Finding No Object: A Traversal through Processes in Digital Poetry

Although Mieke Bal’s “travelling concepts” (2002) framework is widely used, even if not always acknowledged, as a migration function within the humanities, arts and architecture, there is still a prevalence of researching a unique and unchangeable object. Thus, even if Bal calls for a critical object, which ought to be analyzed, meaning that a “theoretical object” entails different views on what a text or a work of art might signify, these approaches do not accurately perform when dealing with digital artworks. In fact, if one undertakes a critical position towards generative, time-based or distributed media artworks, one needs to adopt a reading and analytical perspective that disregards objects, but considers data, process(es), instantiations and manifestations. As Philippe Bootz et al. (2009) assert, our reception of digital literary works cannot comply with an objectual view, as the work/artifact is no longer a consistent and identifiable element, since it is constituted by several process(es) and variables, e.g. code, network, surface, text, image, sound, input, output, that can operate on different levels of performative presentation and, being machine-dependent, behave differently over time. Moreover, if one considers generative works, the on-screen output might be always different from view to view. In time-based works, the output varies according to time parameters, as studying Philippe Castellin’s çacocophonie (2013), as a time-lapse experience, shows.
Therefore, the emphasis cannot be placed so much in a sole output as a unique object, but more in the underlying processes that create diverse output instantiations. As such, the term object becomes as obsolete as the affected and unstable character of any given text, sound or image in a precise spatio-temporal instance.

(Source: Author's Abstract)