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Immersion and Interactivity in Digital Fiction
Digital fiction began by defining itself against the printed book. In so doing, transgression of linearity and the attempt to reduce the authorial presence in the text, were soon turned into defining characteristics of this literary form. Works of digital fiction were first described as fragmented objects comprised of “text chunks” interconnected by hyperlinks, which offered the reader freedom of choice and a participatory role in the construction of the text. These texts were read by selecting several links and by assembling lexias. However, the expansion of the World Wide Web and the emergence of new software and new devices, suggested new reading and writing experiences. Technology offered new ways to tell a story, and with it, additional paradigms. Hyperlinks were replaced with new navigation tools and lexias gave way to new types of textual organization. The computer became a multimedia environment where several media could thrive and prosper. As digital fiction became multimodal, words began to share the screen with image, video, music or icons.
Daniela Côrtes Maduro - 05.02.2015 - 12:28
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Running Out of Time: The Strategies of Ending in Digital Fictions
Ever since the early theorizing of electronic literature, both the beginning and ending of these literary works has been seen as problematic issues. In the spirit of Umberto Eco’s “open work” (in English 1989), especially hypertext works were considered challenging to the closed nature of literary work – there may be several entrances to the work, but even more importantly, there is no fixed ending but rather, alternative, optional exit points. J. Yellowlees Douglas’s The End of Books or Books without End, a cornerstone in this field, provided a detailed analysis of M. Joyce’s Afternoon, putting much emphasis on its various endings.
If the early 1990’s theoretical discussion was mainly concerned with hypertext, the current electronic literature scene with its dozens of new modes of expression, technologies and genres, has grown used to the fact that most of the works do not offer a definite ending, but either a set of alternative endings, or, no obvious ending at all. The openness of dynamic ergodic literature has become such a naturalized phenomenon that there has not been much theoretical interest in the question of ending in electronic literature lately.
Hannah Ackermans - 16.11.2015 - 11:05
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Rhematics and the Literariness of Electronic Literature
In Gerard Genette’s (1993; 1997) narratology, “rheme” is contrasted with “theme.” While themes are symbolic indications of what texts mean, rhemes are super-formal indications of texts themselves. The title of this article is highly thematic because it indicates much of that what is being discussed; a title like “Only an Article” would be highly rhematic due to its lack of indication of the subject matter at the expense of non-reflective form.
Veli-Matti Karhulahti has recently argued that the aesthetics of the videogame phenomenon are better understood through “rhematics” than the rhetoric of “meaning” that has so far dominated the analysis of cultural products, especially within literary studies:
Hannah Ackermans - 27.11.2015 - 14:48
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Narrative Affect in William Gillespie's Keyhole Factory and Morpheus: Biblionaut, or, Post-Digital Fiction for the Programming Era
Programmable computation is radically transforming the contemporary media ecology. What is literature's future in this emergent Programming Era? What happens to reading when the affective, performative power of executable code begins to provide the predominant model for creative language use? Critics have raised concerns about models of affective communication and the challenges a-semantic affects present to interpretive practices. In response, this essay explores links between electronic literature, affect theory, and materialist aesthetics in two works by experimental writer and publisher William Gillespie.
Focusing on the post-digital novel Keyhole Factory and the electronic speculative fiction Morpheus: Bilblionaut, it proposes that: first, tracing tropes of code as affective transmissions allows for more robust readings of technomodernist texts and, second, examining non-linguistic affect and its articulation within constraint-based narrative forms suggests possibilities for developing an affective hermeneutics.
Eric Dean Rasmussen - 02.06.2016 - 11:15
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Re-imagining the City: (Con)Textual Gaps in Implementation and #QtCoL
This paper explores the concept of narrativity in the city by analyzing the project Queering the City of Literature (#QtCoL), a distributed narrative inspired by Implementation (Rettberg and Montfort). Distributed narratives are literary texts that are distributed across different spaces and times to create divergence rather than unity (Walker 1). Implementation and #QtCoL build on several modern-day practices: both of the works consist of text fragments that participants were invited to put up in places of their choice on public surfaces. The texts were photographed and posted online.
Amirah Mahomed - 03.10.2018 - 15:23
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Narrating (Through) Space: Implementation as a Diffractive Reading Between Text and Context
This paper explores the concept of narrativity throughout space by analyzing the distributed novel Implementation (Rettberg and Montfort 2012). Distributed narratives are literary texts that are distributed across different spaces and times to create divergence rather than unity (Walker 1). Implementation consists of 240 stickers with text fragments and people are invited to put up stickers in a place of their choice on public surfaces. The stickers could then be photographed and added to the project website.
The practice of putting up the stickers highly influences the way in which the actor views the space, connecting elements in the text fragment to elements in their surroundings. The actor who places the sticker might not have noticed certain elements if it hadn't been for the text on the sticker. Once the sticker is placed in its context, the opposite occurs: the surroundings influences the reading of the narrative.
Hannah Ackermans - 28.11.2018 - 11:08
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Does Interpretation Have a Future? Hermeneutics in Times of Big Data
In this workshop, we seek to provide possible answers to the question: what does the replacement of writing by code mean for the future of reading and interpretation? With increasing reliance on algorithms and big data, does interpretation even have a future? What constitutes reading today, and what could hermeneutics look like in a digital age? Hermeneutics traditionally refers to the method and study of textual interpretation. Modern hermeneutics has its origin in textual exegesis, the interpretation of the Old Testament. It revolves around building bridges—between the present and the past, the familiar and the strange. In a time of post-truth, filter bubbles, and alternative facts, such perspectives are worth remembering and reiterating.
Hannah Ackermans - 03.12.2019 - 11:17
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How to Review a Database
In this 5-minute lightning talk, I introduced my work-in-progress chapter on database criticism. A video of the presentation is available on YouTube, see below.
Hannah Ackermans - 03.12.2019 - 12:53
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An Interpretive Approach to Discourse Moves in a Multicultural Peer Conversation
An Interpretive Approach to Discourse Moves in a Multicultural Peer Conversation
Kristina Igliukaite - 05.03.2020 - 19:48
