Autoauthor, Autotext, Autoreader: The Poem as Self-Assembled Database

Abstract

This article contains an introduction to contemporary Portuguese electronic literature, focusing on works by Rui Torres. Starting from texts by other 20th-century authors, Rui Torres’ generative works recode their source texts by opening up their syntax and semantics to digital materiality and programmed signification. Randomized algorithms, permutational procedures and interactive functions are applied to sets of digital objects consisting of verbal text, video, voice, music, and animation. His hypermedia poems demonstrate that programming codes have become crucial elements in the rhetoric and poetics of digital creation. I analyze his database poetry by looking at the algorithmic play between writing and reading in three hypermedia works: Mar de Sophia [Sophia’s Sea] (2005; http://telepoesis.net/mardesophia/), Amor de Clarice [Clarice’s Love] (2005; http://telepoesis.net/amorclarice/amor.html), and Húmus Poema Contínuo [Humus Continuous Poem] (2008, http://telepoesis.net/humus/humus.html).