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This
essay deals with literary experiments from the
Swedish 1960s - by artists and writers such as
Öyvind Fahlström, Åke Hodell, and
others - that elaborate and differentiate the
interface of poetry through the use of various
media (book, performance, gramophone, etc). Apart
from presenting a challenge to the traditionally
assigned roles of writers and readers, these texts
can be seen as articulating a threshold between a
'culture of expression' and a 'culture of
information', where the forms of poetry are shaped,
not by the search for the perfect expression of an
experience as much as by an attempt to write
through the databanks that inform and form
(ideological) ensembles of knowledge at a certain
historical juncture. The main example in the essay
is Åke Hodell's book, performance, record,
TV-film, etc. Lågsniff, from 1966, which,
through its use of technical codes and data,
connects literature to the discourse of information
theory, technology, and war. A problematic question
to be raised is also, if, and in what way, one can
relate these poetic forms to a digital poetics
today.
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