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Towards a Digital Epistemology: Printed Texts and the Logic of Electronic Literature
What I tentatively call a "Digital epistemology" is a twofold media archaeological concept, on the one hand it defines a historical notion, or – with Kittler – a discursive network. By this I mean that texts and artworks produced during the post-war digital era in many ways could be said to reproduce a digital logic, whether or not they are digital-born, and whether or not they orchestrate, or address, a digital logic on a formal as well as thematic level. In short: a novel need not be about computers to be an expression of the digital epistemology. On the other hand, and consequently, Digital epistemology could be said to define a set of literary and aesthetic practices from almost any point in history, in any medium. This understanding of the concept suggests that digital logic actually could predate digital technology, and thus could be found in texts and artworks all through history (a suggestion, though, I will not fully explore in this presentation…).
Arngeir Enåsen - 14.10.2013 - 15:03
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Exopoiesis and literariness in the works of William Gibson, Mark Z. Danielewski, Kate Pullinger and Chris Joseph
Over the last two decades, many recent forms of electronic literature have revealed a strong aptitude for hypertextuality and hypermediality. Meanwhile, we have assisted to the progressive emergence of innovative examples of print fiction that may be defined as «writing machines»,1 because they strive to incorporate the aesthetics and the symbolic forms of the electronic media. These kinds of narrative are often characterised by an "autopoietic" potentiality, since they often tend to include a multiplicity of media sources while preserving the autonomy of their literary function. As Joseph Tabbi observes: «Defining the literary as a self-organizing composition, or poiesis, is not to close off the literary field; instead, by creating new distinctions such a definition can actually facilitate literary interactions with the media environment».2 At the same time, some examples of print and electronic 'writing machines' are also characterized by an «exopoietic function».
Arngeir Enåsen - 14.10.2013 - 15:08
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E-Literary Text in Nomadic Cockpit
New mobile technologies shape the way, in which people communicate and perceive the reality. Our basic position is the nomadic cockpit (expression coined by the author of this paper) in terms of being armed with many of navigating and controlling mobile screenic devices (from cell phones and tablets to consoles, cameras, and various players). When we move around in our surroundings armed with such devices we perceive the data shown on the screen of such a device, meaning that both the visual and aural interfaces are integrated in our experience of walking or riding environment. Virtual data approaching from the remote context on the screen are related to and coordinated with our basic, non-mediated perception from the physical here and now, meaning that the digital technology, provoking one’s hands on controls activity becomes incorporated in the experience and understanding of our being-on-the-move. This paper aims to explore the way in which the present mobile culture enters some movements in new media art and e-literature that presuppose the interactions between the moving bodies and the words and images on the move.
Arngeir Enåsen - 14.10.2013 - 15:15
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Read Fast, Die Young? – Interpreting Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries’ Flash Poem Dakota
In this paper I discuss Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries’ digital poem Dakota. I discuss how the poem controls the reader’s experience and how this control affects its possible interpretations. The control is mostly executed by limiting the reader’s freedom over reading. Reading time, direction and duration are determined by the poem. It is only possible to start the poem, but not rewind, stop or fast-forward it. Furthermore, the manipulation of speed affects reading in many ways. In the fast extreme the effect is illegibility, but more subtly used speed creates varieties of emphasis and de-emphasis. The effect of emphasis of this kind, I argue, creates different layers of readings and invites re-reading. These different readings require different cognitive modes, which mirror our contemporary reading habits. Not being in control of the reading process also leads to a scattered sense of unity, one of postmodernism’s essential traits. While reading the poem I also question why I read as I do, and by doing so I hope to present more general traits of how to approach digital literature.
Arngeir Enåsen - 14.10.2013 - 15:20
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Golden Days, Silver Nights: Locating Utopia through Diminished Reality
This talk introduces Golden Days, Silver Nights, a new steampunk-themed, alternate-history locative adventure game designed to provoke critical thinking about political history and social progress. The game is designed around the life and writings of William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925), celebrated orator, infamous crusader against commercial monopolies, and the alleged inspiration for L. Frank Baum's Wizard of Oz. Bryan first ran for U.S. President in 1896 as the candidate for the fused Democratic and Populist parties, inspired in part by the socialist vision of Edward Bellamy's fabulously popular utopian fiction, Looking Backward (1888). But if Bryan began his career a progressive, he ended it a militant reactionary and notorious anti-Darwinian. By some accounts, his campaign permanently derailed the American progressive movement, and with it, the hopes and dreams of utopian socialists. Taking its cue from alternate histories by Robert Heinlein and others, Golden Days, Silver Nights begins with the counter-factual premise that Bryan won the 1896 election and went on to reshape America's destiny, though not in the image of Bellamy's technologically utopian socialist future.
