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P

O

E

T

R

Y

N E W M D I A

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Charl

es Buk

ow

ski

Your is your

Know it while you

have it.

You are

MARVELOUS

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Poetry

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Rethinking Poetry in the Digital Age Kushtrim Hamzaj W.S. 2017

Advisors:

Prof. Hermann Klöckner Prof. Bernd Hennig

Masters of Arts in Integrated Design

Fachbereich Design - Department of Design

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In tr o 1 2 R esear ch Personal motivation. Liberating the words. Design opportunity

Why Poetry Is Necessary. Poetry & Politics.

Plato’s Fear of Tragedy. Emotional Net.

Poetry is thriving on the Internet.

10 11 14 16 20 28 40 46

Contents

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3 4 Pr oposal Pr oduc t

How Apple changed the Music Industry. Reading habits have shifted.

Type Matters more than ever.

Benefits of Touch Screen Technology.

Desktop Platform. Poetry on-the-go.

Poetry in the living room.

Conclusion Acknowledgements References 64 78 80 82 86 88 94 98 100 102

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R esear ch te xtual in terpr et ations o f l yricism te xtual in terpr et ations In ter ne t and poe try

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INTRODUCTION

1

Per sonal Mo tiv ation er D esign Op por tunity

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As Vassar Miller asserted: “Poetry, like all art, has a trinitarian function: creative, redemptive, and sanctifying, It is creative because it takes the raw materials of fact and feeling and makes them into that which is neither fact nor feeling. Redemptive because it transforms pain, ugliness of life into joy, beauty. Sanctifying because it gives the tran-sitory a relative form of meaning.”

As a heavy user of the web and as fan of this spe-cial genre of literature, it’s hard not to be sympa-thetic to both sides. Poetry seem more important than ever in today’s digital world where language has become a provisional space where words are cheap and infinitely produced, where a random tweet or a Nobel laureate speech can be treated equally.

In the face of this unprecedented amount of dig-ital text, I believe that poetry can do something worthwhile in the way we approach the web. The technological rise of the web has brought to fru-ition the poets ambfru-ition to convey their ideas to the whole masses. In a world of full of words such as that of Internet, poetry has found a place and should blossom. The combination seems just per-fect. Poetry is something we do with language. Or rather, it’s a lot of things we do with language. In-ternet in the other hand, It’s a place where we can attend language, as a stadium is place to attend the body. In conclusion, Internet and poetry are both made of “words”.

In tr oduc tion

Personal

Motivation

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In

tr

oduc

tion Although the current situation may seem alarming, most of these issues are not new. In 1988,

philoso-pher and essayist George Steiner already expressed his concern over the imminent demise of book-cul-ture in the face of the overwhelming number of new electronic information and entertainment media (at the time, chiefly television, radio, and video games), which he charged with “appropriating the resources of time and of perception which were once the do-main of the book.”

The design focus of my thesis is the presentation of artistic and textual interpretations of lyricism, po-etry and philosophy in space, time and interaction, including experimental and spatial works. It will con-nect new media innovations with ancient traditions. Although the current situation may seem alarming, most of these issues are not new. In 1988, philoso-pher and essayist George Steiner already expressed his concern over the imminent demise of book-cul-ture in the face of the overwhelming number of new electronic information and entertainment media (at the time, chiefly television, radio, and video games), which he charged with “appropriating the resources of time and of perception which were once the do-main of the book.”

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I begin this discussion with a quote from the poet and artist Brion Gysin on the relation between painting and writing, in 1959 he boldly declared: “Writing is fifty years behind painting. I propose to apply the painters’ techniques to writing. Why words are prisoned in a printed book? The poets are supposed to liberate the words - not to chain them in phrases.

And he might still be right: In the art world, since impressionism, Innovations and risk taking have been consistently taken along with the new tech-nology that came along. Kenneth Goldsmith In Uncreative Writing says that: “with the invention of the camera, painting was forced to change its course in order to survive, hence Impressionism, abstraction, and modernism”. Today, with the rise of tablets, e-readers, compuater screens, reading is facing a similar challenge. The development of the digital media has led to an imminent demise of book culture and its replacement by a wide-spread digital revolution where most of the newly published literature is going digital. Reading hab-its have shifted and will continue to shift!

Without denying the significance of these trans-formations, which are supported by a pletho-ra of scientific studies, the question arises: Has the reading made this transition? How does it mean to read in our day and age? This is precisely the question that I will be interested to address throughout this book, that, our newly relationship with reading should be revisited from it’s core. This brings me back to another question: Why we still read in the same conventions as the ones

ap-In tr oduc tion

Design

Opportunity

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In

tr

oduc

tion Although the current situation may seem alarming, most of these issues are not new. In 1988,

philoso-pher and essayist George Steiner already expressed his concern over the imminent demise of book-cul-ture in the face of the overwhelming number of new electronic information and entertainment media (at the time, chiefly television, radio, and video games), which he charged with “appropriating the resources of time and of perception which were once the do-main of the book.”

The design focus of my thesis is the presentation of artistic and textual interpretations of lyricism, po-etry and philosophy in space, time and interaction, including experimental and spatial works. It will con-nect new media innovations with ancient traditions. Although the current situation may seem alarming, most of these issues are not new. In 1988, philoso-pher and essayist George Steiner already expressed his concern over the imminent demise of book-cul-ture in the face of the overwhelming number of new electronic information and entertainment media (at the time, chiefly television, radio, and video games), which he charged with “appropriating the resources of time and of perception which were once the do-main of the book.”

