Search

The search found 50 results in 0.011 seconds.

Search results

1. Semantisation, Exploration, Self-reflection and Absorption: Our Modes of Reading Hypertext Fiction

   "How do we read hypertext fiction? The question has been widely explored (Moulthrop 1991; Kaplan and Moulthrop 1991; Snyder 1997; Miall and Dobson 2001; Ryan 2001; Gardner 2003; Gunder 2004; Landow 2006; Mangen 2006; Page 2006) and there seems to be a consensus regarding the reader’s experience of hypertext fiction. Many critics actually claim that reading hypertext fiction generates frustration and insecurity. These and other studies describe how their readers react on and respond to hypertext fiction, but, as I see it, they partly fail in that they put to much weight on the reader’s responds and hardly no weight on the fact that hypertext fiction just like print fiction encourage or prefigure different responses and different modes of reading. The consequence is that these studies suffers from limitations witch lessens their valuable contribution to our knowledge about reading hypertext fiction. One reason for this might be that hypertext theory lack established concepts for describing response structures that encourage different modes of reading.

   Eric Dean Rasmussen - 27.01.2011 - 15:13

2. The Aesthetics of Materiality in Electronic Literature

   According to the French author and theoretician Jean-Pierre Balpe, “all digital art works are first conceived outside the framework of a pragmatic relation to materiality. Any manifestation of digital art is but a simulated moment of an absent matter.”

   However, I wish to show that there is at least as much materiality in the digital media as in other media. Of course, as a formal description, digital and material can be distinguished. Digital media correspond to formalization, insofar as formalization is understood as the modelling of a given reality through the use of a formal code. But because digital media refers to the effectiveness of digital calculation, it can be considered as “material”, at least on two levels:

   Eric Dean Rasmussen - 27.01.2011 - 15:39

3. Teaching Digital Literature within a “Research and Teaching Partnership” in a Transatlantic Blended Learning Environment

   This paper outlines the practices of teaching digital literature at the University of Siegen in Germany where Peter Gendolla and Joergen Schaefer taught courses on literature in computer-based media for students of both Literary and Media Studies. This paper thus provides an historical synopsis of the didactical transformations the teaching practices have undergone as well as an overview of the University’s profile and its focus on research and teaching literary studies. In 2007, the classroom moved online and held a class transatlantically in cooperation with Roberto Simanowski (Brown University/Providence, RI, USA). The online course approached an experimental Blended Learning concept. The paper introduces the methodological concept of the class “Digital Aesthetics” and discusses using Online Communication Systems in the context of the course of studies: Net Literature.

   Eric Dean Rasmussen - 27.01.2011 - 16:52

4. Endless Text: New Media Technologies in The Raw Shark Texts

   Since the digital revolution of the 1990’s, the ‘end’ of literature has been often proclaimed from both a utopian and apocalyptic perspective. While the former has imagined a release of the literary from the constraints of paper and print, in the animation of letters and words, the latter has lamented the end of reading and writing as ‘we’ know it. However, as clear as the opposition between the hopeful visions of theorists such as George Landow and the nostalgic lament of critics like Steven Birkerts may be, their respective stances are easily disclosed as two sides of the same coin: both the positive and negative presentations of the end of literature build on the subtext that literature ‘is’ something; an inside (a space, or a practice) that is either creatively challenged or threatened from the outside – as if it were a backward country or a country under threat, to be opened up and developed or protected respectively. This paper challenges such a distinction between inside and outside by reading ‘literature’ as an interface of other media technologies.

   Eric Dean Rasmussen - 02.02.2011 - 15:42

5. Weapons Of The Deconstructive Masses: Whatever the Electronic in Electronic Literature may or may not mean

   This piece is an attempt to hasten the death of the 'electronic' in 'electronic literature' — to re-cognize it as a dead metaphor — as the prelude to an agonistic meditation on my generation's anticipation of the death of literature itself, with 'the literary,' potentially, waiting in the wings (and published elsewhere, elsewhen, elsehow).

