Search

The search found 6 results in 0.187 seconds.

Search results

1. Electronic Literature and the Mashup of Analog and Digital Code

   This essay examines the complexity of contemporary electronic literary practice. It evaluates how electronic literature borrows from, and also influences, the reception of the textual message in other forms of communication that efficiently combine image, sound and text as binary data, as information that is compiled in any format of choice with the use of the computer. The text aims to assess what it means to write in literary fashion in a time when crossing over from one creative field to another is ubiquitous and transparent in cultural production. To accomplish this, I relate electronic literature to the concept of intertextuality as defined by Fredric Jameson in postmodernism, and assess the complexity of writing not only with words, but also with other forms of communication, particularly video. I also discuss Roland Barthes’s principles of digital and analogical code to recontextualize intertextuality in electronic writing as a practice part of new media. Moreover, I discuss a few examples of electronic literature in relation to mass media logo production, and relate them to the concept of remix.

   Patricia Tomaszek - 06.05.2011 - 15:17

2. Collaborations in E-lit

   This essay, a discussion between two esteemed e-poets for whom collaboration is an integral part of their creative practice, appeared in the "The Collaborative Turn" special issue of American Book Review, guest-edited by Davis Schneiderman. In their discussion, Montfort and Strickland survey several common types of e-lit collaboration and provide links to representative examples. Strickland explicitly links the material aesthetics of code poetics to literary theorist Timothy Morton's call for critical thinking that engages the universe's enmeshed interconnectedness, which he dubs "the ecological thought."

   Eric Dean Rasmussen - 29.12.2011 - 11:45

3. Who Grabbed My Gorge

   Who Grabbed My Gorge

   Meri Alexandra Raita - 19.02.2012 - 19:52

4. Taroko Gorge Remixed: Repetition and Difference in Machine Texts

   In 2009 Nick Montfort wrote a short program--first in Python and later in Javascript--that generated an infinite nature poem inspired by the stunning Taroko Gorge in Taiwan. While Montfort never explicitly released the code of “Taroko Gorge” under a free software license, it was readily available to anyone who viewed the HTML source of the poem’s web page. Lean and elegantly coded, with self-evident algorithms and a clearly demarcated word list, “Taroko Gorge” lends itself to reappropriation. Simply altering the word list (the paradigmatic axis) creates an entirely different randomly generated poem, while the underlying sentence structure (the syntagmatic axis) remains the same. Very quickly Scott Rettberg remixed the original poem, replacing its naturalistic vocabulary (“crags,” “basins,” “rocks,” “mist,” and so on) with words drawn from what Rettberg imagined to be a counterpoint to Montfort’s meditative nature scene--a garage in Toyko, cluttered with consumer objects. J.R.

   Eric Dean Rasmussen - 18.06.2012 - 13:36

5. Digital Arena: Machine Libertine

   "Our aim is to liberate machines." A performance of Machine Libertine by Natalia Fedorova and Taras Mashtalir.

   Scott Rettberg - 12.09.2013 - 17:11

6. Heath, prelude to tracing the actor as network

   Traversing a variety of digital and print formats, this critical prelude introduces the possibilities of tracing the networked associations enacted in Heath by Tan Lin. The writing explores Actor-Network-Theory across platforms, considering Heath both as an actor-network in ANT terms and a coterminous mode of sociological accounting. Like ANT, Heath attempts a process of demystification through detailed description, tactical citation, assemblage, and the critical deployment of mediators and their relations, where every actor is understood as network. More directly, this paper traces the ways Heath translates diverse mediators from the digital event (the non-events) of Heath Ledger's death into an actor-network exploiting a material book format. Thus the task of the critic is to crunch the details of these manifold relations as they are situated in Heath — to describe the network enacted through Lin's ambient citations and novelistic formulations.

   (Source: Author's abstract)

   Scott Rettberg - 25.08.2014 - 10:14