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R esear ch R esear ch R esear ch R esear ch

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WHY

2.

POETRY?

R esear ch esear ch R esear ch

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R

esear

ch

Why Poetry

Once upon a time, in cultures all over the world, po-etry was the means by which a culture gave itself coherence, and allowed its members to share their perspectives with one another. A poem, recited to music, was the way people “told it like it was.” They used poetry to pass on information about their his-tory, religion, and values to the next generation. That remained true in the West, at least, until literacy re-placed orality and, as a result, prose took over from poetry as the means by which a culture replicated it-self—particularly in Athens during the fifth century BCE.

The tropes that we associate with poetry today arose during these periods, in which the majority of people were not literate and culturally necessary informa-tion was transmitted orally. Much of what we think of as the fancy frills of “poetic” language arose not for aesthetic but for practical reasons: Poetic tropes made information easier to remember. Alliteration, assonance, anaphora (repetition), rhyme, meter, and many other tropes arose as mnemonic devices. Many have lasted into our era, in which poetry has largely become a form of written communication.

Poetry is art by means of words. The word itself is of Greek origin and its etymological meaning is “mak-ing” (to say that someone is a poet is to call him or her a “maker”). This oldest of the human arts was born in song (and dance). Rhythm and rhyme (and reason) go hand-in-hand when it comes to poetry. Though the language of poetry is the language of emotions, it is not devoid of rationality either. In a good poem the head is the head of the heart, even as it is the heart that gives life to the head. And this is true even if we

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Poetry makes nothing happen… or does it?

Poetry has the power to start a revolution in our so-ciety. It can alter the way we see ourselves. It can change the way we see the world. You may never have read a poem in your life, and yet you can pick up a vol-ume of Mary Oliver say, or Neruda, or of Rumi, open it to any page, and suddenly find yourself blown into a world full of awe, dread, wonder, marvel, deep sor-row, and joy. This is why poetry can be useful as well as necessary. Because we may never be the same again after reading a poem that happens to speak to our own reality directly. I know that when I meet my own life in a great poem, I feel opened, clarified, confirmed somehow in what I sensed was true but had no words for. Anything that can do this is surely necessary for the fullness of a human life.

You see the phrase, “poetry makes nothing happen” trotted out over and over again, attributed to W.H. Auden as some sort of evidence for the reductive-ness and hermetic inutility of poetry. The response to this would be: In times of war and other extremi-ties, when God, or our notion of God, seems far away, poetry can be a lifeline, a clarity of breath, a means toward balance, a respite from despair that is not an evasion. Poetry reminds us we can lie down, as Wendell Berry suggests, under the stars, near “wild things / who do not tax their lives with forethought / of grief.” We can, with Mary Oliver, behold the world calling to us “like wild geese, harsh and exciting— / over and over announcing [our] place / in the family

R

esear

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Poetry is the

of meaningful beauty

by means of words.

R esear ch

creation

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Some of the greatest

moments in human

history were fueled

by

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esear

ch

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Some of the greatest moments in human history were fueled by poetry. When Martin Luther King, Jr. presented his dream, he chose language that would stir the hearts of his audience. “Instead of honoring this sacred obligation” to liberty, King thundered, “America has given the Negro people a bad check.” He promised that a land “sweltering with the heat of oppression” could be “transformed into an oa-sis of freedom and justice,” and envisioned a future in which “on the red hills of Georgia sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave-owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.” Delivering this electrifying message required emo-tional intelligence—the ability to recognize, under-stand, and manage emotions. Dr. King demonstrated remarkable skill in managing his own emotions and in sparking emotions that moved his audience to ac-tion. As his speechwriter Clarence Jones reflected, King delivered “a perfectly balanced outcry of reason and emotion, of anger and hope. His tone of pained indignation matched that note for note.”

However, According to a research made by W. Jason Miller, an associate professor of English at North Carolina State University, it is believed that Mar-tin Luther speech was inspired by Hughes’s poetry. His outcome show that Hughes’s poetry hovers be-hind Martin Luther King’s sermons like watermarks on bonded paper. But Why did King use an idea from Hughes’s poem as the central focus for his first ser-mon about dreams, and why is this connection

im-Poetry &

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esear

ch

Where did Dr.King found these emotions?

Politics

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The answers is: King was enamored with poetry. He was aware of the fact that being in touch with emo-tions is essential. And for him a poem had all the at-tributes to that. When he presented his dream, he chose a poem that would stir the hearts of his au-dience. He also had previous (and remarkable) suc-cess with using several of Hughes’ other poems in his speeches. Dr. King first started using the phrase “I have a dream.” Gradually turning the negative as-pects of dreaming into something truly inspiring and unifying, King found a creative way to synthesize prophecy, politics, and poetry into something unfor-gettable and truly his own.

