states of revision.

secrettechnology.com/graphoem/graphoem.html

Detail: Stories/Poetry from interactive graphs driven by pop-videos.

A strange hybrid work where writing is built directly from the videos and statistical graphs. ….. These are imaginary worlds/possibilities, with the background pop culture videos evidence and inspiration. After mousing over the data points/dots the statistics and lines pop-up. Perhaps the most difficult aspect of creation was determining the percentages and numbers which drive the stories/poetry, and how do those statistics coax the narrative/poetry along into semi-coherent streams. And being a child of the late 70s and 80s I am fascinated by the glory days of absurd pop culture, the notion that a near storyless video game pixeled mouth can eventually have its own branded can of pasta. And then there is the frankenstein clip. Just damn beautiful, even more so that its now a hundred years old.

Maybe I should continue exploring other types of graph/statistical interfaces and methods for displaying/generating poetic/fictional texts.

secrettechnology.com/wittenoom/starthere.html

Detail: Exploratory work using various digital poetry interfaces.

Digital poetry should surround the reader, to encompass them in the experience, to entice their hands and eyes to move with the language and explore the interface. It’s critical for digital writers to see the interface, visuals, sounds, and movements as poetic/fiction elements. ….. Multimedia and interface components are not just navigational holiday lights to pretty up the place, they add/change/expand the artwork. Within this work, I designed a responsive creatures as both fun to play and allow the reader to jump between texts, to read in their own ordering, to non-linearly explore the inherently non-linear nature of poetry.  Layering is also of prime importance, as creating a sense of thematic and visual depth, embeds the poetry in a larger world, a more complex poetic.

In Western Australia the ex mining town of Wittenoom that once was home to  thousands is now empty. The town and the surrounding region’s air is literally cancerous. After years of prosperous asbestos mining and dozens of hill sized tailings piles open to the area’s powerful winds, signs warn anyone entering the region of the tiny lung lesion fibers.  Like a much smaller Chernobyl, Wittenoom represents the quick riches and fast ignorance of industry, leaving empty houses and playgrounds intact and unused. To explore these themes, Wittenoom (my digital poem) uses a variety of interactive depth and spatially dynamic interfaces as homes for recombinatory poetic lines.

Another example of a combination digital poem is The Bomar Gene.( http://www.heliozoa.com/gene/bomargene.htm ): Within every human there is a singular gene, unique only to that individual. And with that gene comes a singular ability, a rare, mostly never realized capacity for interacting with the world. The Bomar Gene explores this mythical gene, through a series of ficto-biographies, with each story being retranslated and spatialized through interactive interfaces and embodied animations. Each section opens up to such questions as: How are we defined by our genetic code? What does it mean to be an individual, to be unique? What are the implications of a society obsessed with rare abilities and super-powers?

secrettechnology.com/death/deathspin.htm

Detail: A recombinatory slot game with 15 five-line death fictions/poetics.

By combining an online pokie machine, new media art, and fortune telling, …..artist Jason Nelson built his new digital art creation entitled “this is how you will die”. The project, designed to be featured on the web, explores cultural understandings of death, gambling and video games. Basically this online art project is a stripped down pokie machine, and instead of winning money, the player wins short fiction combinations and pop-up movie clips.

Each time the player pushes the spin button, a new death scenario comes to the screens. If the player wins more spins they can continue, if they lose, they have just forecasted their death. To create the random death scenarios, Jason wrote 15 short fictions, each divided into five sections: where you will die, how you will die parts one and two, and what happens after you die parts one and two. Each of these sections then become the channels of the Death Pokie machine. When all sections stop spinning, then you have a new random fiction sequence, a series of lines that form the story of your future demise.

Work like this is known as Digital Writing or New Media Art. The basic premise of this fast growing art genre is to use technology, in this case web technologies, to build artistic creations that are both interactive and have multiple levels of meanings and narrative. Imagine writing a novel for a video game environment, and in the case of “this is how you will die” a pokie machine.

Eventually this work, like much of Jason’s online artwork will be displayed in art galleries and online magazines worldwide. In addition, he has plans to use the same Pokie game engine and explore other perennially controversial topics such as sex and politics.

Jason Nelson says, “Like any gambling device you want to hook the player, to get them interested enough to keep playing. I’ve had friends play this who are obsessed with building credits, or in this case Death Credits. They send me screen shots of their winning totals.”

