Essay Exhibit for Intro to Digital Humanities

My final essay for Intro to Digital Humanities is written on the subject of low-tech digital poetry and fringe art.  To be clearer, my essay discusses the use of basic computer programs and digital documents to produce digital poems or other forms of artwork that, while not precisely poems, contain some poetic values.

Some of the digital poems produced for the Digital Poetry course in which I am enrolled fall into my definition of low-tech digital poetry.  In the following Jing video (screencast), I will be briefly highlighting some of my work for the class and some of the work of my classmates.  I had to rush through the poems to keep the video short, and some are not shown in their entirety.  Unfortunately, there isn't much time to delve into these poems during the live exhibit, but I have hyperlinked to them below so that you can look at them later.  As you watch this Jing video, notice the different ways in which digital poems may be produced using methods as simple as .txt files or Prezi.

Essay Exhibit Jing (Note: You may want to hold Ctrl/Command and scroll to fit the whole video on your screen.)

Digital Poems Included in Jing (in order of appearance):

"Pain Changes" by Montana Mang

"Don't Worry" by Emily Moore

"Oh, What Are You Doing, And Where Are You Going?" by Patrick Stahl

"Save Changes" by Jonas Kiefer

"Lightly Worn" by Patrick Stahl

Now, quickly explore these two digital poems yourself:

"Dashed" by Patrick Stahl

"Seeking a release from the monotony" by Sean T. Jackson

The Jing video you just watched contains poetry made with Prezi, Jing, HTML, Excel, Notepad, and a few other basic computer applications (in the case of "Don't Worry"). Consider how each of these basic technologies affords the ability to create digital poems without very much technical training. The final two poems I asked you to explore yourself use .pdf files ("Dashed") or blog posts+videos+an audio recording ("Seeking..."). What impact is there on poems that require users to interact with documents that may not be so sleek as Flash or HTML?

If you have a moment (though you probably don't), check out my latest, tiny digital poem. It uses basic HTML and CSS coding and consists of just three pages.