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  1. The Reader as Author as Figure as Text

    The paper takes a short look at the much discussed dismissal of the author in hypertext collaborative writing and discusses the role of authorship in three German collaborative writing projects. The results are: 1. Collaboration sometimes works like collaboration with the 'enemy.' The pleasure of some collaborative writing projects therefore comes not so much from the story itself as from what the text reveals about its authors. 2. The attraction of some collaborative writing project lies in the setting more than in the contributed texts. What fails as Netliterature may get a second chance as Netart. 3. If the program of a collaborative writing project automatically and randomly creates the links and develops the structure of the whole, it takes over the collaboration between authors and their texts. The conclusion is: As the text itself becomes more and more part of a technical setting, and as the program moves more and more into the center, the project of collaborative writing increasingly dismisses the reader. To a user who accidentally stops by and starts to read, the text itself doesn't say all that much.

    Patricia Tomaszek - 14.09.2010 - 12:19

  2. Teaching Digital Literature: Didactic and Institutional Aspects

    Digital media is increasingly finding its way into the discussions of the humanities classroom. But while we have a number of grand theoretical texts about digital literature we as yet have little in the way of resources for discussing the down-to-earth practices of research, teaching, and curriculum necessary for this work to mature. The book Reading Moving Letters, edited by Roberto Simanowski, Jörgen Schäfer and Peter Gendolla, addresses this need and provides examinations by nine scholars and teachers from different national academic backgrounds. While the first section of the book provides definitions of digital literature as a discipline of scholarly treatment in the humanities, the second section asks how and why we should teach digital literature and conduct close readings in academia and discusses institutional considerations necessary to take into account when implementing digital literature into curricula. The following text is the introduction to section two.

    Patricia Tomaszek - 14.09.2010 - 12:33

  3. Digital Poetics or On the Evolution of Experimental Media Poetry

    The academic and literature critical discussion on new media poetry or about digital texts swings to and fro, in method and conception between two poles: one is the 'work immanent' approach of structure description and classification, and the other the deduction of abstract media esthetics. At a tangent to this the communication on media, culture and media art has been more or less committed to the priority of technological reasoning since the nineties at the latest. The concern with technology remains a dilemma: Technology has to be taken into account when dealing with concrete structure analyses of works of digital poetry, but some traps lie in wait. Is the knowledge accounted for here really sufficient? I would say that few of those taking part in the discussion who do not actually work in the specific area artistically are capable of programming digital texts (the same may be said of some artists). Another problem is something I have casually termed a new techno-ontology: a ‘cold fascination’ for technological being (also of texts), which flares up briefly with each innovation pressing for the market in the respective field.

    Patricia Tomaszek - 14.09.2010 - 14:16

  4. From Concrete to Digital: The Reconceptualization of Poetic Space

    It has almost become self-evident in the critical discourse on digital poetry to assess digital poetry as a continuation of an experimental tradition with its origins in the historical and the neo-avant-garde. Critics such as Friedrich W. Block and Roberto Simanowski in particular read contemporary digital poetry explicitly as extension and continuation of concerns of the avant-garde and concrete poets.

    Block points out that almost all vital concerns of digital poetry can be traced back to its historical predecessors. He names the reflection upon the concrete language material, the transgression of genre boundaries, multilinearity and the exploration of spatial structures, movement and interactivity as key strategies which are vital concepts in historical avant-garde, concrete and digital poetry. Digital poetry is frequently, and I believe correctly, assigned to the wider trajectory of experimental/avant-garde poetry in many other studies as well. It is often considered as a third stage, contemporary continuation and further development of earlier experiments.

    Patricia Tomaszek - 14.09.2010 - 14:43

  5. The Dreamlife of Letters

    A Flash animation, based on a text by Rachel Blau DuPlessis, that attempts to explore the ground between classic concrete poetry, avant-garde feminist practice, and "ambient" poetics (that's really just plain fun to watch).