Moreover, Hughes had written a poem about King in 1956, and by the end of 1959 King would personally request and receive a poem by Langston Hughes to be used at a celebration for A. Philip Randolph. This poem not coincidentally also featured the subject of dreams which King himself picked up on in his own personal remarks at the event held at Carnegie Hall on January 24, 1960. Literary sources about failed dreams, not biblical prophecy, served as the origins of King’s engagement with the subject of dreams. King’s 1959 sermon “Unfulfilled Hopes” marks the beginning of King’s engagement with the subject of dreams. What becomes most extraordinary about King’s use of Hughes’s poem is this: without the suc-cesses of the play and King’s intimate familiarity with Hughes’s poetry (buoyed through his wife Coretta’s vast collection and appreciation of Hughes’s works), Martin Luther King, Jr. would have never started

R

esear

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Martin

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...I have a dream that one day this

nation will rise up and live out

the true meaning of its creed:

“We hold these truths to be

self-evident: that all men are created

equal.” I have a dream that one

day on the red hills of Georgia the

sons of former slaves and the sons

of former slaveowners will be able

to sit down together at a table of

brotherhood. I have a dream that one

day even the state of Mississippi,

a desert state, sweltering with the

heat of injustice and oppression,

will be transformed into an oasis

of freedom and justice...

Te

xt Ex

cerp

t fr

om

“I Ha

ve a Dr

eam

” Speec

h

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Langston

Hughes

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I dream a world where man

No other man will scorn,

Where love will bless the earth

And peace its paths adorn

I dream a world where all

Will know sweet freedom’s way,

Where greed no longer saps the soul

Nor avarice blights our day.

A world I dream where black or white,

Whatever race you be,

Will share the bounties of the earth

And every man is free,

Where wretchedness will hang its head

And joy, like a pearl,

Attends the needs of all

mankind-Of such I dream, my world!

I Dr

eam a W

orl

d b

y Langs

ton Hughes

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However, argued

that it was important

to keep poetry out of

the ideal state.

R

esear

ch

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According to Plato,

Poets are immoral:

they pervert reality

with songs that

seduce readers into

an imaginary world.

R

esear

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But even thousands of years ago, some people were skeptical of poetry’s place in the political sphere. Pla-to, writing the Republic at a time when literacy was just beginning to replace oral tradition, argued that it was important to keep poetry out of the ideal state. He was particularly vehement about preventing po-ets from obtaining leadership roles. Popo-ets, according to Plato, are immoral: they pervert reality with songs that seduce readers into an imaginary world, leaving them unable to function in the present.

Although he recognises poetry is a vital and neces-sary part of human society, still he regards it with suspicion, According to him, poetry is a mark of hu-manity’s fallen state. Of course, his remarks must be read within the cultural framework of Plato’s time, where the dissemination and spread of poetry was very different.

To put this straight, Plato did not like the mimetic aspect of poety - namely that poetry imitated life. This aspect of poetry was seen as opposed to true reality. Plato had a robust idea that what one really needed to know was the eternal forms and one could only gain this knowledge through dialectics, that is, philosophy. This is why Plato banished the poets from his ideal Republic. However, to say that Plato does not use poetry in his writings would be wrong. Any platonic scholar would tell you that Plato uses plenty of poetic forms and devices all throughout his works. I think he does this, because he sees himself as a true philosopher. True philosophers are not real-ly prone to the dangers of poetry, because they have been trained in the school of philosophy.

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Poetry &

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It is well known that in Plato’s utopian ideal state there is no room for free artistic expression: artists are mistrusted and art works heavily censored. Less known is that, once they are properly selected and purified, art works are particularly valued by Plato. However, Plato completely disapproves of a certain category of art, which he defines as ‘mimetic’. ‘Mi-metic art’ is a priori disqualified by him as morally bad, misleading and dangerous. It is therefore cat-egorically forbidden in the ideal state. Tragedy is threatening to this construction because it under-mines the unrealistic Platonic conception of man as an autonomous, rational being.

A discussion now ensues about the ethics of poetic influence — it may be for good or for bad, depending on the outcome of that influence in practice. I argue that if a poem inspires a war of liberation from to-talitarian rule, or colonial domination, as in the case of the African-American Civil Rights Movement, it would be hard to denounce such a poem as “bad”. In such instances, poetry functions as a positive inspi-ration. Poetry could be used for ideological purposes, to induce false emotions and mass hysteria in an ef-fort to manipulate people, but on the other hand, an oppressed or endangered people may spontaneously find consolation and the strength to resist that op-pression in some poem not written with that purpose in mind. So do we have to accept that poetry in itself cannot be said to be good or bad, but that it can be used either way?

Plato’s Fear of Tragedy

R

esear

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Good poetry used

by bad people, can

stir emotions,

and sway logic.

R

esear

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Donald Trump, in his

rhetorical role, is the

best example on what

Plato feared.

R

esear

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Emotional intelligence is important, but the unbri-dled enthusiasm has obscured a dark side. New evi-dence shows that when people hone their emotional skills, they become better at manipulating others. Leaders who master emotions can rob us of our ca-pacities to reason. If their values are out of step with our own, the results can be devastating. Recogniz-ing the power of emotions, another one of the most influential leaders of the 21th century spent years studying the emotional effects of his body language. Practicing his hand gestures and analyzing images of his movements allowed him to become “an abso-lutely spellbinding public speaker,” says the histori-an Roger Moorhouse—“it was something he worked very hard on.” His name was Donald Trump.

His poetic tendencies explain why so many people find him irresistible, while so many others—the more Platonically inclined—find him intolerable. Like the best poetry, he arouses strong feelings in his audi-ences. So what is it in Trump’s speeches that make him irresistible? He does not rely on the most ob-vious poetic strategies, rhyme and meter. Indeed, rhyme and meter are more associated with women politicians in today’s political climate—both Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin have used these poetic de-vices to memorable effect.

