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1. Implied Code as Mental Geography

   The "implied code" is a mental model of the operational logic of an interactive work. We might describe this as a kind of interior map in the mind of the interactive user, a private cartography created while wandering the territory of the code. In hypertext fiction, representations of the corpus of the text through "maps" (e.g. a garden, quilt, or body) have played with the disjunction between the map and the territory of node-link navigation. In interactive fiction (IF), map-making both an authoring and user engagement strategy is a tradition that stretches back to the foundation of the genre in 1970s speleunking. Later, paratextual maps of various kinds were often bundled with 1980s corporate works. The tensions between these authorial, descriptive maps and user-created, experiential maps (both mental and physical) are still explored in today's contemporary IF. Like the implied human in Turing's test, these implied psychogeographic landscapes are often not what they appear, however this artifice is one fundamental aspect of their art electronic literature.

   Scott Rettberg - 08.01.2013 - 10:47

2. Mapping out Spaces for E-Lit Criticism

   This paper explores the process of discovering works of elit by focusing on the role of the online literary journal. The heyday of Web 1.0, the late 1990s, gave birth to the first generation of electronic literature. To support this emergent art form, this period also delivered a multitude of online literary journals that showcased hypertexts, kinetic poetry, animations, and interactive fiction as well as scholarly articles, interviews with authors, book reviews, and critical discourse. But as the Web became a more graphic-friendly navigation space and debates about cybertext vs. hypertext took centerstage in critical forums, celebration of electronic literature in web-zines and journals seemed to dry up. In the first few years of the twenty-first century, most of the literary journals that had flourished in the late '90s had ceased operations. What are the spaces for electronic literature and its discovery in the 21st century? How do these spaces or lack of them map and remap the field of electronic literature and its criticism?

   Scott Rettberg - 09.01.2013 - 11:56

3. Extended Narratives in Egypt: The Book of Going Forth by Day

   Extended narratives in electronic literature often take place in a "setting" or series of landscapes that might be real or imaginary. In my work, I have often chosen a template from a "real" landscape (California, Egypt) as not only a narrative story feature but also as a part of the navigation system. In *Egypt: The Book of Going Forth by Day* the reader is encouraged to become familiar with a "screen" landscape that is schematic map, navigation tool and "register" for multiple points of view. In order to "map" these fields, the early reader is introduced to areas of the screen which recall the conventional organization of ancient tomb paintings and manuscripts and also correspond to land, river, and sky. Each of these areas is also linked to aspects of the narrative voice. Thus, the imaginary landscape is mapped in the storyline, the screen organization, and the navigation.

   Scott Rettberg - 09.01.2013 - 12:00