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Posthumanism and Electronic Literature
Posthumanism, according to Cary Wolfe, "names a historical moment in which the decentering of the human by its imbrication in technical, medical, informatic, and economic networks is increasingly impossible to ignore" (xv-xvi). This conference paper brings the framework of posthumanist philosophy to bear on the field of electronic literature, at a critical moment in time wherein our conception of the human, and of literature, are fundamentally questioned through digital technology. I argue that humanist philosophy is explicitly tied to the rise of print literature, via Elizabeth Eisenstein (1979), while posthumanism is linked with digital media (Wolfe 2010) and, by extension, electronic literature. Furthermore, posthumanism interrogates assumptions of autonomy and subjectivity inherited from humanism, and via cybernetics articulates an image of the human as another information-processing machine. Electronic literature's reliance and amalgamation of natural and artificial languages (most noticeable in “codework”) reflects the posthumanist critique of the supposed binaries between human and machine.
Thor Baukhol Madsen - 17.02.2015 - 16:02
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The tensions of digital literature
Les tensions de la littérature numérique
La littérature numérique repose sur des tensions qui contribuent à asseoir sa spécificité : tension des supports, de l’écriture programmée, des médias, de l’expérience esthétique. Le terme tension ne signifie pas forcément conflit, mais suggère qu’il y a des évidences déconstruites des deux côtés. Ce peut être une tension créatrice.
- Tension des supports
La LN met en tension des formes culturelles, littéraires et artistiques héritées de l’imprimé et des formes nées avec le numérique. La tension des supports ne concerne pas seulement la tension entre support numérique et support imprimé, mais également la tension entre les différents supports de restitution (pouvant correspondre par exemple à tout un dispositif de monstration dans le cadre d’une installation ou d’une performance).Daniela Ørvik - 19.02.2015 - 14:23
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Towards an Aesthetics of Sculptural Fiction
As a writer of electronic literature who is also deeply engaged with computational narrative, my goal is producing work both engrossing to read and also engaging to play. How can (and why should) we expand an e-lit reader's affordances beyond selecting what lexia to view next, to take on a more active role of creator and co-author? For the past few years my work has been exploring these questions in a series of experiments towards an aesthetics of sculpturalfiction. By "sculptural" I mean to suggest that an encounter with such a work has qualities similar both to the act of sculpting-- playful exploration, encompassing many small acts of expression and decision-making-- but also the way asculpture is encountered: on the audience's terms, without a set script, for as much or as little time as the viewer is interested. Sculptural fiction implies continuous interaction with a piece where exploration and self-expression are both integral to the experience. I believe it illuminates an interesting corner of existing e-lit work in a new way, and provides an intriguing direction for future exploration.
(source Author Abstract)
Sumeya Hassan - 19.02.2015 - 14:34
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Intergrams in My Pocket
Digital literature authors — particularly those of an experimental bent — are frequently obliged to use multimedia environments whose longevity is questionable at best. When support for such an environment on a new platform is not available, portation of the work may be the most direct strategy for making the work available. An excellent example of such a platform was Hypercard — only available on Macintosh MacOS Classic (and emulators). This paper discusses my experiences in porting Intergrams from Hypercard — first to Windows in 1996, and more recently to Squeak, where it will run on a wide range of platforms. Following on the pioneering recommendations of “Acid Free Bits”, the paper explores the following issues: (1) ability and desirability of digital literature authors to create their own file formats that are open, human-readable, and serve as “texts of description” (in the spirit of Bootz) whose preservation is assured by the simplicity and openness of the file format (as opposed to closed proprietary undocumented file formats often found with multimedia environments). (2) The importance and desirability of using multimedia environments which allow for self description.
Eivind Farestveit - 19.02.2015 - 14:47
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Projected Poetry: From the Medium Specific to the Complex Surface
I would like to propose a paper that centers on the specific poetic form of the mesostic. The mesostic not only allows us to reflect on the specific qualities of and differences between print, analog film, and digital born works, but also inspires thinking about complex surfaces picked up by John Cayley and Wardrip-Fruin, among others. My intervention would thus at once make a case for an “old” form of digital literature (the projected poem) and continue emerging debates on the future of textual practices that rely on contemporary developments in computer technology.
FLUXUS related artists such as John Cage, Jackson Mac Low, and Dick Higgins saw in the printed mesostic a way of organizing language that dispenses with grammar and syntax, which rely on linear structuring principles. The printed mesostic, by contrast, is basically organized around a phrase printed vertically on the page, whereby each letter intersects the middle of horizontally distributed lines, although additional, seemingly random rules complicate and enhance its poetic possibilities. I shall analyze more (as well as less) convincing works in this genre.
