“hearing litoral voices / bearing literal traces”: Subliteral Narratives

This collaborative project brings together the narrative practice of Joanna Howard and John Cayley’s digital language art research on the reading of subliteral differences. Particularly in certain fonts, differences of less-than-a-letter distinguish certain pairs of English words – hearing/bearing, litoral/literal. Howard composes brief narratives laced with words from these pairs such that, when the subliteral differences are realized, the narratives are developed, subverted, folded in on themselves: bearing the literal traces of narrative experiences within which tiny formal differences, actualized by digital affordances, generate aesthetic and critical reading.

There are six distinct micro-narratives in this piece, tagged as: "lascaux", "ars", "murder", "mars", "order", and "noir". Arrow keys or mobile device gestures can be used to move through the work and from one narrative to another. For each, an intertitle is shown and then the narrative itself which oscillates slowly, back and forth, between its two narrative 'phases' or (subliterally differing) 'states.' If a keyboard is linked, and while a narrative is being shown, it is possible to use the 1 thru 6 keys to access one of the others according to the order of 'tags.'