Part 3: VIRTUAL POETRY

Unfortunately, there is no way to appreciate what a virtual poem is other than in a virtual space. The picture, or rather the "electronic image" registered with virtual cameras, is a pale reflection of the poem, excessively insufficient. Virtual poetry is possible due to two intrinsic characteristics of computing: 1) it could engender three-dimensional signs inside a virtual space and 2) it could program their behaviors. That is to say, a design in three dimensions is needed in order to facilitate what we normally carry out with an object when we want to know it: to manipulate it in all directions and under all possible viewpoints.

Therefore, it is mentioned as "(virtual) reality" since the "virtual object", likewise the "real object" will ever respond in the same way, because it itself contains the whole necessary information about itself. However, we are not discussing here the "real object" but a group of data loaded in a memory to which it is able to apply the "physics" that we want. Even algorithms of behavior that work oppositely to the classical physics of Newton or to the most versatile of Einstein.

So, the virtual poem could not only move and transform itself according to precise programs but, also, respond to certain situations occasioned by the observer who, could even touch them and operate with them as if they were real objects. With the appropriate equipment it is possible to insert himself/herself into that virtual space and interact with texts and signs. In short: the three-dimensional representation simulated on a computer, able to create their sense of reality and to perform competently the sensations characteristic of the objects, applied to cause a correct although not real perception in the observer, aside from the possibility of its virtual manipulation due to previously developed programs.

This section is finished with an extract of the basic text "Criteria for a Virtual Poetry" by Ladislao Pablo Györi published as a broadsheet by the author in May of 1995 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and launched later in the magazine Dimensão Nº24 (Uberaba, Brazil) during the same year:

“ VIRTUAL POEMS or VPOEMS are interactive digital entities, capable of: (i) taking part in –or being generated within– a virtual world (here called VPD or "Virtual Poetry Domain") through software or routines (for the development of virtual reality applications and real time explorations) which confer diverse manner to manipulation, navigation, behavior and alternative properties (in presence of environmental constraints and interactions), evolution, sound emission, animated morphing, etc.; (ii) being "experimented" by means of partially or fully immersive interface devices (vpoems support "walkthroughs" and "flybys"); (iii) assuming an aesthetic dimension (in accordance with the semiotic and entropic concept of information), not reducing themselves to a simple phenomenon of communication (like a pure data stream) and (iv) being defined about a hypertext structure (circulation of open and multiple digital information) but principally producing hyperdiscourses (with a strong semantic non-linearity).

The VPD is a substitutive field –with respect to its quality of "support"– for that traditional printed page which only establishes a "surface and static" contact, which is very restricted in relation to the requirements of large versatility and global artificiality that also dominate contemporary poetic productions and, especially, those of the future. VPD also exceeds all the more or less established techniques of "channeling" of poetic messages, because it breaks in a definitive way with the first support that produces and maintains them: real physical space. Vpoems and the VPD have a logical existence, so that, they bear no resemblance to anything, becoming entities with an actuational power (related to the quantity of resources at work) as has never been seen or experimented before.

The opening of the VPD to the computer networks will facilitate the realization of virtual teleportations of "explorer" subjects to "VP-base computers" (anywhere in the world or in the physical space), obtaining an absolutely new remote experience of simulated run and exploratory "reading", which is still difficult to value today in its most extraordinary dimension and possibilities.”

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