Poètica

Poètica is a visual system for graphically interpreting lyrical poetry. The project aims to fuse art and technology to represent any poem in both a plastic and automated way.

A poem’s highest theme or premise is taken into account to create a visual representation. The author expresses a feeling or a determined mood in each poem, and therefore the visual sys-tem in based upon feelings.

We define five primary feelings, and each of them is assigned a chromatic value: fear (black), sadness (blue), anger (red), love (pink) and happiness (yellow). From this starting point, the colour combinations of the primary feelings lead to ten secondary feelings: melancholy, heart-break, violence, anguish, joy, frustrated love, rage, frustration, aggression and betrayal.

The graphic element is created by automatically selecting words associated with a particular feeling within the poem. They are assigned coloured dots according to where they are located. From here, two systems are created: one in the style of an infographic, in which the colours are simply joined by lines, and one that is more visual, fusing the colours to create a common gradient.

These systems are applied to three books of poetry by three different authors so as to visually understand the differences between them. The selected works are Soledades (Solitude) by Antonio Machado, Romancero Gitano (Gypsy Ballads) by Federico Garcia Lorca and Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair) by Pablo Neruda.