Electronic Literature and Kinetic Interactive Digital Poetry as Posthuman Text: Focusing on Text Rain and Still Standing

The current study aims to investigate the patterns of embodied interaction and meaning generation in kinetic interactive digital poetry mediated through movement within the theoretical frameworks of posthumanism and multimodal semiotics, focusing on Camille Utterback and Romy Achituv's Text Rain (1999) and Bruno Nadeau and Jason Edward Lewis's Still Standing (2005). The study focuses on three types of interactions mediated by movement in these works. Firstly, it explores the interaction between the audience and the works, investigating the impact of bodily interaction as a fundamental element in the generation of meaning during the art experience. Secondly, it delves into the interaction between image and text. Within these kinetic interactive digital poems, the duality of textual and visual symbols is central, emphasizing their multimodality as a crucial attribute. Thirdly, the study examines the interaction among the audience. The interactions among the audience in public rather than isolated private spaces significantly influence the physical transformation of the artworks and the construction of meaning. Through such analysis, this paper seeks to revaluate the position and implications of kinetic interactive poetry as a literary form that transcends the boundaries between literature and art and explores new avenues of criticism for electronic literature.