From Memnon to Gangnam : a diachronic study of the interaction of technology with oral, written and music-based poetries

Abstract

Since the advent of capture technologies poets have advanced, through their experimental practice, an expanded understanding of what constitutes a text to incorporate not only its content, but also its construction. Reframed by morphological and mechanical perspectives, our changing relationship with sound and image was constituent to a cumulative process of artistic abstraction that would, in time, come to define modernity. By highlighting the importance of technologies such as telegraphy and electricity in the conception of poetry as a connecting force, of photography and cinema in the recalibration of our perceptions of subject and object, and of gramophony, radio, television and computing technologies as key agents in a process of naturalization regarding the relationship between poetry and its audience, this thesis will attempt to illustrate the progression of technology-led abstraction in oral, written and music based poetries from the beginning of the industrial age to the present day. Our relationship with the communication technologies we invent has become increasingly interwoven with the epistemological structures such mechanisms advance. This thesis will propose that as a consequence, the ways we organise and remediate texts, sounds and images into new, creative contexts that utilize the mass communication technologies and distribution networks of our modern experience positions electronic music, rap, digital memes and other interdisciplinary modes of digital expression as significant poetic forms. Our day-to-day engagement with diverse media allows us to reconfigure all our manifestations of self and any examination of mass media’s impact on poetic expression must likewise constitute a reading of both literary and popular materials. To this end, this thesis will consider the progressive technologization of our engagement with oral, written and music-based poetries that media technologies facilitate within the context of the praxis of prominent poets, their literary theories and those of the literary movements they endorsed.