Data Poetics

(2016-)

Originally inspired by the University of Victoria Libraries’ McPherson Library punch card for the 1981 book, Poetry and the Computer: Some Quantitative Aspects of the Style of Sylvia Plath by C.S. Butler, Data Poetics is a series of conceptual poetry that explores systems of information.

In creating Data Poetics, the holes of the punch card are filled in by hand, leaving a remnant pattern which is suggestive of a disclosed code or possible language. Poems are named after the title on the punch card, and arranged with a corresponding visual.

The punch card is used as a point of departure, the information arranged and redacted to formulate new compositions of data that we will not be able to decode due to the obsolescent nature of this technology.