But Trump does rely heavily on other, less obvious poetic tropes. For instance, he makes a lot of use of aposiopesis—breaking off a sentence before it’s fin-ished. He is a fan of anaphora, or repetition: he never says anything once when he can say it three times. He is a master of hyperbole (exaggeration): Everything about him, from his hands to his fence at our border

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esear

ch

Donald Trump &

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Moreover, Trump’s fondness for anaphora (repetition) encourages the public to remember his words and quote them to others. Eventually, this repetition may effectively convince people that his words represent not the effusions of one particular politician, but re-ceived truth. As Lewis Carroll said, in The Hunting of the Snark:

By the third time we repeat any idea, it begins to take on the aura of received wisdom. Trump knows this well. So many of his speeches reiterate themes: Obama’s Kenyan birth, the criminality of Mexicans, Trump’s history as a supporter of women’s issues— just for starters. Of course some of this reiteration might be due to the fact that Trump has only a few ideas, so they have to do a lot of work; but another reason, I think, is that he knows the power of the “Snark Rule.” And because repetition offers poets a means to signal to their audiences, “This is what you believe. This is what you know is true,” many of us find Trump’s repetitive pattern very persuasive. The lyrics of the song are about a “vicious snake” that takes advantage of a “tender woman,” who treats the creature with kindness only to get bitten. Trump sug-gested the song was a metaphor for what would hap-pen if the US embraced refugees fleeing the violence in Syria, whom Trump considers potential terrorists. So I call Donald Trump a poet. While that doesn’t mean that I like his poetry, I don’t object to the idea of campaigning with it. What concerns me more is that if he somehow manages to win, he would also govern in poetry. And here I am with Plato: that’s dangerous.

R

esear

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Donald

Trump

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On her way to work one morning

Down the path along side the lake

A tender hearted woman saw a poor half frozen snake

His pretty colored skin had been all frosted with the dew

“Poor thing,” she cried, “I’ll take you in and I’ll take care of you”

“Take me in tender woman

Take me in, for heaven’s sake

Take me in, tender woman,” sighed the snake

She wrapped him all cozy in a comforter of silk

And laid him by her fireside with some honey and some milk

She hurried home from work that night and soon as she arrived

She found that pretty snake she’d taken to had bee revived

“Take me in, tender woman

Take me in, for heaven’s sake

Take me in, tender woman,” sighed the snake

She clutched him to her bosom, “You’re so beautiful,” she cried

“But if I hadn’t brought you in by now you might have died”

She stroked his pretty skin again and kissed and held him tight

Instead of saying thanks, the snake gave her a vicious bite

“Take me in, tender woman

Take me in, for heaven’s sake

Take me in, tender woman,” sighed the snake

“I saved you,” cried the woman

“And you’ve bitten me, but why?

You know your bite is poisonous and now I’m going to die”

“Oh shut up, silly woman,” said the reptile with a grin

“You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in

I Dr

eam A W

orl

d - Langs

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Oscar

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On her way to work one morning

Down the path along side the lake

A tender hearted woman saw a poor half frozen snake

His pretty colored skin had been all frosted with the dew

“Poor thing,” she cried, “I’ll take you in and I’ll take care of you”

“Take me in tender woman

Take me in, for heaven’s sake

Take me in, tender woman,” sighed the snake

She wrapped him all cozy in a comforter of silk

And laid him by her fireside with some honey and some milk

She hurried home from work that night and soon as she arrived

She found that pretty snake she’d taken to had bee revived

“Take me in, tender woman

Take me in, for heaven’s sake

Take me in, tender woman,” sighed the snake

She clutched him to her bosom, “You’re so beautiful,” she cried

“But if I hadn’t brought you in by now you might have died”

She stroked his pretty skin again and kissed and held him tight

Instead of saying thanks, the snake gave her a vicious bite

“Take me in, tender woman

Take me in, for heaven’s sake

Take me in, tender woman,” sighed the snake

“I saved you,” cried the woman

“And you’ve bitten me, but why?

You know your bite is poisonous and now I’m going to die”

“Oh shut up, silly woman,” said the reptile with a grin

“You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in

I Dr

eam A W

orl

d - Langs

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Who needs logic?

We appear to be living

in an Emotional Age.

R esear ch

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How Internet became

a stadium to read

and listen poetry?

R

esear

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Twenty-five years after the first website went online, internet was supposed to be a tool to liberate knowl-edge, to give us access to the facts in the palm of our hands. Instead, it has turned to be a place where feelings, not facts, are what matter. But how did it came until here? Is it technology to be blamed? Since the invention of the web,The average person reads more words per day today than ever before. There is even a study conducted by researchers at the University of California-San Diego that shows “in 2008, the average person consumed 100,000 words of information in a single day through various channels, including the television, radio, the Web, text messages and video games. (By comparison, Leo Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” is only 460,000 words long.) Unfortunately, so far there hasn’t been a study to show the the “quality” of the words people read! Maybe we instead of Tolstoy, we are filling the void with, say, Facebook statuses from our friends and ar-ticles we read online?

In the midst of this havoc of information in front of us, we are caught in a series of confusing battles be-tween opposing forces: bebe-tween truth and falsehood, fact and rumour, kindness and cruelty; between the few and the many. So the main question is: How could one distinguish what is true and what is false? This does not mean that there are no truths. It simply means, that there are so much facts, it has become extremely difficult to tell the difference between facts that are true and “facts” that are not true. So how could one decide between two facts?

