Eduardo Kac

Artist
School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Participates in 3 items
Eduardo Kac is internationally recognized for his experimental poetry as well as his books and essays on an expanded notion of Electronic Literature. Kac created his first digital poem in 1982 and his first online poem in 1985, the latter on the Minitel network. In 1983, Kac created the first holographic poem, or holopoem, writing with light in three-dimensional space and exploring holography’s unique temporal possibilities. Kac creates distinctive syntaxes and sensorial experiences for each of his poems, delving into the irreducible possibilities of writing media. Some of his digital poems take the form of animations, installations, interactive or networked pieces. Through holopoetry, Kac introduced a series of new compositional procedures and developed the notion of kinesthetic reading, which calls for the full-body engagement of the reader in the reading act. Between the early 1980s and the late 1990s, Kac produced a total of 38 digital and holographic poems combined, which have been exhibited and discussed worldwide. In 1997, Kac introduced Bio Art and in 1999 he presented his groundbreaking work Genesis, in which he translated a sentence from the eponymous biblical book into Morse Code, and converted the Morse Code into DNA base pairs. Kac synthesized the Genesis gene and incorporated it into bacteria. Participants on the Web could turn on an ultraviolet light in the gallery, causing real, biological mutations in the bacteria. This changed the biblical sentence in the bacteria, which was read back into English. In 2003 Kac published the Biopoetry manifesto, and his poetry was collected in the bi-lingual book Hodibis Potax (Édition Action Poétique, Ivry-sur-Seine, France, 2007). In 2011, Eduardo Kac released his book Aromapoetry, with 12 inkless poems to be read with the nose. Kac’s book Biopoetry was published in 2016 by Editions AcquAvivA, Berlin. His relentless investigation of the new possibilities of poetic creation in new media also led him to create a space poem aboard the International Space Station (ISS); French astronaut Thomas Pesquet realized it on Saturday, February 18th, 2017. Kac's space poem, entitled Inner Telescope, was specifically conceived for zero gravity and was not brought from Earth: it was made in space by Pesquet following the poet’s instructions. Inner Telescope is an instrument of observation and poetic reflection, which leads us to rethink our relationship with the world and our position in the Universe. Uniting Kac’s poetry as whole is his vision of the indeterminateness of language and his creation of liminal verbal experiences that scape the reader’s attempt to seize the text. Kac’s book Holopoetry. Essays, manifestoes, critical and theoretical writings was published in 1995. Kac’s anthology, New Media Poetry: Poetic Innovation and New Technologies, published in 1996, was the first book on digital poetry. A second, revised and expanded edition was published in 2007 as Media Poetry: an International Anthology.

Sessions in which Eduardo Kac participates

Monday 13 August, 2018

Time Zone: EDT/Eastern Time (US & Canada)
6:00 PM
6:00 PM
Exhibition Attention à la marche! / Mind the Gap! 3 days 20 hours Mon 13, 06:00 PM  -  Fri 17, 02:00 PM  |  Centre de Design (DE) UQAM , Galerie du Centre de Design
Participant Eduardo Kac (School of the Art Institute of Chicago) | Participant Alan Sondheim (Independent) | Participant Justine Bizzocchi (Bizarts) | Participant Jim Bizzocchi (Simon Fraser University) | Participant Anastasia Salter (University of Central Florida) | Participant Anne Sullivan (Georgia Tech) | Participant Jules Deslandes (GHAM&DAFE) | Participant Delphine Gauly | Participant Boris Du Boullay (Université de Marseille) | Participant Lucie Plançon | Participant Héloïse d’Almeida | Participant Marjorie Terral | Participant Guillaume Verguin | Participant Cal LaFountain | Participant Duncan Speakman | Participant Dr Tom Abba (UWE Bristol) | Participant Anna Dot (University of Vic) | Participant Steve Dipaola (Simon Fraser University) | Participant Nick Montfort (MIT) | Participant Mez Breeze (mezbreezedesign.com) | Participant Andy Campbell (One To One Development Trust) | Participant Ms. Marcelina Wellmer (Independent artist) | Participant Tina Escaja (University of Vermont) | Participant Laura Zaylea (Temple University) | Participant Shanmugapriya T | Participant Qianxun Chen | Participant Lucas Baisch (Brown University) | Participant Theadora Walsh (Brown University) | Participant Michel Lefebvre (Agence TOPO) | Participant Eva Quintas (TOPO - Laboratoire d'écritures numériques) | Participant Winnie Soon (Aarhus University) | Participant Tony Vieira (York University) | Participant Mark Marino (University of Southern California) | Participant John Murray (University of Central Florida) | Participant Joellyn Rock (University of Minnesota Duluth) | Participant Anna Tolkacheva | Participant Laura Okkema | Participant Jason Nelson (Digital Poet Land) | Participant Isabelle Raynauld (Films Musidora) | Participant Sophie Latouche | Participant Mickaël Lafontaine | Participant Richard Holeton (Stanford University) | Participant Kyle Booten (Neukom Institute, Dartmouth College) | Participant María Mencía (Kingston University) | Participant John Cayley (Brown University) | Participant Søren Bro Pold (Aarhus University) | Participant Manuel Portela (University of Coimbra) | Participant Will Luers | Participant Alan Bigelow (Medaille College) | Participant Christy Sheffield Sanford (Ms.) | Participant Erik Loyer | Participant Mehitabel Glenhaber (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) | Participant Caitlin Fisher (York University) | Participant Piotr Marecki (Jagiellonian University) | Participant Stuart Moulthrop (U. Wisconsin-Milwaukee) | Participant Judy Malloy (School of the Art Institute of Chicago) | Participant Patsy Baudoin | Participant Istvan Chung | Participant Harriet Fisher | Participant Stella Fisher | Participant Sarah Van Dierdonck
Exhibit
Exposition
Inner Telescope 3 days 20 hours Mon 13, 06:00 PM  -  Fri 17, 02:00 PM   Part of: Exhibition Attention à la marche! / Mind the Gap!
Participant Eduardo Kac (School of the Art Institute of Chicago)
Work

Tuesday 14 August, 2018

Time Zone: EDT/Eastern Time (US & Canada)
5:15 PM
5:15 PM
Inner Telescope: The First Poem in Outer Space (A Conversation) 1 hour 5:15 PM  -  6:15 PM  |  Écomusée du Fier Monde , Pool
Moderator Marianne Cloutier (Université de Montréal) Participant Eduardo Kac (School of the Art Institute of Chicago) |
Talk