Arngeir Enåsen - 14.10.2013 - 15:23
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Spars of Language Lost at Sea
Our poetry generator, Sea and Spar Between, was fashioned based on Emily Dickinson’s poems and Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. Both in its original edition and in the edition expanded with comments—cut to fit the toolspun course—it exemplifies seven different ways to seek and grasp text: 1) by porting code; 2) by translating text strings and processes; 3) by contrasting the page/canvas experience via a link or URL with the experience of reading code via “View Source”; 4) by harpooning a particular stanza and using the browser’s capability for bookmarking; 5) by creating human-readable glosses of code for readers who may not identify as programmers; 6) by relating its depthless virtual space to the import of Mallarmé’s Coup de dés as interpreted by Quentin Meillassoux; 7) by foregrounding non-translatability as a characterizing sieve for natural languages.
Arngeir Enåsen - 14.10.2013 - 15:35
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Aura in the Age of Computational Production
This roundtable interrogates whether creative computational work can conjure aura, and to what extent the authoring and distribution systems those works rely on foreclose upon or enable "aura." Benjamin’s seminal "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1935) describes fascistic modes of production and mass deception that forecast -- in very specific ways -- iOS. Co-chairs Berens and Flores will frame the discussion by centering on the authorial contexts afforded by PC and iOS. The other participants are all accomplished writers of electronic literature, actively creating works in a variety of computational environments and distribution models. Each presenter, including the co-chairs, will have 5 minutes to present their own critical and artistic insights on this topic. Once the roundtable discussion begins, they might comment on how Berens' and Flores' theoretical model plays out in their own artistic and commercial works.
Scott Rettberg - 15.10.2013 - 14:40
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Translating afternoon, a story by Michael Joyce, or How to Inhabit a Spectral Body
If we are to follow Paul de Man’s reading of Walter Benjamin’s famous essay “The Task of the Translator” , the translating process, far from being an attempt at totalization, further fragments the already fragmented pieces of a greater vessel, "die reine Sprache", or pure language, which remains inaccessible, and stands for a source of fragmentation itself. The work exists only through the multiple versions it comprises. As claimed by Walter Benjamin in « The Task of the Translator », a work always demands a translation which is both an alteration and a guarantee of its perpetuation : "(…) it can be demonstrated that no translation would be possible if in its ultimate essence it strove for likeness to the original. For in its afterlife -- which could not be called that if it were not a transformation and a renewal of something living -- the original undergoes a change."
Rebecca Lundal - 17.10.2013 - 16:17
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<<Chercher l’exhibition>> Curating Electronic Literature as a Critical Practice
This presentation focuses on curating electronic literature as a critical practice. Exhibits focusing specifically on Electronic Literature have been mounted at galleries, libraries, universities, convention spaces, and parks and other outside venues. The Electronic Literature Organization’s 2012 Media Art Show, for example, hosted exhibits in five different locations in Morgantown, including a community arts center, local gallery, the university library, a department’s conference room, and the city’s amphitheater, while the MLA 2012 and 2013 exhibits were held at the Washington State and Hynes convention centers, respectively. Exhibits of Electronic Literature are planned for U.S. Library of Congress in April 2013 and Illuminations gallery at University of Ireland Maymooth in March 2014, and in various locations in Bergen, Norway in fall 2015. This range of venues suggests a flexibility and appeal of Electronic Literature that is both scalable and broad. With these qualities in mind, the presentation will discuss questions including but not limited to:
Fredrik Sten - 17.10.2013 - 17:13
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The "Research and Creation" Approach in Digital Literature
How can one articulate literary and artistic creation and scientific research? In my case, creative research consists in creating experiences. Indeed I emphasize the notion of experience, or rather experiences: the experiences of the author, of the reader and of the researcher (in the field of digital literature). This approach is based on a variety of first person and third person experiences, subjective experiences and objective descriptions, spontaneous and instrument-based experiences (ie closer to experiments). Conceiving a literary and artistic experience as a scientific experience implies admitting that real life experience can have a scientific dimension. In this approach, I analyse my own productions as well as the productions of other authors. I can think my productions and those of others from a concept-based perspective or from a creative activity perspective, as a literary and artistic experience or as material for a scientific experiment.The challenge is to develop protocols of introspection, data collection and traces which will then reconstruct what happened.
Fredrik Sten - 17.10.2013 - 17:32