R

esear

ch

Emotional web

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R

esear

ch To answer this question is important to understand

how the brain reacts when it is forced to make de-cisions. According to Neuroscience, in most persua-sive situations, people react based on emotions, then they justify their actions with logic and facts. A message that is completely based on emotion will often set off alarm bells on the logical side. On the other hand a logical message with no appeal to emo-tion doesn’t create a strong enough response in the audience. An effective persuader will create a proper balance between logic and emotion in order to cre-ate the perfect persuasive message. We are persuad-ed by reason, but we are movpersuad-ed by emotion. Several studies conclude that up to ninety percent of the de-cisions we make are based on emotion. We use logic to justify our actions to ourselves and to others. Take note that emotions will always win over logic and that imagination will always win over reality.

So the fact that is connected with personal emotion will be the one that wins. A fact would not work if there is no emotion on it. We are living in living in a kind of metaphorical duck-rabbit world where every-one believes in their own “truth”. Increasingly, what counts as a fact is merely a view that someone feels to be true. According to Leave founder Arron Banks: “You have got to connect with people emotional-ly. It’s the Trump success.” When “facts don’t work” and voters don’t trust the media, everyone believes in their own “truth” – and the results, as we have just seen, can be devastating.

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You cannot, no matter

how hard you try, see

both duck and rabbit

at once.

R

esear

(44)

fact, fact, fact. It just

doesn’t work. You have

got to connect with

people emotionally.

R

esear

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People are turning

to poems to cope

with this moment of

confusion and crisis.

R

esear

(46)

That is the reason why poetry, one of mankind’s old-est art forms is enjoying a resurgence on the web. People are turning to poems to cope with this mo-ment of confusion and crisis. We are living in strange, interesting, and often horrifying times. Through our screens and news feeds, we increasingly witness acts of violence and horror that defy straight analy-sis. It’s no wonder that poetry is providing emotional succour where the bleak language of news reports so often fails. And in the process, it is going viral.

William Wadsworth of the Academy of American Po-ets two years ago said that poetry was the eighth most popular subject on the Internet, surpassed only by such things as Pokemon, Star Wars and sex, and more popular than baseball, football or golf. Surpris-ingly, it seems that rather than killing it off, modern technologies like email, social networking sites such as Facebook and online media players are helping poets reach new audiences.

The best example of poetry popularity on the net was in the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election. When it was announced that Donald Trump was also President-Elect Donald Trump, a poem went viral on social media. “Differences of Opinion,” the Brit-ish poet Wendy Cope’s sharp evisceration of mans-plaining, spoke, in its spare nine lines, to a political moment that has been defined in large part by a tense relationship both with women and with facts. The poem appears on Hello Poetry, a website for wide-ranging verse that has more than 1,100 poems pop up under the name Trump. The musings are writ-ten in haiku, free verse, limerick and rhyme. A num-ber appear to have no structure at all, as if

power-R

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ch

Poetry is thriving

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It is no surprise that Trump has roused poets or those who see themselves as poets. Verse, after all, is a distillation of the ephemeral and the eternal, a need for language to summon image and find mean-ing. Trump’s campaign and defeat of Hillary Clinton exposed stark divisions and raised disquieting ques-tions about the nation’s character, soul and identity, much like the Trojan War for Homer, Richard III for Shakespeare and the horrors of World War I for Wil-fred Owen.

R

esear

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Poetry is the eighth

most popular subject on

the Internet, surpassed

only by Pokemon, Star

Wars and sex

R

esear

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...and more popular

than baseball, football

or golf.

R

esear

(50)

Poetry has a reputation as a masochist’s medium: it is writing for a small audience. So what becomes of the quiet scarcity of poetry when it hits the loud an-archy of the Internet? The simple question is “Chaos”. For example, you have poetry which is shown on so-cial media, The Tumblr Internet Poetry publishes multimedia mash-ups, text-based work, and found screenshots by Internet-active poets. Then there is twitter, where you can read poetry as a tweet, or Facebook where you can read a poem as Facebook status and lastly there are poetry platforms on the net that show. Poetry on the Internet is a beautiful, informal, and chaotic mess.

But that doesn’t end here. To make matters worse, poetry’s relationship with online publishers is even more chaotic. Recently, I looked for some new poetry to read on Amazon, and I was seriously disappointed. It bothered me how many contemporary poets’ lections were out of print. Even worse, for those col-lections that WERE available ebook format–my pre-ferred method of reading were simply unreadable. (Take, for example, HarperCollins’s eBook edition of the ‘Collected Poems’ of Allen Ginsberg, which makes ‘Howl’ look like a formless blob of text on a screen; it’s unreadable.)”

Of all the literary genres, poetry has proved the most resistant to digital technology, not for stodgy cultur-al reasons but for tricky mechaniccultur-al ones. When a printed poetry book - whether a recently published scholarly or a two-hundred-year old Victorian-nov-el-is transferred to an electronic device it turns into something like a website.

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How poetry is shown

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Its words become wrapped in all the distractions of the networked computer. The linearity of the poetry is shattered, along with the calm attentiveness it en-courages in the reader. Most e-readers mangle the line breaks and stanzas that are so crucial to the ap-pearance and rhythm of poetry.

Washington poet and literary activist E. Ethelbert Miller says that: Form is essential to the art. Line breaks, stanza breaks and pacing — that’s the po-etry; otherwise it’s just words. And form, he says, is precisely what gets lost when poems get converted to e-readers, which is why Miller doesn’t publish on e-readers. He says they don’t honor his work.

