Journal Article

Bionanomedia Expression

Funkhouser, Chris

2008

Overview

Eduardo Kac, Media Poetry Introducing Eduardo Kac’s collection Hodibis Potax, the fictional author “Philip Sidney” (identified as “Director of Thermal Ion Verbodynamics Division” in a “Department of Literary Timeshift Experiments” at an “Eternaut Training Center” in Shanghai, who refers to the artifact in hand as a “qbook”) recalls Kac wanting to send holopoems (holographically displayed poetry) towards Andromeda in 1986. A decade later, Kac—now more widely known as a biological artist than a pioneering author, theorist, and curator of digital poetry—has revisited his influential (yet somewhat obscure) anthology and has published a revised edition titled Media Poetry: An International Anthology. Kac wisely includes essays by authors who focus on the implications of the influence of machinery on poetry, paying particular regard to increased portability, media convergence, broadband networks, and gaming. Kac’s essay, “Biopoetry” (which appears in Media Poetry and Hodibis Potax), also acknowledges digital poetry’s affinity with science. Since poetry has been migrating away from the printed page since the 1980s, he writes, “in a world of clones, chimeras, and transgenic creatures, it is time to consider new directions for poetry in vivo,” and proposes the “use of biotechnology and living organisms in poetry as a new realm of verbal, paraverbal, and non-verbal creation” (191).

• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Subject: Anthologies / Artists / Digital media / Electronic literature / Essays / Kac, Eduardo / Multimedia / Poetics / Poetry / Writers / Writing