Arts Agenda - Poetry in motion

Lines of text that fall like rain, fonts that grow and change with each user, Chinese poems that morph along algorithms. Such surreal concepts may sound like something from a sci-fi novel, but they’re actually real creations by a new breed of artists. The emerging field of electronic literature blurs the lines between writing, visual arts and virtual reality, its composers hot-wiring disciplines like poetry and linguistics with digital technology to create forms at once familiar and fantastic.

A smattering of local and international pioneers in the field will be in Atlanta for TechnoPoetry Festival 2002, taking place at Georgia Tech’s Wesley Center for New Media. The interactive exhibit and symposium is the brainchild of professor Stephanie Strickland, Tech’s McEver Chair in Writing and a new media poet herself.

Works featured in the festival’s exhibition tap technologies ranging from virtual environments to biotechnology. Local artist Sha Xin Wei marries speech recognition with dynamic typography in a projected video installation. Another experimental video piece, Camille Utterback’s “Text Rain,” lets users “catch” cascading lines of letters and words, a sort of Magnetic Poetry on a projection screen. Many of the works explore the relationship between the body and technology, and Strickland says all the exhibits are interactive.

“The whole idea is to play with something immaterial, which is kind of the digital promise, in a way. But the reading becomes visceral as well as cerebral. The whole body gets involved,” she says.

In addition to the exhibition and artist lectures, the two-day festival ends with a dance performance based upon Glide, a dynamic visual language created by Diana Reed Slattery. Strickland calls this blending of movement, music, language and technology all part of a greater artistic convergence taking place in society.

“It does all begin to come together,” she says, “and that has to be rethought by our society really.”

TechnoPoetry Festival 2002 takes April 1-2 from 4-10 p.m. at the Wesley Center for New Media, Georgia Tech campus. Free. 404-894-8556. technopoetryfestival.com.??