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1. Is There a Message in the Medium? The Materiality of Language

   The initial argument of this essay is absurdly simple, obvious, literal: language must be embodied and thus its particular medium is—literally, ontologically—the matter, the flesh, the materiality of any message that it articulates. Marshall McLuhan urged us to recognize that media signify, that the matter in which the message is embodied also traces differences that were already what we have come to call ‘writing’ in a poststructuralist, Derridean sense: grammatological practices. However, McLuhan’s copula was not ontological. It expressed a concern that these other, parallel messages were more significant than any linguistic message they embodied. This same anxiety has reached a kind of apotheosis in recent criticism of digital literature—from Christopher Funkhouser and Roberto Simanowski—revenant as no less than our ancient fear of cannibalism. The message of the medium literally consumes the materiality of language: its own body, flesh of its flesh. But this cannibalism would only be literal—and thus taboo, thus truly terrifying—if McLuhan’s copula were ontological.

   Eric Dean Rasmussen - 30.08.2011 - 12:34

2. From ‘words, words, words’ to ‘birds, birds, birds’: Literature between the representation and the presentation

   From ‘words, words, words’ to ‘birds, birds, birds’: Literature between the representation and the presentation

   Eric Dean Rasmussen - 01.09.2011 - 10:57

3. MATTERS, Electromagnetic poems

   When materials that support texts change, the content have to change. Matters is a physical reflection on how the materiality could affect the text. From ceramic tiles to displays, each new supporting material has opened new possibilities for writing. The support does more than sustain the text, it limits and potentiates it at the same time. The rules of the text are established thanks to these materials, which are implemented as a medium for the text. The physical, the chemical, the sociology, and the politics of these mediums definitively influence the literary use of the ideas. The change in supporting materials allow us to tap into new possibilities that poetry has the pleasure of exploring and amplifying. Similarly, the poetic endeavour is obligated to question the physical, chemical, social, and political limitations of either medium as a support for the text. The expressive reflection allows the revision of rules established by the use of either format and, perhaps, generates new uses of a medium; or in an extreme case, generates a new medium for the diffusion of the text.

   Hannah Ackermans - 06.07.2016 - 16:41