Poesie und Technologie / Poetry and Technology (Poetry Debates II)
Event series, fall 2022
Curated and hosted by Vadim Keylin in cooperation with Claudia Benthien
At first glance, poetry and technology might seem like an unusual pairing. One widespread view of poetry is that it is a short literary form that evokes atmospheres and conjures up vivid mental images using only a few carefully chosen words – thus standing in stark opposition to the mechanistic realm of machines and algorithms. However, in the digital age, no human activity can entirely avoid the influence of technology. Writing poetry has always meant relying on specific “techniques” – and recently these have come to include technical means. New forms of digital, performative, musical, and visual poetry have emerged that rely on advanced technologies. In poetry performances, talks and discussions, the second Poetry Debates series will explore this contentious relationship between poetry and technology.
The four events will bring together poets and scholars representing a wide spectrum of positions on this subject. Some of them explicitly and emphatically embrace technology as a new tool in the poet’s craft. They explore the multimedia diversification of poetic forms and even present poetry written and performed with the help of artificial intelligence, which challenges the primacy of human creativity. Others consider how poetry and poets are reacting to the increasingly technologized world – whether by critically deconstructing the language of digital media or actively withdrawing from the hi-tech realm to carve a niche for artistic expression free from technocracy.
Wed, Oct 26, 2022
Crafting Poetry with Digital Media
Wed, Nov 9, 2022
Posthuman Creativity: Poetry and Artificial Intelligence
Tue, Nov 22, 2022 > POSTPONED DATE: Wed, May 31, 2023
Live Poetry as Resistance to Technology
Wed, Dec 7, 2022
Poetry and the Hard Sciences
Continue to the video recordings of the events