BEING POETIC. Digital poetry sounds like an oxymoron in the first place. The new, funky and hyperactive digital world seems to be the opposite of this calm and romantic world of poets and philosophers.
But there were algorithms long before our attention was drawn to everblinking digital companions. Beforehand humans acted like computers themselves: doing the given job at hand. People calculated with pen and paper – a romantic thought these days. It’s funny that we’ve created this discord between humans and computers. Back then we were computers, outsourcing our work to machines and now we melt together again as we become transhumans.
These days we talk to these machines on a more abstract level: We write code. Code is a language, so you can literally write poems with it. But there is also an intrinsic poetry of code in the way it works: through repetition, repetition, 4bstr4ct10n and the way instruction becomes .execution. Our thoughts come together to create an experience. There are endless possibilities to combine a 1 and a 0, as there are endless numbers in between 0 and 1, is that poetic or mathematic?
Endless nuances between on and off, the true grandeur is located in the in-between. And if it is located there, are there digital things in-between humans? Is retro the new romantic? Is the foe the new friend? Is Twitter the new tale? These and more questions may or may not be answered by reading this issue. We find poetry in various places, even in the digital world of yes and no, language and mathematics, logic and electricity. So let’s get poetic!