    (Source: Author's Description from ELC Vol. 1)

    Patricia Tomaszek - 16.09.2010 - 16:54

  6. Lexia to Perplexia

    Author description: Lexia to Perplexia is a deconstructive/grammatological examination of the "delivery machine." The text of the work falls into the gaps between theory and fiction. The work makes wide use of DHTML and JavaScript. At times its interactive features override the source text, leading to a fragmentary reading experience. In essence, the text does what it says: in that, certain theoretical attributes are not displayed as text but are incorporated into the functionality of the work. Additionally, Lexia to Perplexia explores new terms for the processes and phenomena of attachment. Terms such as "metastrophe" and "intertimacy" work as sparks within the piece and are meant to inspire further thought and exploration. There is also a play between the rigorous and the frivolous in this "exe.termination of terms." The Lexia to Perplexia interface is designed as a diagrammatic metaphor, emphasizing the local (user) and remote (server) poles of network attachment while exploring the "intertimate" hidden spaces of the process.

    (Source: Author's description from Electronic LIterature Collection, Volume 1)

    Patricia Tomaszek - 16.09.2010 - 17:11

  7. The Prime Directive/Primärdirektivet

    Online work, in two parts + intro. Main themes: science fiction, nature. First published in 2006 by danish website Afsnit P. In the intro two books are slowly rotating, when clicking on them they each lead to one of the main parts of the piece: The Path of the Fragment and The Prime Directive. The images and texts in these are of a dark sci-fi nature, the soundtrack ambient and droney.

    Patricia Tomaszek - 16.09.2010 - 17:35

  8. A Four-Sided Model for Reading Hypertext Fiction

    I will not pursue the issue of a hypertextual competence (or a multimodal hypertextual competence) here. Rather I would like to take a closer look at literary hypertext and electronic literature itself, and the fact that electronic literature, just like print literature, prefigures different modes of reading. I will insist on the necessity of examining what mode of reading and what kind of responses are prefigured in hypertexts when we make conclusions about hypertext reading. I want to approach the topic by putting weight on how Megan Heyward’s Of day, of night (2002) prefigures the reader's response. The aim of this article is to explore some of the preconditions for reading Of day, of night, and to identify three modes of reading in this hypertext fiction. In addition to these three modes I will argue for a fourth mode of reading hypertext fiction. This mode can be identified in several literary hypertexts, but is less relevant for describing the preconditions for reading Heyward's text. Consequently I will make use of other work to exemplify this mode. Four modes of reading are identified and described. These are semantization, exploration, self-reflection and absorption.

    Patricia Tomaszek - 17.09.2010 - 11:09

  9. The Jew's Daughter

    The Jew's Daughter is an interactive, non-linear, multivalent narrative, a storyspace that is unstable but nonetheless remains organically intact, progressively weaving itself together by way of subtle transformations on a single virtual page.

    (Source: Authors' description from ELC 1.)

    Patricia Tomaszek - 17.09.2010 - 21:56

  10. To Touch

    It may seem paradoxical to create an online work on touching. One cannot touch directly: in this case touching requires a mediating tool such as a mouse, a microphone or a webcam. This touching experience reveals a lot about the way we touch multimedia content on screen, and maybe also about the way we touch people and objects in everyday life. The internet user has access to five scenes (move, caress, hit, spread, blow), plus a sixth one (brush) dissimulated in the interface. She can thus experience various forms and modalities of touching: the erotic gesture of the caress with the mouse; the brutality of the click, like an aggressive stroke; touching as unveiling, staging the ambiguous relation between touching and being touched; touching as a trace that one can leave, as with a finger dipped in paint; and, touching from a distance with the voice, the eyes, or another part of the body. This supposedly immaterial work thus stages an aesthetics of materiality.

    (Source: Author's description from Electronic Literature Collection, Volume Two)

    Patricia Tomaszek - 17.09.2010 - 22:09

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