It is not the concrete poets who were the first to have aimed conceptually for the effects which could be fully realized in digital poetry, but the Italian Futurists. In 1916 already, F.T. Marinetti and his comrades foretold the downfall of the book in their manifesto “The Futurist Cinema” from 1916.64 Moreover, they also envisaged the following:
“Filmed Words-In-Freedom in Movement (synoptic tables of lyric values – dramas of humanized or animated letters – orthographic dramas – typographical dramas – geometric dramas – numeric sensibility, etc.).”
This prophetic vision of the Futurists seems to corroborate very clearly one of Walter Benjamin’s theses. In “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” Benjamin declared that artists tend to aim for effects which can be realised and effectuated only with the help of new technologies:
“One of the foremost tasks of art has always been the creation of a demand which could be fully satisfied only later. The history of every art form shows critical epochs in which a certain art form aspires to effects which could be fully obtained only with a changed technical standard, that is to say, in a new art form.”
This prophetic vision of the Futurists seems to corroborate very clearly one of Walter Benjamin’s theses. In “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” Benjamin declared that artists tend to aim for effects which can be realised and effectuated only with the help of new technologies:
“One of the foremost tasks of art has always been the creation of a demand which could be fully satisfied only later. The history of every art form shows critical epochs in which a certain art form aspires to effects which could be fully obtained only with a changed technical standard, that is to say, in a new art form.”
