In the last decades of the 20th century, as immediate descendants of computation and with literary roots in concrete poetry, the first poems written in programming languages appeared. With the emergence of literary and artistic objects whose primary medium is these languages, stylistic criteria different to those traditionally valued in programming (efficiency, elegance, and simplicity) arose. Languages originally conceived to be free of ambiguities began to be employed for writing texts that activate multiple layers of literary resources. What happens to these languages when they are used for creative purposes, and their functional purpose is redirected toward aesthetic fulfillment?

Poetry was, in its origins, an oral genre. There are several academic discourses around poetry which consider that, in its transition to writing, poetry sacrifices part of its essence. Most poems written in programming languages are not conceived to be recited. Although there are many that engage with their potential to be performed, they fall far from the lyrical genre as we know it. On the other hand, when executed, the poem’s code produces an image or artistic object parallel to the text that can be understood as its translation into another medium and which reveals an integral part of its meaning. Both components inform each other and are inseparable in reading. This is a poetry that gains distance from the auditory and merges with the visual, which is only part of the technical and functional shift that this literary genre is undergoing. Many of these circumstances have been present since the avant-garde, but they acquire new dimensions in the digital realm.  

The present research aims to address these issues from a semiotic perspective in order to understand the changing relationship between image and linguistic sign, as well as to contextualize code poetry within its ideological framework and, ultimately, within the landscape of digital literature as an anomalous case within it.