Sound Poetry in the Digital Age
New Media Technologies as Creative Tools for Experimental Spoken Word
This doctoral project will investigate the intermedial field of contemporary sound poetry and its use of (electronic and digital) media technologies as tools for creation, instead of merely examining them as means of documentation and distribution. It will thus follow a definition of sound poetry that explicitly encourages the use of new media technologies as creative tools, as new media technologies and digitality have become important factors, not least in artistic production. Therefore, the various technological possibilities of directly manipulating texts and thus creating innovative artworks will be investigated in order to ascertain technology’s potential for the production aesthetics of sound poetry. Experimental poets like Anja Utler, Dagmara Kraus, Jörg Piringer, and Ian Hatcher create audiotexts that are performed live and/or distributed on CD, vinyl, tapes, as files or recorded performances, and as interactive apps and web installations, or – more specific to this study – they compose works that are genuinely electroacoustic.
One focus of the project will be on audio works that can be classified as “neo-semantic” as described by artist Lily Greenham, who has demanded that we turn away from non-semantic aesthetics and back to “purposeful communication” in this field. It will examine specific technologies and artistic methods, such as sound effects, editing, sampling, online devices, and machine learning, to show how artists interact with sound and (audio-)texts to create new poetic forms. To this end, the project will analyze selected audio works by utilizing methods from recent literary theory – such as close listening (cf. Bernstein 1998) – and sound and media studies, and by conducting and evaluating qualitative interviews with artists.
This study will show that the recent works of sound poetry and experimental spoken word relevant to this study continue, refine, and enhance artistic techniques that have been in development since the late 1950s, when new media and sound technologies became more broadly available. Recent works utilize new technologies like easily accessible sound software and DAWs (digital audio workstations), digital sound effects, samplers, computer technology, AI, and machine learning. The project’s main research questions include how these new technologies are used as artistic means and to what extent innovative aesthetic forms emerge from this use. One of the main objectives is thus to determine how to evaluate and discuss these new aesthetic forms and what conceptual framework is most suitable for this purpose.
Finally, this project will discuss the relationship between these contemporary sound poets and their predecessors in the twentieth century, as one specific current of sound poetry promotes the creative utilization of new media technologies as constitutive for the genre (cf. Chopin 1968; Burroughs 1979; Wendt 1985). Generally speaking, it will emphasize the aural dimension of poetry in order to consolidate the status of audiotexts as a literary category in their own right.