   (Source: Author's abstract)

   Respondents at 2008 ELO Conference

   Joe Tabbi
   University of Illinois Chicago, USA 

   Scott Rettberg
   University of Bergen, Norway 

   Stuart Moulthrop
   University of Baltimore, USA

   Jill Walker Rettberg - 09.10.2012 - 21:00

6. The E-ssense of Literature

   Many works of electronic literature use text generation algorithms or interactive interfaces to present the reader with a different text upon each reading. Such variable texts can be difficult to analyze and discuss because it can be prohibitively difficult to take into account all possible permutations. The standard critical methodology for approaching these texts is to discuss excerpts from different readings, perhaps comparing passages that involve alternative renderings of the same textual content. While this approach can convey a general sense of the work and its possibilities for variation, it usually doesn't allow a thorough treatment of a complex work's structural framework. This essay presents a method for analyzing a work's source code to define the most important constant and variable properties of its constituent elements. It then applies the method to a generated electronic poem, "Snaps," by Dirk Hine. The source structure thus defined provides a springboard for critical interpretation of the work.

   Jill Walker Rettberg - 09.10.2012 - 21:12

7. The Cuckoo Bird of Fiction: Pastiche, Hoax and the Evolution of Form

   Drawing examples from the free-swinging, rootin'-tootin' 18th century and from the present day, this talk will explore imitation as the sincerest form of innovation. By finding vigorous vernacular forms and investing them with the scope and goals of classical literature, or by projecting wildly onto idealized "foreign" forms, writer/designers have --- at moments of social transition --- pushed, pulled and parodied their cultures toward needed change . . . often laughing all the way. The gesture is that of the cuckoo --- laying one's eggs in another's nest. While offering a historical and theoretical account of this strategy, the presentation will also practice what it preaches --- by performing, live, the latest chapter in an ongoing pastiche fiction. Hang on to your hats!

   Scott Rettberg - 07.01.2013 - 15:35

8. See Spot Link. Link, Spot, Link: How to read and appreciate electronic literature (Workshop)

   Abstract
   What is the difference between reading on screen and reading electronic literature? Between an e-book and an e-lit piece? Electronic literature, or eliterature, uses computer technology as an integral part of the work to convey meaning. Find out about the literary art of links, images, sounds, and motions. Make connections between images and text, between sounds and words, between motions and implications. Uncover an exciting new world where writers expand beyond the page and embrace the screen with an array of new literary techniques.

   Agenda
   This workshop will cover 4 basic elements of electronic literature: links, imagery, motion, and sound. For each element, we will read a portion of works to see these elements in action, take part in an exercise to explore writing using these elements, and discuss techniques to recognize and understand these elements.

   Scott Rettberg - 07.01.2013 - 15:41

9. I like IRC & SMS

   Rita Raley's presentation focuses on the use of IRC and SMS in multimedia installations, net-based projects, and street performances. Projects discussed will likely include "Listening Post" (Mark Hansen and Ben Rubin), "RE:Positioning Fear" (Rafael Lozano-Hemmer), "Urban Scrawl" (Sushma Madan and Neil Noakes), "TXTual Healing" (Paul Notzold), and "Simple Text" (Family Filter). While the chat messages used in "Listening Post" are datamined rather than solicited, the other projects are instances of user-driven media. One clear tension to explore, then, will be that between surveillance and participatory culture. Other themes and issues will include public vs. private space, locative media, and electronic English.

   Scott Rettberg - 07.01.2013 - 16:12

10. Hors-Categorie: An Embodied, Affective Approach to Interactive Fiction

    The interactive fiction work "Hors-Categorie" stages a virtual encounter between bodies in a hotel room along the Tour de France bicycle race. 

    In the story, the player is confronted with a number of decisions regarding his or her body, which, in the game state exists virtually. Various bodily choices—blood doping, shaving one's legs, peeing in a cup—lead to the generation of affects that alter the game state. My effort in writing this work—concerning doping, cyclists, bodies, and ethics—is to think through the potentialities for engaging, designing, and theorizing new media with an emphasis on the embodied nature of affect. 

    Scott Rettberg - 07.01.2013 - 16:21

Pages