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  1. Meta Discourse: An Investigation into Possibilities of Meta-Fictions in the 21st Century

    The old rites of literature are quickly starting to come to a head, and as we move through the 21st century we will find ourselves staring into new modes of expression of literary concepts that we have known only on the printed page for centuries prior. Meta-fiction not only allows for new ways of approaching a narrative but also new ways of approaching literature in general, including electronic literature. Questioning the boundaries between the reader and the writer, the audience and the performer, the characters in the text and the ones reading it, one might say that meta-fiction was one of the first forms of hypertext mediums in which the reader was encouraged to draw on outside influences and information to arrive at the heart of the text. This understanding of meta-fiction, then, makes it an appropriate place to begin an analysis of new modes of discourse and the variability of the messages presented. In such a textually-conscious style of writing, how does the narrative alter according to the mode of presentation while still retaining a questioning and awareness of the literary roots?

    Scott Rettberg - 07.01.2013 - 22:39

  2. Hypermediating the Game Interface: Grand Theft Auto and the Alienation Effect

    One of the most controversial computer games in recent years has been "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" (Rockstar Games 2004). Much of the controversy surrounding the game (including the disparaging critiques of the likes of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton) centered around the relationship between the game's simulation of violence, sex, and racial stereotypes and the potential for this game interface to affect the real-world actions of its players. Though "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" is often considered to simply be a gang-violence simulator, this paper will argue that the relationship between the digital interface and the potentially-affected material space can be altered in such a way as to create a sense of distanciation. Drawing from Bertolt Brecht's theory of the Alienation Effect (which is echoed in Bolter and Grusin's theory of the hypermediated interface), I will demonstrate how the customization possible in "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" provides a framework for distanciation and socio-political critique essential to Brecht's theory.

    Jill Walker Rettberg - 07.01.2013 - 22:44

  3. Blending the Crossword with the Narrative: An Examination of the Storygame

    Interactive narrative cannot be understood as only literature or as only game, nor even as a combative relationship between the two. Narrative-oriented "games" are neither novel nor movie, but they are likewise significantly different beasts than conventional, competitive games. They rather draw elements from both. We will come to terms with the concept of the storygame by examining the historical role of games in stories and stories in games to come to understand how the two forms combined into the modern storygame, focusing on the key traits of interactivity and immersion.

    Scott Rettberg - 07.01.2013 - 22:47

  4. On Moving and Being Moved

    Mark Hansen (2004) argues that the privilege of literature as a technology of communication lies not in its imitation of the flexibility of technical media, but rather in its relationship with the body. This is apparent in the processes by which we acquire alphabetic literacy (how we learn to read and write) and in the reproduction of writing through processes of inscription, dissemination and reception. Newer media technologies are tapping into this relation of intimacy with increasingly greater speed and accuracy (Kittler, Levy). The conversion of text into language calls not only on the cognitive capacities of writers and readers, nor simply on the sense of sight alone. Rather, it mobilises these capacities along with those of all the other sensory modalities, including affect. Language itself is a supramodal synaesthetic medium, as various theories of metaphor make clear. This view of language makes electronic forms a privileged site for understanding the relationship between language, the visual, and the sonic as they are channelled and processed by the senses and temporarily organised in a series of ‘central assemblies'. We take this latter term from the work of Silvan S.

    Scott Rettberg - 07.01.2013 - 22:57

  5. Infinite Interfaces and Intimate Expressions: Hand-Held Mobile Devices and New Reflective Writing Spaces

    In my presentation I will examine hand-held mobile interfaces and the complex possibilities they provide for self-reflective digital writing. As technological innovation has minimized the writing space and increased its portability, the interface has been radically altered. With the keyboard reduced to fingertip control and the screen transformed to a compact-sized mirror, intimacy between user and device is increased, along with the infinitesimal possibilities for personal production afforded when writing goes on the move. With reference to location-based mobile "writing," I will explore this new form of self-reflective digital expression and theorize models for engaging this new personal interface.

    Scott Rettberg - 07.01.2013 - 23:07

  6. Blurring of Public and Private Space in New Media Art

    This paper seeks to address the discourse of the blurring of public and private space in new media art, specifically in Mouchette.org and Life Sharing by Eva and Franco Matteos. Both pieces utilize an understanding of the social systems inherent in new media art as a set of relations that require the user to complete. This system, dependant upon the relations that the user, the artist and the artwork creates a discourse on the concept of public and private space that is predicated on the notions of interactivity.

    (Source: Author's abstract from ELO 2008 Conference site)

    Jill Walker Rettberg - 07.01.2013 - 23:11

  7. Digital Modernism

    A prominent strategy in some works of contemporary electronic literature is the appropriation and adaptation of literary modernism, what I call "digital modernism." This paper examines digital modernism as a strategy relevant to rethinking not only the origins of electronic literature but the ways in which we discuss and understand the field of electronic literature in general. I examine Bob Brown's Readies machine (circa 1930), an avant-garde attempt to speed up text and thus transform literature and reading practices, in relation to works of electronic literature by Young-hae Chang Heavy Industries and William Poundstone. These contemporary works employ Flash to create a flashing aesthetic that resonates with Brown's goals for the Readies. Situating electronic literature within this forgotten but distinctly literary history of machine-based textual experimentation exposes the importance of reading today's new, new media literature in relation to the a movement from the early decades of the twentieth century which sought to "make it new" in the new media of its time.

    Scott Rettberg - 07.01.2013 - 23:29

  8. Original Chat: Exploring the Origins of the Turing Test

    The chatbot, or conversational agent, is a new media art object that has been around since Joseph Weizenbaum's ELIZA (1966), which is included in ELO's directory of e-lit. These programs have since been adapted for electronic narratives and interactive dramas. Instigating this area of research, Alan Turing's thought experiment/dare, the Turing Test (1950), claimed that computers would soon be able to perform conversational exchange convincingly as humans. While many use the Turing Test to contextualize a discussion about chatbots, few have examined the origins of the Turing Test itself. Crossing the history of technology in this vision of a chatbot legacy, I will outline one new theory of the origins of the Turing Test, suggesting a lineage from the military-industrial complex that helps us to re-examine our interaction with artificial agents in electronic literature from IF works such as Emily Short's "Galatea" to Andrew Stern and Michael Mateas' "Facade."

    Scott Rettberg - 08.01.2013 - 10:45

  9. 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

  10. Brautigan Bibliography and Archive: Digitizing a Literary Life

    I discuss the digitization of the literary life of author Richard Brautigan, a novelist, poet, and short story writer often cited as the writer to best capture the zeitgeist of the counterculture movement in San Francisco during the late 1960s and early 1970s. This digitization creates not only an archive, but a literary bio-bibliography as well, one that is written not from the perspective of an individual author or archivist (myself), but rather as an upshot of heretofore unachievable associations and interconnections of multiple kinds and sources of information (biographical, bibliographical, historical, ethnographical). The result is a 3-D knowledge base, a "data hive" with a unique and individual electronic literary presence

    Scott Rettberg - 08.01.2013 - 11:07

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