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Proposal for a Universal Electronic Publishing System and Archive
Excerpt from chapter 2 of Literary Machines. Susalito, CA: Mindful Press, 1981.
Eric Dean Rasmussen - 14.05.2012 - 15:34
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Beyond Myth and Metaphor: Narrative in Digital Media
The concept of narrative has been widely invoked by theorists of digital textuality, but the promotion of what is described as the storytelling power of the computer has often relied on shallow metaphors, loose conceptions of narrative, and literary models that ignore the distinctive properties of the digital medium. Two myths have dominated this theorization. The myth of the Aleph (as I call it) presents the digital text as a finite text that contains an infinite number of stories. The myth of the Holodeck envisions digital narrative as a virtual environment in which the user becomes a character in a plot similar to those of Victorian novels or Shakespearean tragedies. Both of these myths rely on questionable assumptions: that any permutation of a collection of lexias results in a coherent story; that it is aesthetically desirable to be the hero of a story; and that digital narrativity should cover the same range of emotional experiences as literary narrative. Here I argue that digital narrative should emancipate itself from literary models. But I also view narrative as a universal structure that transcends media.
Eric Dean Rasmussen - 15.05.2012 - 14:07
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What Hypertext Is
Over the past couple decades, as the term "hypertext" has gained a certain popular currency, a question has been raised repeatedly: "What is hypertext?" Our most respected scholars offer a range of different, at times incompatible, answers. This paper argues that our best response to this situation is to adopt the approach taken with other terms that are central to intellectual communities (such as "natural selection," "communism," and "psychoanalysis"), a historical approach. In the case of "hypertext" the term began with Theodor Holm ("Ted") Nelson, and in this paper two of his early publications of "hypertext" are used to determine its initial meaning: the 1965 "A File Structure for the Complex, the Changing, and the Indeterminate" and the 1970 "No More Teachers' Dirty Looks." It is concluded that hypertext began as a term for forms of hypermedia (human-authored media that "branch or perform on request") that operate textually. This runs counter to definitions of hypertext in the literary community that focus solely on the link. It also runs counter to definitions in the research community that privilege tools for knowledge work over media.
Scott Rettberg - 25.05.2012 - 14:15
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The Paratexts of Inanimate Alice: Thresholds, Genre Expectations and Status
In her book Writing Machines, N. Katherine Hayles described the concept of thetechnotext. Hayles used this concept to provide an analysis of a range of texts, including online work, based on their materiality. The analysis described in this article complements this method by developing an approach that explores the conditions of production of contemporary digital literature. It achieves this aim by providing a close reading of the online paratextual elements associated with the first four episodes ofInanimate Alice by Kate Pullinger and Chris Joseph. In doing so, it modifies the print-based analytical framework provide by Gérard Genette and others to develop a detailed account of the off-site, on-site and in-file paratexts of this online work. It sets out a range of thresholds that mould the reception of this text. It also notes how they position it within wider discourses about genre, media, literature and literacy. This article concludes by exploring the limits of this paratextual reading. It discusses whether it provides an adequate account of the material conditions of these texts.
Jill Walker Rettberg - 02.06.2012 - 14:25
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Porting E-Poetry: The Case of First Screening
This presentation seeks to examine issues around the practice of porting electronic literature,
particularly E-poetry by examining the case of First Screening by bpNichol, a Canadian poet who
programmed a suite of e-poems in Apple BASIC in 1984. This work was preserved, documented, ported, curated, and published in Vispo.com in 2007 by a collaborative group of poets and programmers: Jim Andrews, Geof Huth, Lionel Kearns, Marko Niemi, and Dan Waber. This publication consists of a curated collection of four different versions of First Screening which I will analyze in my presentation:1. The original DSK file of the 1984 edition, which can be opened with an Apple IIe emulator, along with the Apple BASIC source code as a text file, and scanned images of the printed matter
published with the 51/4 inch floppy disks it was distributed in.2. A video captured documentation of the emulated version in Quicktime format.
3. The 1993 HyperCard version, ported by J. B. Hohm, along with the printed matter of that
published edition.4. A JavaScript version of First Screening ported by Marko Niemi and Jim Andrews.
Eric Dean Rasmussen - 12.06.2012 - 12:27
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Den digitale litterære kultur og bibliotekerne : Stram forretningsmodel eller litterær udfordring?