When John Ashbery, the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, first learned that the digital editions of his poetry looked nothing like the print version, he was stunned. There were no line breaks, and the stanzas had been jammed together into a block of text that looked like prose. The careful architecture of his poems had been leveled. He complained to his publisher, Ecco, and those four e-books were immediately withdrawn. That’s a widespread feeling among his fellow poets and a debate that can pit poetry purists against fu-turists. “The technology has to get it right,” says Mill-er. Or poets won’t use it. Soon after author Steven Johnson began reading e-books on his new kindle, he realized that ”the book’s migration to the digital realm would not be a simple matter of trading ink for pixels, but would likely change the way we read, write, and sell books in profound ways.”

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Poetry on the Internet

is a beautiful, informal,

and chaotic mess.

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Desperately in a need

for a new more formal

publishing project.

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To make matters worse...

R

esear

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Poetry’s relationship

with online publishers

is even more chaotic.

R

esear

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When it comes to

poetry, technology

has to get it right

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esear

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...or poets won’t use it.

R

esear

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Give poetry the

medium it deservs

on the digital screen.

Music Indus try R esear ch Bene fits of Touc h Scr een Tec hnol og y Promo ting Indie Ar tis ts

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THINKING

IN THE

3.

POETRY?

R

eading habits hav

e shift ed esear ch Type Matt er s mor e than e ver!

DIGITAL AGE

RE

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The chaos with poetry on the web is nothing new: Mu-sic industry and how it dealt with technology is good inspiration for poetry. In the late 1990s, computer and Internet technology had reached a point that made the transfer of reasonably sized, high-quality MP3 files extremely easy and inexpensive for mil-lions of people. Once that point was reached, the mu-sic industry was set on a collision course with mod-ern technology.

In 1999, on the heels of the initial success of peer-to-peer file sharing sites like Napster, lawsuits were filed. But lawsuits would not solve the overwhelming issue: Music had become broadly available online, and access was easy—not to mention free. Ten years ago CDs, though declining, were still the predomi-nant mode of distribution for legally bought music, and regulated digital downloads seemed like an in-surmountable challenge. Many iPod users were us-ing their devices to carry around and listen to pirated MP3s, and the music industry was keen to find a dig-ital model that would make it as easy for customers to buy music legitimately as it was for them to obtain it from file sharing services such as Kazaa.

With the revolutionary principle of paying a small charge per song, the iTunes Music Store was wildly popular - 10 million songs were downloaded within the first few months of its US operation. As the de-vices have matured, so have the software capabili-ties. The iTunes Store now allows buying or renting HD movies and TV shows, and is mostly integrated with the store used for buying applications on iOS devices. AirPlay and iCloud are bringing these devic-es together, and iTundevic-es is the one-stop digital shop

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esear

ch

How Apple changed

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Earlier this week, Spotify released a graph suggest-ing that indie artists on its service weren’t just sur-viving – they were making pretty decent money, and they were about to become millionaires. As part of a posting announcing that its service now has 20 mil-lion subscribers, Spotify said that a “indie/niche art-ist” typically earns $700,000 a year from its service, a total that would rise to $1.2 million with so many new subscribers now paying into the company’s roy-alty pool.

“More people listening on Spotify means more pay-outs to the creators of the music you love,” the post read. “As we grow, the amount of royalties we pay out to artists, songwriters and rights holders continues to climb faster than ever.” For many artists, as well as for advocates who have long complained that Spotify does not pay a fair amount for streams, that number came as a surprise. “That was pretty shocking,” said Kurt Feldman, a sound designer and engineer who spent many years living as a working musician with the bands The Pains of Being Pure At Heart and the Depreciation Guild. “I don’t know what they consider indie.”

Promoting Indie Artists on Spotfiy

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10 million songs were

downloaded within

the first months of its

US operation.

R

esear

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MP3 files extremely

easy and inexpensive

for millions of people.

R

esear

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Why can’t we figure

out ways to make

poetry less obscure

R

esear

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Why can’t we

make poetry more

commercial?

R

esear

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Music Indus try R esear ch Bene fits of Touc h Scr een Tec hnol og y Promo ting Indie Ar tis ts

(75)

DESIGN

4.

APPROACH

R

eading habits hav

e shift ed esear ch Type Matt er s mor e than e ver!

(76)

As we alread know, Poetry has never been more pop-ular, I think many of us have found ourselves looking to Google and one of the many poetry sites to look for a paricular poem. However, the problem is not in the availability of the poems on the web, the problem lies in the way poetry is shown on the screen. There are, of course, tons of poetry sites floating around the Web, but the large majority of them are poorly designed with annoying pop up adds full of stagnant, boring text.

A large percentage of poetry readers are fetishistic and like holding the physical book. However, Reading habits have changed. Poetry lovers are no different. There is an entire segment of the poetry readership who own Kindles, smartphones and tablets, but they can’t read (much) poetry on them because there’s vir-tually nothing for them to read. We’ve all but aban-doned print books, and we do most of our reading on our Kindle Fire and/ or iPhone these days. Paper-backs don’t suit our busy lifestyle. It’s sad but true. Reading has shifted and will continue to shift toward mobile devices. Mobile is the future, and that future is here.

