PO-EX.net: Arquivo Digital da Literatura Experimental Portuguesa

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The aim of PO.EX'70-80, as a research project, is to provide continuity to the first research project “Portuguese Experimental Poetry - a CD-ROM of Dossiers and Catalogs” (FCT 2005-2008, Ref. POCI/ELT/57686/2004), which studied Portuguese literary experimentalism of the 1960s and created a digital archive with the most relevant magazines, catalogs and publications of that group of poets (http://www.po-ex.net/evaluation). Requests by several agents and recommendations from our consultants have led us to identify the need to extend the reproduction of Portuguese Experimental Poetry into the 1970s and 1980s. This new timeline will allow us to develop the studies and the collections already begun, now including visual and sound poetry, video-poetry, happenings, and cybernetic literature – all of which can be seen as extensions and renovations of literary experimentalism of the previously analyzed period.

Within this framework, we will consider a connection between concrete poetics and digital poetics. The present project, characterized by its openness and free access to resources, will therefore continue the task of preserving a literary legacy which may be at peril.

We will follow three main courses of action. Each of them enfolds in a series of concrete tasks.

1) Collecting and Theoretical Framing – The history of the relationships between literature and other arts (design, painting, sculpture, performance) will allow us to better understand the experimentalist production of the 1970s and 1980s. Starting from a theoretic and critical awareness of the processes of mediation effected by the intervention of information technologies, it is our aim to propose a taxonomy that allows us to organize, understand and classify the conceptual relationships displayed in the collected texts.

2) Digitalization, Translation and Re-creation – The process of digitizing (audio and visual capture) the Portuguese experimental literature (visual and sound poetry and video-poetry) will be framed by a set of theoretical texts. Therefore we propose the translation of articles and manifestos that can help the public to understand the presented works. However, this digitizing process does not apply to some of the texts we will work with – texts that are dynamic, interactive and/or generative. Therefore, it is necessary to use processes of software emulation, accompanying them with the recovery and historical study of programming software (cybernetic literature) which is unavailable at the moment. Apart from this emulation, which corresponds to a literal archive, we will also invest in processes of digital transformation and re-creation of some of these works, with the use of multimedia and interactivity.

3) Platform and Dissemination – The creation of a digital platform for the dissemination of experimental literature will have to be sufficiently open, relational and comprehensive. The contents will be presented according to previously defined taxonomies and ontologies. The presentation of magazines, catalogs, theoretical texts and manifestos can also be complemented by collections of artists ́books, personal web-pages, biographies, bibliographies and interviews, thus connecting theory with current forms of literary creation.

Lastly, it should be stressed that we aim to start, within the scope of this project, a Laboratory of Digital Writing, coordinated and supervised by team members. In this Laboratory we expect to offer adequate technical conditions for the development of artistic residences of poets and writers with an interest in multimedia and hypermedia digital platforms. The potential of programming languages as specific technologies for literary writing could be explored on a collaborative basis. In this way, we hope to foster the development of internal networks of production and digital literary creativity, documenting and later extending the process and its results, namely by means of an on-line publication platform.

Contributors' notes: 

Research Team

Rui Torres (Principal Researcher; Associate Professor at FCHS-UFP)
Manuel Portela (Assistant Professor, FLUC)
Pedro Reis (Assistant Professor da FCHS-UFP)
José Manuel Torres (Associate Professor at FCT-UFP)
Maria do Carmo Castelo Branco (Associate Professor at FCHS-UFP)
Eduardo Paz Barroso (Full Professor at FCHS-UFP)
Débora Cristina Santos e Silva (Associate Professor at Univ. Estadual de Goiás e Centro Universitário de Anápolis-Go-Brasil)
Elisa Costa (Associate Professor at FCHS-UFP)
Elsa Simões (Associate Professor at FCHS-UFP)
Ana C. Moutinho (PhD)
Fabiano Correa da Silva (PhD student)
João Donga (PhD student)
Maria do Céu Melro (PhD student)

Consultants

2010 - Fernando Aguiar, Jorge Luiz Antonio
2011 - Pedro Barbosa
2012 - Johanna Drucker, Christopher Funkhouser

Research Fellows

André Seixas, Diogo Gomes, Alexandra Nogueira, Alexandre Rocha, Helena Marinho

Critical writing that references this Database or Archive:

Title Author Year
A Beam of Light: Reading the Portuguese Electronic Literature Collection Álvaro Seiça 2014
A Interatividade na Poesia Digital Otávio Guimarães Tavares 2009
Algum Ritmo Algorítmico: Possíveis Ligações Entre o 'Sintext' e a Poética de E.M. de Melo e Castro Otávio Guimarães Tavares 2007
Appealing to Your Better Judgement: A Call for Database Criticism Hannah Ackermans 2020
CELL Project Meeting Davin Heckman, Dene Grigar, Gabriel Tremblay-Gaudette, Joseph Tabbi, Rui Torres, Leonardo L. Flores, Bertrand Gervais, Ariane Savoie, Enrico Agostini Marchese, Servanne Monjour, John Cayley, Scott Rettberg, Álvaro Seiça, Hannah Ackermans 2018
Concrete Poetry in Portugal Experimentalism and Intermediality Rui Torres 2010
Considerações Acerca do Código Fonte na Poesia Digital Otávio Guimarães Tavares 2010
Curating Digital Archives: Interoperability and Appropriation @ PO-EX.NET Rui Torres 2017
Electronic Literature and Online Literary Databases: The PO.EX and ELMCIP Cases Álvaro Seiça 2014
Electronic Literature: Documenting and Archiving Multimodal Computational Writing Scott Rettberg 2019
Flash Script Poex: A Recodificação Digital do Poema Experimental Manuel Portela 2009
Justificação Metodológica da Taxonomia do Arquivo Digital da Literatura Experimental Portuguesa Manuel Portela, Rui Torres, Maria do Carmo Castelo branco de Sequeira
Letter in support of the PO.EX’70-80 project research proposal Johanna Drucker 2012
Literatura experimental, educació i eines interactives multimèdia Rui Torres 2010
Manuel Portela and Rui Torres on the Portuguese E-Lit Collection at ELMCIP.net Álvaro Seiça 2013
Multimodal Editing and Archival Performance: A Diagrammatic Essay on Transcoding Experimental Literature Manuel Portela 2014
O PO.EX, Arquivo Digital da Literatura Experimental Portuguesa: Uma Recensão Álvaro Seiça 2014
p2p: Polish-Portuguese E-Lit André Sier, Silvestre Pestana, Rui Torres, E. M. de Melo e Castro, Pedro Barbosa, Manuel Portela, Józef Żuk Piwkowski, Piotr Puldzian Płucienniczak 2015
Performing the Digital Archive: Remediation, Emulation, Recreation Manuel Portela 2012
PO.EX '70-­80: The Electronic Multimodal Repository Rui Torres, Manuel Portela 2011
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Eric Dean Rasmussen