E-bogen er blevet forsøgt lanceret flere gange i løbet af de sidste årtier og bogens død er ofte forudsagt. Uanset om bogen er døende, er litteraturens medier i opbrud, og derfor er der behov for en litteraturforståelse, som kan diskutere litteraturen som kunstform på tværs af medier og platforme. Her er der mulighed for at hente inspiration fra den digitale litteratur.
Denne artikel tager udgangspunkt i analyser af to elektroniske bogformater og diskuterer, hvordan de lægger op til forskellige digitale litterære kulturer, hvilket har betydning for bl.a. bibliotekernes fremtid. Amazons Kindle lægger op til en form for ”kontrolleret forbrug”, mens Påvirket som kun et menneske kan være bruger det digitale til at understøtte læseoplevelsens
intensitet. Bibliotekerne har som litteraturhuse interesse i en åben digital litteratur, der ikke
kun er designet ud fra e-bogens forretningsmodel.Søren Pold - 12.06.2012 - 13:30
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Non-Translation as Poetic Experience
In my paper I present some points of view concerning strategies for experiencing electronic literature and art made in different languages, and suggest ways for dealing with language diversity in electronic literature. Although educated as a sociologist, I am not a researcher but an artist, and use some of my own works of concrete and digital poetry as a basis for my presentation. This includes two paper-based works of concrete poetry (audition for fenomener uten betegnelse and bokstavteppekatalogen), the screening of my first work of video–poetry LYMS (2009) and my latest film “when” (2011). Because of the nature of my works – and a lot of different works in the world of e-lit – I use the concepts literature and art in a broad sense.
Eric Dean Rasmussen - 12.06.2012 - 16:26
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Post-Processing Translations of E-Lit Works and Scholarship
The workshop is meant to make use of the present scholars from diverse language backgrounds as a resource to document their field in their original language. It focuses in particular on documenting works and papers written in languages other than English and seeks to draft translations for descriptions. An endeavour all those who do not have an understanding of a respective language, are dependent upon in order to give a particular language community the visibility they are in need of to allow appropriate scholarship in a particular nation.
A work without translation is a blind spot in research for those unfamiliar with its language of origin. The English translation provides, at least the chance to be recognized in research and offers a starting point for a dialogue with its author.
Cultural and Linguistic Diversity - Features in the Knowledge Base
As an international project, the linguistic diversity in the field of electronic literature is respected, welcomed, and taken into account within the implementation of various features in the knowledge base:
Eric Dean Rasmussen - 12.06.2012 - 16:32
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Text and Digital Media: The Visualization of Code, Codex and Context
The changes provoked by contemporary digital media have altered the traditional concepts of political and social hierarchies as well as blurred the boundaries between disciplines. The concepts of interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity, as well as those of transnationalism and multiculturalism, offer insight into the new sets of relationships that have developed between diverse disciplines within a global and local context. These relationships are framed within a digital media structure based on processes of mediation, remediation and transmediation that reflect the digital transformations that have blurred the boundaries between classic and new media (Lev Manovich; Henry Jenkins). In this context literary works are no longer part of a standalone discipline but can be visually represented in multiple visual formats, both digital and analogue. The text itself with its context, real and/or virtual, becomes a visual structure that can be manipulated and engaged with beyond its original purpose.
Jill Walker Rettberg - 18.06.2012 - 10:46
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Philosophical Labyrinths in Cybertexts
Not only since Postmodernism have spatial dichotomies such as absence and presence, inside and outside played a major role in defining the human condition and the physical positioning of the subject within the world. With the emergence of phenomena like HTML and the World Wide Web authors and artists have found new tools to explore and express new ideas of the human condition in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Hypertexts or, with Espen J. Aarseth, “cybertexts”, offer new ‘roads’ which need not be taken, hiding places or Dantesque places of beauty. The one is only a step away from the other; in which space the user finds himself depends on the ‘literary machine’ with its narrative strategies. Often compared to labyrinths, these virtual spaces recall an almost archetypal quality of the conditio humana: The choice of exploring life, and of finding enlightenment and defeating the mythical minotaur; yet with one significant difference, as it appears one cannot escape from the labyrinth. Heidegger’s “Dasein” as much as Derrida’s “différance” are key to understanding what this means. At the example of three texts, Michael Joyce’s afternoon, a story, Mark Z.
Jill Walker Rettberg - 18.06.2012 - 10:53