Portuguese Electronic Literature Collection

Description: 

The Portuguese Electronic Literature Collection (PELC) at the ELMCIP KB aims to address and collect the most relevant creative and critical works produced by Portuguese authors in the field of electronic literature during the past forty-five years. The collection also brings together authors, events, organizations, publishers, journals, publications, conferences, performances and exhibitions related to the Portuguese context.

The first works of electronic literature produced in Portugal have primarily dealt with computer-generated literature (CGL). Pedro Barbosa’s A Literatura Cibernética 1: Autopoemas Gerados por Computador (1977) and A Literatura Cibernética 2: Um Sintetizador de Narrativas (1980) can be understood as the first major works combining literary creation with computational programming. In these volumes, besides a critical framework, Barbosa published a selection of the outputs (poetry and fiction) of his text generators programmed in a mainframe computer, a practice developed in other media and languages since the 1980s until nowadays. Meanwhile, between 1981 and 1983, Silvestre Pestana developed a series of kinetic and visual poems, Computer Poetry, using the home computers ZX81 and ZX Spectrum. E.M. de Melo e Castro, a pioneer of videopoetry, e.g. Roda Lume (1968), created several videopoems during the 1980s with the assistance of electronic equipment, and worked with image editing software, coining the term ‘infopoetry’ to describe his poetic work with electronic media. Furthermore, Melo e Castro has been widely theorizing on many aspects of literary experimentalism, videopoetry and infoliterature.

In the contemporary scene it is worth noting authors such as Antero de Alda and Manuel Portela, who began their artistic trajectory in the late 1980s in the context of visual and, then, digital poetry, being Portela’s theoretical oeuvre singularly strong. From 2000 onwards, there is a new generation of creators-programmers, such as André Sier, a digital artist who has also developed textual works, and Rui Torres, a writer whose creative and critical work, influenced by Barbosa, has proved decisive not only in elaborating combinatorial and networked digital poems, but also in disseminating the PO.EX legacy and cyberliterature in the panorama of literary studies.

PELC uses sources from different essays and monographs – e.g. Poemografias: Perspectivas da Poesia Visual Portuguesa (1985), edited by Fernando Aguiar and Silvestre Pestana, E.M. de Melo e Castro’s Poética dos Meios e Arte High Tech (1988), Pedro Barbosa’s A Ciberliteratura: Criação Literária e Computador (1996) and Christopher T. Funkhouser’s Prehistoric Digital Poetry: An Archaeology of Forms, 1959-1995 (2007) – in addition to online databases and archives, such as the ELMCIP KB and the PO.EX, benefiting from the collaboration with Manuel Portela and Rui Torres, principal investigator of the Digital Archive of Portuguese Experimental Literature.

As a further media contribution, PELC contains a video interview with Manuel Portela and Rui Torres recorded during the Electronic Literature Organization 2013 conference “Chercher Le Texte,” in Paris, bringing into question some of the important characteristics, influences and future directions of Portuguese e-lit.

—Álvaro Seiça, August 2013-August 2015

For PELC's synopsis in Portuguese, read the PDF in "PELC/CLEP: Portuguese Synopsis/Sinopse em Português": http://elmcip.net/node/9990

Note: A full critical analysis of the collection and the specific literary, political, historical and media elements that run from the Portuguese Experimental Poetry movement to current e-lit environments was published in Portuguese in Texto Digital (2015): https://elmcip.net/node/10760

PELC was presented during the ELO 2014 conference, in Milwaukee, US (June 19-21) and at the Doctoral Programme in Advanced Studies in the Materialities of Literature (June 25, 2014), School of Arts and Humanities, University of Coimbra, Portugal.

+ info: http://elmcip.net/node/9736

http://elmcip.net/node/9401

Po-ex.net entry: http://www.po-ex.net/taxonomia/transtextualidades/metatextualidades-alog...

Multimedia: 

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People:

Namesort descending Residency
José Manuel Torres
Porto
Portugal
PT
Leonel Valbom
Liliana Vasques
Coimbra
Portugal
PT
Luís Aly
Oporto
Portugal
PT
Luís Carlos Petry
Sao Paulo
Brazil
BR
Luís Cláudio Fajardo
Brazil
BR
Luís Lucas Pereira
Coimbra
Portugal
PT
Manuel Portela
Coimbra
Portugal
PT
Markku Eskelinen
Finland
FI
Marta Meira
Nuno F. Ferreira
Oporto
Portugal
PT
Nuno M. Cardoso
Porto
Portugal
PT
Osvaldo Manuel Silvestre
Coimbra
Portugal
PT
Otávio Guimarães Tavares
Florianópolis
Brazil
BR
Pedro Barbosa
Porto
Portugal
PT
Pedro Reis
Oporto
Portugal
PT
Rui Torres
Oporto
Portugal
PT
Salette Tavares
Sérgio Bairon
Sao Paulo
Brazil
BR
Silvestre Pestana
Vila Nova de Gaia , Porto
Portugal
PT
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Critical Writing:

Titlesort descending Author Year
Cibertextualidades 5 2013
Cibertextualidades: Introdução Rui Torres 2006
Concrete and Digital Poetics Manuel Portela 2006
Concrete Poetry in Portugal Experimentalism and Intermediality Rui Torres 2010
Contributos para uma Teoria Quântica do Cibertexto Pedro Barbosa 2012
Digital Art and Meaning: Reading Kinetic Poetry, Text Machines, Mapping Art, and Interactive Installations Roberto Simanowski 2011
Electronic Literature Collection, Volume Two 2011
Electronic Literature Publishing and Distribution in Europe Markku Eskelinen, Giovanna Di Rosario 2012
Electronic Poetry: Understanding Poetry in the Digital Environment Giovanna Di Rosario 2011
ELMCIP Anthology of European Electronic Literature 2012
Flash Script Poex: A Recodificação Digital do Poema Experimental Manuel Portela 2009
From Textual Random Synthesis to Hypermedia - The Genesis of a Multimedia Electronic Work: ALLETSATOR/ROTASTELLA Pedro Barbosa 2011
Infopoesia ou Poesia Informacional E. M. de Melo e Castro 1987
Kissing the Steak: The Poetry of Text Generators Chris Funkhouser 2009
Manuel Portela and Rui Torres on the Portuguese E-Lit Collection at ELMCIP.net Álvaro Seiça 2013
New Strategies of Anthropophagy in Brazilian/Portuguese Digital Literature Alckmar Luiz dos Santos 2009
Notas sobre AlletSator: O Retomar da Viagem – Sintetizador Poético, Ciberdrama e Hipermédia Pedro Reis 2007
O PO.EX, Arquivo Digital da Literatura Experimental Portuguesa: Uma Recensão Álvaro Seiça 2014
O Poema no Caminho do Leitor e o Leitor no Caminho do Poema Manuel Portela 2012
Performing the Digital Archive: Remediation, Emulation, Recreation Manuel Portela 2012
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Alvaro Seica