From biopoetry to digital fungi: the poetics of text-organisms

• Type: Chapter or Part of a Book
• Date: 2026

Authors

Marques, Diogo (Author) FLUP

Book

Title: Entanglements in the age of the posthuman

Pages: 80-99

ISBN: 978-90-04-74152-2

Electronic ISBN: 978-90-04-74155-3

Publisher: Brill

Indexing

Crossref

Other information

DOI: 10.1163/9789004741553_007

Abstract (EN): From Eduardo Kac’s pioneering biopoems in the 1980s and Christian Bök’s Xenotext experiments with the (im)possibility of creating a space poem that outlives humanity, to the more recent Cesar & Lois bioart installations employing microbiological AI s, this chapter aims to reflect on the poetics and aesthetics of text-organisms capable of transcending boundaries between nature and culture while merging social, technological, and biological systems. If considered collectively through a “history of infections” that permeates different fields of knowledge, these examples of bio-inspired computing in the arts can challenge, in various and often polarized ways, the tropes of contamination between art, science, and technology. By exposing how literature acquires new possible readings through its disruptive interconnections with multiple disciplines – particularly in the use of digital technology – this text proceeds from the premise that such disruption is far from being exclusively digital. Nonetheless, as digital technologies permeate almost every aspect of our lives, there is also evidence of a surge in inter-, trans-, and antidisciplinary practices that may likewise stem from this ubiquity.

Language: English

Type (Professor's evaluation): Scientific

Notes: Publication: 22 Dec 2025. Copyright Year: 2026