Full bibliography

Contemporary visual poetry remains as hybrid and experimental an artistic modality as it was in the 20th century, with a continued emphasis on mixing temporal and spatial elements in a dynamic verbal–sound–visual structure. These essential aspects and techniques, still at work today, which originated in simple pattern poems from earlier centuries, reached their peak of sophistication with the Concretists and Neoconcretists. Today, however, intermedia practices have a tendency to focus more on certain aspects of our technoculture that resonate with an ‘altered’ mode of perception, keen on exploring uncharted territories through the newest technologies and the speed of information. To illustrate this attraction to the functional use of technologies, I have selected two representative artists, Bartolome Ferrando and Eduardo Kac. Their radically different lines of work and artistic intentions reflect, nonetheless, a similar conception of poems as (bio)dynamic objects, existing as living art within a continuum of possibilities. Ferrando is more interested in exploring the possibilities of condensing movement in a 2-D or 3-D surface, whereas Kac wants his poetic performances to interfere with the essentials of life itself. These authors prioritize the importance of non-linear sequencing with the organization of multiple levels of information in micro-units of space-time in order to manipulate the standard experiences and expectations of readers.