“While the concept of a pokie machine that forecasts your death is, at first glance, disturbing, this digital art project is really about creating fictions, and exploring a society obsessed with death and gambling”

“In many ways, much of our daily life is a gamble. “this is how you will die” through its game play and poetic pop ups, reinforces the idea that all our actions have results, and while we can change our paths, we must also accept the inevitability of death. ”

In addition, I’ve used the same interface for a Xmas Disaster Generator: http://www.secrettechnology.com/holiday/creepyxmas.html

secrettechnology.com/tree/

Detail: Multi-level navigation menus create multi-linear poems.

Multi-level menus as poetry generator, for when lines branch and branch. ….

When writing a poem, often any line could generate out new directions, intersecting poems, branching possibilities. Using the modified code of a menu-sub-menu, I am experimenting with a poem within a poem within a poem. Enjambent as menu as poetic turn. A few factors I’m playing with: 1. the menu fade away timing (more or less?) 2. the mixing of various level depths 3. only one first entry, that extends to dozens of depths? 4. how else might this be used? 5. Rollover or On Press to trigger?

I plan to continue with this work, plotting more complex poetic interactions between lines and nodes. Additionally, it might be interesting to interlink two or more deep menu poems. Of course this form of non-linearity is so complex that reading must become an entirely exploratory and focus-intensive activity. Will this swing in the age of quick and easy?

Branch/Branch Digital Poem (http://www.netpoetic.com/experiments/npoem4.html)

A fancy way/method for branching, poetic lines out of lines, extending the poem down and out, read through node or nodeless. The poetic notion is more than simple. Write a poem, perhaps ten lines long. Then explore each of the lines, imagine poems which might build from them. Your poem might now have three branches extending from the trunk. Now choose lines from the branches and extend those, trees on trees. Geometry is both important and not important. Such meaningless statements are designed to coax vague thoughts an academic wonder. Are you now an academic wonder? You are. You are. Just because I am silly doesn’t mean I’m not entirely serious. Whatever that means.

Once you have your branching poem, condense it more, in terms of visibility. Only the first line of the first trunk will be visible on user/reader arrival. As with most of my other net poems, you should abandon any thought that you can control how the user will click, which lines will expand, what lines will leave the screen. Stop being such a controlling monster, your bone claws  like apples with wasps, really angry and large wasps. Damn anglo-saxons.

Title:

secrettechnology.com/ausco/compass3.html

Detail: Circular compass interface with two textual levels.

This strange island continent and its ever dry center and clusters of wooded sea tethered cities is compass confused. ….. European colonizers are forever pointed north and west, pining for California culture or European roots, the indigenous population is pulled towards the center, a home where cartographic directions and menus are irrelevant, and an economic engine and future reality that spins hard, thick arrows pointing east.  The rest of the world sees this place, this strange residual of British Empire as down, forever down. Wide and Wildly Branded uses the compass as an interface, a rounded guide to poetic lines. The top and bottom, the north and south textual lines are at odds, contrasts abstract and relationship and directionally confused. The background video was shot while lost, hiking by a creek that turned into two creeks and then four, pathways alike and specific, threatening and alluring enough to entice wandering. Turn and play along a downward compass, the antarctic, the antarctic.

heliozoa.com/speech/speechtext.html

Detail: Processing media into strange texts with S2T software.

Using speech to text software trained to my scratchy and yet (in the afternoon) velvety voice, I process the worlds of media ….. (movies, radio, music, crowds, the ocean). The software, as all technology, is an imperfect and jealous lover that misunderstands explosions, or ambient noise as text, and retranslates the sounds and dialogues, finds hidden words beneath what we (and it) hears. Think of the process as an interpretive dance, a jittery technological oracle for our electronic boxes that shine out uncertain media prophets. These poems are the first in a series of noise to poetics experiments.
The rules:

Once the raw text file was generated from the source (recording the movies, radio programs and on and on) I recreated the text into a poetic form. All text stayed in the same order, but words were removed, lines broken, enjambment toyed. And the only text additions allowed were a few prepositions or conjunctions, the occasional plural/possessive, some grammar wrecking punctuation and a titling system to give the whole chaotic swagger a bit more framework.

The questions:

We are increasingly reliant on technology to translate the world’s texts. So how do these gizmos mutate our perceptions? How do they season and cook our words? Can these technologies be used to reveal meanings, like silent orphans hiding between gun’s cracking, crowded conversations, and the manipulative musical score of our surroundings.