Search

The search found 31 results in 0.012 seconds.

Search results

1. Algorithmic Invention

   In his 1966 essay “Rhétorique et enseignement,” Gérard Genette observes that literary studies did not always emphasize the reading of texts. Before the end of the nineteenth century, the study of literature revolved around the art of writing. Texts were not objects to interpret but models to imitate. The study of literature emphasized elocutio, or style and the arrangement of words. With the rise of literary history, academic reading approached texts as objects to be explained. Students learned to read in order to write essays (dissertations) where they analyzed texts according to prescribed methods. This new way of studying literature stressed dispositio, or the organization of ideas. Recent developments in information technology have further challenged paradigms for reading literature. Digital tools and resources allow for the study of large collections of texts using quantitative methods. Various computational methods of distant as well as close reading facilitate investigations into fundamental questions of the possibilities for literary creation. Technology has the potential for exploring inventio, or the finding of ideas that can be expressed through writing.

   Li Yi - 29.08.2018 - 15:27

2. Gestural Semiotics and App Fiction

   In his theory of gestural manipulations, Bouchardon (2014; see Ensslin 2014: 82-83) starts from the assumption that “all clicking is interpretive” (160). He proposes a refined view of how readers interact with digital media through a “repertoire of gestures” (161-162), the use of which depends on the physical device used to interact with a particular text. In his view, analyses of gestural manipulations happen at five distinct levels: (1) the gesteme, which is an individual move, such as a key stroke or a mouse click, linking haptic move and interactive interface item; (2) the acteme, which refers to a sequence of individual gestemes combining to form a larger unit of gestural meaning, such as drag-and-drop; (3) the semiotic unit of manipulation (“SUM”), which is the sum of identical or similar actemes and their semiotic function; (4) media coupling, which denotes specific functions and meanings of SUMs in their medial contexts; and (5) interactive discourse, which happens at the superordinate level of digital text in context, and relates to the meanings of gestural interactions against this larger backdrop. 

   Susanne Årflot Løtvedt - 29.08.2018 - 15:28

3. E-Lit in the Gutter: Applying McCloud's Transition Categories to Interactive Fiction

   Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics has been a staple text in digital media classes for decades. Chapters focusing on topics such as symbolic and iconic representation, relationships between word and image, and the illustration of time provide powerful insights into the creation and interpretation of digital works. McCloud’s analysis of the visual-centric comic medium bears obvious relevance to what we create and see on the screen. For those working in interactive fiction, however, the most useful chapter may be the one dedicated to what cannot be seen. Chapter 3, “Blood in the Gutter”, examines the physical and narrative gaps between frames in a comic strip or book. These gaps, or “gutters” are the visible whitespaces between inked panes and, simultaneously, the conceptual spaces between points in a narrative. McCloud’s examination of these spaces offers valuable insights for both authors and readers of the code-triggered gaps between hyperlinked elements of an interactive fiction. 

   June Hovdenakk - 29.08.2018 - 15:30

4. Social Media: Problems & Projects

   Social Media: Problems & Projects

   Carlos Muñoz - 29.08.2018 - 15:41

5. e-Loops in e-Lit: Mechanical Reflexive Reading

   Loops are mostly patterns: patterns based on a predetermined set of repetitions, and that allows for a recognizable sense of progression and movement. It is used and perceived as a structure whose impact on interpretation can be considerable. This presentation focuses on how the loop defined as a shape, a process and a pattern becomes a figure in contemporary electronic literature works and practices. I will investigate this particularity of digital writing by examining how loops condition reading and writing practices. How do e-loops revisit interpretation processes? More specifically, does the loop’s reflexivity echoes the electronic text it produces?

