INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AS A FACTOR IN THE POETICS OF CULTURE

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to specify the connection between modern information technologies (IT) and the poetics of culture, taking into account existing theoretical models of such a connection, the plurality of forms and interpretations of poetics, the structural complexity of culture as an integral system, and the specific interdependence between the IT industry and digital culture. The methodology is based on a comprehensive cultural approach, which includes: general scientific tools of systemic thinking, analytical-synthetic and comparative-analytical methods, as well as hermeneutic procedures within the poetics of culture and culturological reflection, including insights derived from own’s programming practice. The article’s contribution lies in the comparative analysis of Mark Coeckelbergh’s and Vilém Flusser’s models of the technology – poetics nexus, in examining the multilayered impact of IT on cultural poetics, and in introducing the concepts of IT poetics and code poetics. Coeckelbergh’s model (technépoetics) and Flusser’s model (poetics of apparatuses/algorithms) are not mutually exclusive but complementary, each corresponding to distinct cultural contexts. The former is applicable to processes of creative development (design, testing, refinement, and innovation) and to instances of non-routine technological engagement by the cultural subject, whereas the latter applies to contexts in which subjectivity is diminished or displaced within informational reality. 2. The influence of IT on the poetics of culture can be discerned on three theoretical levels: (a) the systemiccultural level, where IT functions as both a medium and a structure-forming principle of contemporary (digital) culture; (b) the industry-specific level, particularly in digital art, where technology and poetics converge functionally and semantically – consistent with both Coeckelbergh’s and Flusser’s frameworks; (c) the technological level, encompassing the poetics of IT itself, which rests upon the poetics of code and reflects the interrelation of the two aforementioned models. Accordingly, the poetics of code should be situated within the broader poetics of digital culture as its basis, and the poetic dimension may be regarded as the primary cultural modality and the leading culturological dimension of IT.