Tesauro (Thesaurus), digital poetry

VIDEO

Digital poemas based on my book Tesauro (Thesaurus), which was published by the National Council for the Culture and Arts (CONACULTA) in 2010. The first section of this poetry book won the First Prize for Poetry Contest of Magazine “Punto de Partida” of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). Some of this digital poems in their printed form are part of the book in Visual Mexican Poetry: The Transfigured Word, a collection of five artist-books published by the National Council for the Culture and Arts (CONACULTA).

About Tesauro (Thesaurus): Irreverence, experimentalism, games that associate and disassociate, splittings and mathematical formulas are an essential part of poetic language in Tesauro (Thesaurus) of Karen Villeda; a "treasure", a "dictionary" or "catalog" disused that juggles with syntactic definitions. Villeda, in her eager writing, presents an ironic view of roles with their constant references to masculine-feminine. Divided into six sections, Tesauro (Thesaurus) engages different levels of dialogue; while telling a story, makes us accomplices of a relationship based in codes and involves us in "Sonnet of the Vowels" of Arthur Rimbaud to give us the meanings of the colors.

¡AH! Interj. Condemnation to Female and Masculinity // Humanity: They still understand what was before // To derive the existence together // Intersection of the statement of amusement, surprise or shame // To find the singular in the embrace is seasonal regret // Signal of what will die / / To resume/Recommence the monologue in Murkiness // the admiration is covered with canopies (the material replaces the communion) // To feign portents (in the gears of the back) // Where the singular?, ask both // Retort in the mirror: “Hide in Person” // Numerosity is unnatural of name

Conception

In late 2009 and early 2010, I started working on the project of a laboratory of cyberpoetry inspired in my first book Tesauro (Thesaurus), which is a comprehensive itinerary of contemporary poetic forms. I was obsessed with expanding the collection of the verses of my book and bring them to the screen as a one more poetic form, so I chose to juxtapose the texts as a thesaurus lists, which is a network of words and concepts, to have an itinerary of one reading of many possible. I was interested in promoting an aesthetic nomadism to the user driven by randomness and by evading the restrictiveness of the printed page, as searches in Google, partnerships with Youtube, paraphrases from existing web pages, in order to extend the Tesauro (Thesaurus).

Realization

Nearly of 25 poems were reconstructed with various software tools that allow a translation of printed verse into technical code -either simple or complex- to programming languages. Thus, the digital poem -once a poem on a sheet of paper- became an infinite mapping that allows the wildest connections with a function purely playful: to transmitte an immediate and disposable beauty with just one click.
Tesauro (Thesaurus) became a virtual object called LABO / laboratory of cyberpoetry (www.labo.com.mx) that defies the limited readings of the printed poem because I promoted the free interpretation of the receiving user by requiring his/her cooperation to make it work and his/her grammatical competence to update the chain of expressive artifices as an ad infinitum experience. The receiving user is the backbone of the semiosis of the poems of Tesauro (Thesaurus) because he/she creates a sign that is alike to the one issued and, despite being a similar interpretation to mine, is another sign as being a result of an updated sign. Therefore, a more developed and active reading is achieved and it completes the poem. Thus,  the poems of Tesauro (Thesaurus) are issued to be updated and they become other poems thanks to the receiving user .

Techniques: HTML and Action Script programming, photography, digital illustration.

Keywords: digital poetry, network communication, E-Lit.

Year of creation: 2010.

Web Site (in Spanish)

  

Photo Library

 P. 30-31                                                    Espacio (def.)                                                      P. 95-96

 Digital poem                                Digital poem                                            Digital poem

 P. 20                                                          P. 46                                                                         P. 78

 Digital poem                                Digital poem                                            Digital poem

 P. 13                                                           P. 99                                                                        P. 84

 Digital poem                                 Digital poem                                           Digital poem