Thus, with my poetry suggestion, I aim to create an elegantly designed and dynamic platform where po-etry would be accessible through our favourite de-vices (Mobile, Desktop, TV, Google glass). The recent explosion of mobile devices and touch screens gen-erates a new type of digital poetry, a tactile one that it would be interesting to investigate. The change of device and technology implies new modalities for creation and new possibilities of interaction for the user-reader of a poem as a mobile app.

D esign ap pr oac h

Design

Approach

(77)

As we turn to online reading, the physiology of the reading process itself shifts; we don’t read the same way online as we do on paper. On screen, people tend to browse and scan, to look for keywords, and to read in a less linear, more selective fashion. On the printed page, they tend to concentrate more on following the text. Online, the tendency is compounded as a way of coping with an overload of information. There are so many possible sources, so many pages, so many alternatives to any article or book or document that we read more quickly to compensate.

Technology commentator Nicholas Carr argues that the use of the Internet is causing us to lose the abil-ity to concentrate and think deeply? In a lecture dis-cussing his book, “The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains,” He claims that the brain is plas-tic, and any regular activity changes it. So using the internet changes the brain; and it changes it in such a way that the “linear, literary mind” is under assault. Because “skimming is becoming our dominant mode of reading”, we are losing our capacity to read books; we may even, or so goes the apocalyptic peroration, lose our “humanness”.

Soon after author Steven Johnson began reading e-books on his new kindle, he realized that ”the book’s migration to the digital realm would not be a simple matter of trading ink for pixels, but would likely change the way we read, write, and sell books in profound ways.”

Reading habits have shifted

D

esign ap

pr

oac

(78)

Reading habits

have shifted

As we turn to online reading, the physiology of the reading process itself shifts; we don’t read the same way online as we do on paper. On screen, people tend to browse and scan, to look for keywords, and to read in a less linear, more selective fashion. On the printed page, they tend to concentrate more on following the text. Online, the tendency is compounded as a way of coping with an overload of information. There are so many possible sources, so many pages, so many alternatives to any article or book or document that we read more quickly to compensate.

Design

(79)

I have come to conclusion that the problem is not in the devices, the problem is in the way the infor-mation is shown in the device. So far, mimicking of every aspect of the physical book metaphor is the common design choice for consumers (e.g,, in appli-cation such as, kindles iBooks, iPads.) The primary reason why imitating physical books within digital is familiarity. This can include two elements: visual similarity and interactive similarity and interactive similarity. Visual similarity, or skeumorphism, need not in fact guarantee that the interaction is book-like, is more an aesthetic than interactional concern. In terms of interaction, as most people have been brought up reading physical books, they will conse-quently find a digital text that looks and behaves in a way that matches their experience in print easier to use. However, it is very possible that a new gener-ation of children being brought up reading only from electronic texts, on e Readers for example, will feel very differently about the book metaphor applied to digital document designs.

Soon after author Steven Johnson began reading e-books on his new kindle, he realized that ”the book’s migration to the digital realm would not be a simple matter of trading ink for pixels, but would likely change the way we read, write, and sell books in profound ways.” D esign ap pr oac h

(80)

Type Matters

more than ever!

For poets, each word has weight, and character. It represents a thought, specifies an observation, re-sponds to sensual stimuli. Type on the other hand, can influence our feelings, our senses, and even our taste.

Typography is becoming more and more omnipres-ent, and its function has changed from that of pure-ly conveying information to that of an interpersonal protagonist: in its surface area, in space, in time and in self-organizing network structures

Design

(81)
(82)

Benefits of Touch

Screen Technology

Create thoughtful mobile designs with easy touch targets, awareness of how users hold devices and optimal interaction areas. Digital poets and artists explore, among other things, resources and charac-teristics of haptic device, such as vibrating screen, shaking screen, browser fingerprints, etc., in order to create a new kind of poetic language and an unseen form of expressiveness, based on a multisensory ex-perience (touch, sight, hearing).

Tactile poetry for mobile devices and touch screens constitutes a new stage of literature, an epistemo-logical moment in literary history, questioning poet-ry essence and inviting to think about what makes a poem a poem. The reader’s gesture, the poetic intent

Design

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...AND

R ead e verywher e R esear ch W ear abl e t ec hnol og y P oe try R esear ch

FINALLY!

(85)

5.

WORLD’S LARGES

T

Poe try on-the-go D eskt op pl atf or m R esear ch

BRINGING THE

POETRY PLATFORM

(86)

Desktop

platform

In this platform you can organize and enjoy the po-ems you already have — and shop for the ones you want to get. It’s home to Poetry, which gives you un-limited access to millions of books.

For poets, each word has weight, and character, It represents a thought, specifies an observation, re-sponds to sensual stimuli. Type on the other hand, can influence our feelings, our senses, and even our taste.

Desktop

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Poetry on-the-go

Read everywhere

The poems are available on all your devices, which means you can buy that catchy song you just heard or rent that movie you’ve been meaning to see, anytime you want. All the poems you download are instantly available on all your devices, no matter how you want to play them.

Read

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(90)

The change of device and technology implies new modalities for creation and new possibilities of inter-action for the user-reader of a poem as a mobile app. Tactile poetry for mobile devices and touch screens constitutes a new stage of literature, an epistemo-logical moment in literary history, questioning poet-ry essence and inviting to think about what makes a poem a poem. Pr oduc t

Poetry

on-the-go

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(92)

For the first time poetry is brought to mobile devic-es like Apple Watch. The piecdevic-es are optimized for the screen of the Apple Watch and show short and dy-namic texts for the wrist. The poems reflect time and vanity and change constantly according to the con-tinuosly passing time.