   Li Yi - 29.08.2018 - 15:48

6. Transforming Theoretical Textual Analysis into an Interactive Digital Game

   This paper will outline the material process and theoretical underpinnings whereby I turned a critical practice of reading a philosophical text, in this case Plato’s Phaedrus, into an electronic, interactive, Twine game. The game, called “Plato’s Phaedrus: a Memory Pharmacy,” is a rhizomatic dialogical game whereby players engage in a procedure of enacting verbal dialectics upon an interactive text that is interspliced with both Platonic passages and transcriptions of contemporary interlocutor's dialectical analysis upon the Phaedrus. The game is played on Twine, an open-source tool for non-linear storytelling. Players choose a character, either Socrates or Phaedrus, and begin by reading aloud scripted lines of the Platonic text. As the dialogue continues, it becomes unclear if the text has departed from the original Platonic dialogue as the content mixes in anachronisms and the style vears upon the colloquial. Soon conversation choices are introduced as players can choose which line to speak aloud, and thereby steer the dialogue in different conversational directions.

   June Hovdenakk - 29.08.2018 - 15:51

7. Literature Mods

   This paper presents a critical framework about literature mods—modifications of source code and surface of literary works—and a set of new empirical methods—modifying deformances—as a way of reading and analyzing the behavior of digital kinetic poems, since they move in time and space. How to simply read poems behaving as changing events? How to read poems that display at extremely high speed? How to critically analyze surfaces of inscription that may be impossible to be read? What methods of criticism can be set in practice in order to read kinetic poems? The problem of how to read digital poems, how to interpret them, and how to write criticism about them is closely tied to what kind of methods the reader and scholar use. Some of these methods can, and should require practical engagement with the creative works, a point that C. T. Funkhouser (2014) highlights. In fact, that is the type of “computational poetics” methodology that, in “operating” the code and interface, Stephanie Strickland and Nick Montfort (2013) call for.

   Li Yi - 29.08.2018 - 15:57

8. The Posthuman Poetics of Instagram Poetry

   Instagram poetry, a type of digital poetry is, as the name implies, poetry that is produced for distribution through the social media channel Instagram and most usually incorporates creative typography with bite size verses. 

   Instagram poetry can demonstrate the cultural impact of a posthuman cyborgian fluidity of borders and forms in that we essentially find ourselves left with anthropophagic texts - cannibalistic texts that remix, reuse and re-appropriate content. Digital texts can no longer be regarded as singular standalone objects rather they are constantly changing assemblages in which inequalities and inefficiencies in their operations drive them towards breakdown, disruption, innovation and change 

   sondre rong davik - 05.09.2018 - 14:54

9. Hey Siri, Tell Me a Story: AI, Procedural Generation, and Digital Narratives

   This paper examines a selection of examples of AI storytelling from film, games, and interactive fiction to imagine the future of AI authorship and to question the impetus behind this trend of replacing human authors with algorithmically generated narrative. Increasingly, we’re becoming familiarized with AI agents as they are integrated into our daily lives in the form of personified virtual assistants like Siri, Cortana, and Alexa. Recently, director Oscar Sharp and artist Ross Goodwin generated significant media buzz about two short films that they produced which were written by their AI screenwriter, who named himself Benjamin. Both Sunspring (2016) and It’s No Game (2017) were created by Goodwin’s long short-term memory (LSTM) AI that was trained on media content that included science fiction scripts and dialogue delivered by actor David Hasselhoff. It’s No Game offers an especially apt metacommentary on AI storytelling as it addresses the possibility of a writers strike and imagines that entertainment corporations opt out of union negotiations and instead replace their writers with AI authors.

   Jane Lausten - 05.09.2018 - 14:57

10. Stalking, Shredding, and Streaming: Reading E-Lit Through Artists’ Alternative Web Browsers

    Alongside the emergent commercial browsers of the late 1990s, several artists made alternative browsers that articulated other ways of conceptualizing a global network of electronic documents, and stood in relief to the particular electronic textuality manifest in browsers like Netscape Navigator and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer—a hypertext imaginary that still deeply informs the predominant browsers of today. Post presents research into three such works: The Web Stalker (1997) by the artist collective I/O/D, Shredder (1998) by Mark Napier, and netomat (1999) by Maciej Wisniewski. 

    Post will draw on interviews with the artists and art historical analytical methods to describe the development, functioning, and long-term impact of these works. In particular, Post considers the ways in which these artists’ browsers can inform the study and practice of electronic literature.

    sondre rong davik - 05.09.2018 - 15:05

Pages