Slamming the Sonnet

Slamming the Sonnet is a website emerging from the collaborative partnership of Jayne Fenton Keane (poet) and David Keane (artist and programmer). It investigates the construction of virtual bodies by using Slam poetry as a device to explore implications of re-theorizing the role of authors in habitats of poetry that are made of technological flesh rather than processed tree matter.

This site investigates alternative models of interactivity through engagement with a virtual body made of space, movement, sound and flesh. It becomes terra electra, replete with multiple species of texts, some of which evolve in direct response to the user's actions. It becomes a dismembered cyborg that becomes a part of you as you navigate through it; as your senses are seduced by its voices, breathing and gaze. In other words, it interacts with you beyond the computer screen; it infiltrates your body. It subverts identity and creates a hyperreal competition where everyone is given equal status in its time and space: dead or alive, famous or unknown.

As you proceed through the site your decisions become traces which live beyond your exit. You leave a mark if you score or write. Or you can attempt to be invisible - but this is not possible, the site watches you and logs your visits in its hidden book of statistics.

 (Source: 2002 ELO State of the Arts gallery)