Pr

oduc

t

Wearable

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(94)

Poetry in the

living room

Enjoy the poems on your TV with

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(99)

At the end of this research, I can say that I was amazed how poetry was neglected on the new media. Most of the arguments of people I talked about why poetry is neglected on the internet were mainly based on the following statement: Poetry is obscure or Poetry has never been commercial.But these statements are of-ten made without any further explanation. Why can’t we make poetry more commercial? Why can’t we find ways for poets to monetize, or, dare I say it, make a living from their work? Why can’t we figure out ways to make poetry less obscure and more accessible to a wider audience without compromising its integrity? I started this project because I love poetry and I love technology. Therefore, I want to read awesome col-lections from contemporary poets, but I want to read their works on my terms: on my e-reader, phone or tablet, without the inconvenience of a paperback. The change of device and technology implies new modalities for creation and new possibilities of inter-action for the user-reader of a poem as a mobile app. In this decade, virtual reality may be the next largest stepping stone in technological innovation. Virtual reality refers to an immersive, computer-generated reality that provides the user an artificial sensory experience. In my opinion, Poetry has the power to make us feel more emotions without having the need to invest in any other new technological invention. Thus, the aim of the project is to promote discourse between poets, writers and experienced media art-ists. My hope is that poetry one day will have its de-served place in the digital environment.

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First and foremost, I thank my parents for their con-tinuing support throughout my pursuit towards pro-fessional advancement. My thankfulness and grati-tude for them never ceases.

Thanks also to my advisors for their guidance, en-couragement and support during the development of this work. I feel extremely privileged and grateful for their tutelage. I thank Prof. Hermann Klöckner for his accurate feedback that helped me to find the focus of my project. Thanks to Prof. Bernd Hennig for giv-ing me the confidence needed to finish this research with a proposal that allows me make a link between my passion for Art and Design.

I’d also like to acknowledge Anhalt University of Ap-plied Sciences for granting me the opportunity to start a fresh new challenge in Germany, which pro-vided me with the environment where ideas such as this could take root. In particular, I want to thank the head of the International Masterprogram in Design (MAID) Prof. Uwe Gellert and also the Associate Of-fice Manager Sandra Giegler.

And finally, this book is dedicated to all of my peers with whom I discussed the first draft of my disser-tation. I thank them for their critical questions and productive suggestions and for the long ongoing dis-cussions about the project.

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kno

wl

edgemen

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Carr, N. G. (2010). The shallows: What the Internet is doing to our brains. New York: W.W. Norton.

Wolf, M. (2008). Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain. Icon Books Ltd.

Goldsmith, K. (2011). Uncreative Writing: Manag-ing Language in the Digital Age. Columbia University Press.

Hartman, CH. O. (1996). Virtual Muse: Experiments in Computer Poetry. Wesleyan University Press.

Simanowski, R. (2011). Digital Art and Meaning: Read-ing Kinetic Poetry, Text Machines, MappRead-ing Art, and In-teractive Installations. Univ Of Minnesota Press. Goldsmith, K. (2015). The New Concrete: Visual Poetry in the 21st Century. Hayward Publishing.

Hillner, M. (2015). Basics Typography 01: Virtual Typog-raphy. Fairchild Books.

Sarah, H. (2016). Why Fonts Matter. Virgin Books. McLuhan, M. (2001). The Medium is the Massage 9th Edition. Gingko Press.

McLuhan, M. (1994). Understanding Media: The Exten-sions of Man. The MIT Press; Reprint edition .

Queneau, R. (1981). Exercises in Style 2nd ed. Edition. New Directions.

Queneau, R. (2012). Generative Design: Visualize,

Pro-Book

s

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Lakoff, R. (2016). Donald Trump, true American poet?. http://www.qz.com/ New York City.

Chayka, K. (2008). What Is Internet Poetry? A Definition in Verse. http://www.blouinartinfo.com/ New York City. Parker, L. (2013). Poetry’s tense relationship with e-readers. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ Wash-ington.

Vanderbilt, T. (2016). How Your Brain Decides Without You. http://www.nautil.us/ New York City.

Konnikova, M. (2014). Being a better online reader. http://www.newyorker.com/ New York City.

Poole, S. (2014). The internet isn’t harming our love of ‘deep reading’, it’s cultivating it. http://www.theguard-ian.com/ London UK.

Viner, K. (2016). How technology disrupted the truth. http://www.theguardian.com/ London UK.

Share, D. (2009). Poetry makes nothing happen… or does it?. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/ Chicago, IL.

Alter, A. (2014). Line by Line, E-Books Turn Poet-Friend-ly. http://www.newyorker.com/ New York City.

Miller, J. (2015). How the Poetry of Langston Hughes Inspired Martin Luther King’s First Dream. http://www. floridabookshelf.wordpress.com/ New York City.

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ec

tr

onic Sour

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I hereby declare that this is my own work and effort, and have not used sources or means without decla-ration in the text. Any thoughts from others or liter-al quatations are clearly marked. This work was not used in the same or similar version to achieve an ac-ademic or is being published elsewhere.

Matrikelnummer: MAID - Master of Arts in Integrated Design Hochschule Anhalt

Dessau, Germany Master Thesis Project Winter Semester 2017 Place, Date Kushtrim Hamzaj D ecl ar ation

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