We(s)t Coast: Mapping the Road Between the Physical and Digital

• Main Author: Kirtz, Jaime Lee
• Format: Others
• Published: 2013
• Online Access: http://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/978392/1/Kirtz_MA_S2014.pdf; Kirtz, Jaime Lee <http://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/view/creators/Kirtz=3AJaime_Lee=3A=3A.html> (2013) We(s)t Coast: Mapping the Road Between the Physical and Digital. Masters thesis, Concordia University.

This collection of poems is set along the West Coast in major cities along the I-5 highway: Los Angeles, Portland, Seattle and Vancouver. The West Coast is often cited primarily as an environmental space whereas technology is seen as an inimical force that could potentially devastate natural landscapes, therefore the constraint based poetry in this collection examines the tensions between digital and physical representations and the implications these tensions exhibit on social and ecological networks. Further it aims to illustrate the difficulty of archiving such networks through subversive methodology. The poetry uses both technological and personal approaches searching for the intersections between language and lyric poetry. The main question asks whether the competing forces of ecology and technology, language and lyric writing, print and digital result in a collusion of the two forms. The emphasis on form and social structures results from a theoretical grounding in cultural theorists such as Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault and Theodor Adorno, along with media theorists such as Frederich Kittler and Alan Liu. Constraints echo the forms of code used by digital technology as well as print based media like newspapers and thus provide a way to discuss how information is stored and transmitted and how it shapes our perceptions of issues pertaining to the unique environment of the West Coast.