First Screening: Computer Poems

A suite of a dozen kinetic poems programmed in Apple BASIC. Later, as the first versions became inaccessible, the works were recreated in HyperCard in the early 1990s (after bpNichol's death), and then in 2007 recreated in javascript for the web, and simultaneously the original BASIC and Hypercard files were republished for download.

Electronic Literature Directory entry:

Electronic Literature Directory entry

I ♥ E-Poetry entry:

I ♥ E-Poetry entry

Technical notes:

"The Media Archaeology Lab at the University of Colorado, Boulder has two 5 ¼-inch floppies with incomplete versions of First Screening on them (along with the requisite Apple IIe for viewing them). These beta-phase versions of First Screening not only differ from each other and from the published version (which is available online as an emulation of the software running on an Apple IIe) in content, but also in metadata (Katherine Wooler in: "from Apple Basic to Hypercard, or, Translating Translating bpNichol" (MLA-blog).

Contributors note:

Recreated in various contemporary media by Jim Andrews, Geof Huth, Lionel Kearns, Marko Niemi and Dan Waber.

Teaching Resource that references this work:

Resource	Author	Teaching Resource Type	Year
Digital Genres: Digital Art, Electronic Literature, and Computer Games (DIKULT 103, Spring 2020)	Daniel Jung, Hannah Ackermans, Nick Montfort	Syllabus	2020
Digital Poetry (English 3116)	Lori Emerson	Syllabus	2012
Digital Poetry and the Limits of Interpretation (ENGL 5559)	Lori Emerson	Syllabus	2010
Digital Storytelling (DTC 354)	Dene Grigar	Syllabus	2011

Research Collection that references this work:

Title
Collection of E-Lit Works Affected by "The Lability of the Device"
Digital Letterisms
Electronic Literature, Chapter 5: Kinetic and Interactive Poetry
Electronic Literature, Chapter 7: Divergent Streams
setInterval() Kinetic Poetry

Critical writing that references this work:

Title	Author	Year
Animated Poetry	Philippe Bootz	2014
Becoming Digital	J. R. Carpenter	2015
bpNichol’s ‘First Screening’ - Introduction	Jim Andrews, Geof Huth, Lionel Kearns, Marko Niemi, Dan Waber	2007
Computational Editions, Ports, and Remakes of "First Screening" and "Karateka"	Erik Stayton, Nick Montfort	2014
Digital Art and Meaning: Reading Kinetic Poetry, Text Machines, Mapping Art, and Interactive Installations	Roberto Simanowski	2011
Digital Poetry	Leonardo L. Flores
Early Authors of E-Literature, Platforms of the Past	Dene Grigar	2012
Early Digital Art and Writing	Chris Funkhouser	2014
Electronic Literature	Scott Rettberg	2018
Electronic Literature	Scott Rettberg	2014
Electronic Literature: Documenting and Archiving Multimodal Computational Writing	Scott Rettberg	2019
From the Digital to the Bookbound	J. R. Carpenter	2014
I Love E-Poetry	Leonardo L. Flores	2011
Porting E-Poetry: The Case of First Screening	Leonardo L. Flores	2012
Prehistoric Digital Poetry: An Archaeology of Forms, 1959-1995	Chris Funkhouser	2007
Reading Writing Interfaces: From the Digital to the Bookbound	Lori Emerson	2014
Scripting Reading Motions: The Codex and the Computer as Self-Reflexive Machines	Manuel Portela	2013
The Genealogy of a Creative Community: Why is Afternoon the "Grandaddy" of Hypertext Fiction?	Jill Walker Rettberg	2011
Toward. Some. Air.		2015

Screen shots:

Multimedia:

first-screening-video.mp4

The permanent URL of this page:

https://elmcip.net/node/528

Record posted by:

Jill Walker Rettberg