Elias Mikkelsen - 19.02.2015 - 14:56
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Echo Chambers: The Colossal Cave within House of Leaves
Inspired by Mark Z. Danielewki’s z House of Leaves (2000) and Will Crowther’s Colossal Cave Adventure (1975), It is Pitch Black renders a mysterious, non-visual environment in the form of a text-based videogame. Although Danielewski’s novel participates in the lusory logic of digital games, functions as a paradigmatic post-digital text, and includes a diverse range of media, the book contains no mention of videogames within its pages. It is Pitch Black imagines a missing appendix or additional chapter (like the four pages of hexadecimal code only included in the original hardcover publication) which takes the form of a text-based adventure game that the Navidson children may have played throughout their ordeal. Inspired by Crowther’s inaugural adventure game yet operating according to the idiom of a 3D navigable space, It is Pitch Black foregrounds the tension between the human experience of play and the microtemporal processes of a computer.
Daniela Ørvik - 19.02.2015 - 15:11
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Rendering Text(ures): Foundations for Developing a Virtual Text-Crafting Environment
Over the past decade, installations of the CAVE have compelled participants to explore how immersive text spaces create playful literary sandboxes in which to experiment with various forms of appropriated writing. Although the fusion of virtual reality and literature has continuously been flirted with, the interactive digital creative space has yet to be realized with comparable impact. So far we have been invited by composers such Rui Torres, Stuart Moulthrop, and Jörg Piringer to participate in the ludic engagement with textual instruments; with “New World Order: Basra,” Sandy Baldwin demonstrated how gamespace provides a compelling environment for textual manipulation. However, to my knowledge, we have yet to develop the space that places these a combination of these capabilities within a single compositional environment.
Elias Mikkelsen - 19.02.2015 - 15:11
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E-Pressing e-Literature Into The Future: The New Modalities of Publishing, 1914-2014
The Electronic University Press (EUP) uses digital media forums, tracking systems and databases through the submission, peer-review, editorial, and distribution/promotion phases of a work. Both its catalog and the portal itself serve as a hub for e-literature, en-visioning how multimodal works may be most effectively reviewed and promoted. The goal is to realize new possibilities for literature and scholarship beyond the traditional monograph by offering more active participation from users and more flexibility and inclusiveness for scholars and reviewers. It also offers a, much needed, legitimacy to new forms of scholarship that use electronic visual and sonic media as the literary meaning, or databases, digital interfaces, and multimedia design as crucial elements of the literary or scholarly content. The rise of electronic publishing options are changing the constraints on writing with digital media. The EUP serves as a response to these difficulties by fostering monograph-equivalent digital works that use new digital formats and by building an infrastructure that aids in the evaluation of such works. EUP: Committed to E-Literature. (Source Author Abstract)
Sumeya Hassan - 19.02.2015 - 15:18
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Ciberia: Biblioteca de Literatura Digital en Español
We would like to present “Ciberia”, a collection of electronic literature works in Spanish, housed in OdA, a learning objects’ repository of the University Complutense of Madrid. We will showcase some of its most representative literary works as we revise the process of the collection’s creation. The presentation will cover aspects such as the criteria used for the selection of works, the elaboration of Ciberia’s bibliographic card, the process of metadata cleaning and reconciliation with other collections of the Linked Data cloud, and Ciberia’s research and pedagogical functions. Finally, we will discuss some of the peculiarities of Hispanic electronic literature’s modes of creation and reception that the collection has made visible.
Sumeya Hassan - 19.02.2015 - 15:30
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Unraveling Twine: Open Platforms and the Future of Hypertextual Literature
As the technical affordances that shaped early electronic literature’s frontiers have become commonplace, hypertextual structures abound in our experiences of online texts. Many tools make it easier than ever to generate these types of works, but one of the most interesting for its demonstrated literary potential is Twine: a platform for building choice-driven stories easily publishable on the web without relying heavily on code. In software studies, a platform is defined by Ian Bogost and Nick Montfort as a hardware or software system that provides the “foundation of computational expression.” This definition can encompass any of the tools we use to develop procedural content, as Bogost noted on his blog: “a platform…is something that supports programming and programs, the creation and execution of computational media.” Examining Twine as a case-study among current open, non-coder friendly platforms probes the future of interactive narrative on the web—a future that, outside the traditional scope of the electronic literature community, is highly determined by the affordances of platforms and the desires of their user-developers.
Thor Baukhol Madsen - 19.02.2015 - 15:42
