The Art of Machine Use Subversion in Digital Poetry

Howard Becker (1982) terms a cooperative network of people organized through and around joint knowledge and conventions of practice as an “art world”. A new “art world is born when it brings together people who never cooperated before to produce art based on and using conventions previously unknown or not exploited in that way” (310). This essay examines digital poetry art practice as an example of Becker’s type of novel, networked, and collaborative cultural activity. The diffusion of Internet technologies and the ubiquity of computing has allowed for the creation of many new art worlds, digital poetry being just one example. Furthermore, digital poetry art practice demonstrates a long history of machine use subversion, as we see technologies initially designed for other uses being repurposed to create digital poetry. In these cases, most consequentially to our thinking regarding digital poetry, what occurs is the process described by Becker: “the people who develop new art worlds participate in the broad currents of intellectual and expressive interest growing out of extant tradition and practice” (314). Although the digital poem is a distinct and unique literary artifact, digital poetry can be regarded as an ouroboric recursive practice that builds on the extant traditions of early experimentations with print, film, and video poetry as well as net art. Understanding how digital poetry operates as an art world allows us to legitimize and recognize the importance of digital culture and its impact on contemporary art and culture