The complete works and digitizing bpNichol: staging the written word in digital moving pictures.

Abstract

Through a digital cinema project based on the work of Canadian author bpNichol, this paper explores how contemporary poetry provides methods to create, investigate and critique digital images. By examining the way in which digital technology divides images into discrete elements, this report makes the claim that the methods of avant-garde and contemporary poetry align with the methods of digital image making. Using an active documentation methodology in which the working process of the project is documented and reflected upon, this discussion uses sequences from the project to explore how Nichol's writings and poetic methods provide ways to make and examine digital images.