collaborative writing

In this interview Andy Campbell talks about his first works in video games programming during his teens and how he got involved with digital literature in the mid-1990s. He then gives insight into his work by focusing on the importance of the visual and the ludic elements and the use of specific software or code language in some of his works. In the end he describes the way he looks at digital born works in general.

Pedro Barbosa recalls in this interview his memories of the first studies and works of electronic literature back in the 1970s when he was a student at the University of Porto. Starting from considerations about his collaborative works he makes a comparison between printed literature tradition and the age of new media focusing on the paradigmatic change of this very transitional period with live in and the differences of the creative work. Furthermore he makes an interesting statement on regard of the aesthetics of new media by comparing works of electronic literature with the oral tradition. In the end he mentions some of the milestones of electronic literature that he considers important.

This critical introduction to Calypsis: A Hypertext Fiction argues that university creative writing programs should make full use of the institutional space, time, and resources available to them by introducing students to different types of writing projects and engage students in critical discussions about creative production, activities that they are unlikely to find outside the university's walls. These activities includes experimenting with digital tools, creating multimedia compositions, and producing collaborative work, as well as situating creative writing as an embodied act within specific historical, political, and material conditions. Herein I forward my theory of incremental storytelling, which is informed by both creative writing pedagogy and gaming theory, as one strategy for achieving these goals. Using this methodology, students learn the craft of fiction writing in smaller, discrete bits that, in aggregate, create something much greater than their constituent parts. This progressive approach puts students in immediate contact with each others' writing throughout the entire creative process and opens space for critical discussions about the fictional characters and the shared world they create. I go on to describe a course I designed using incremental storytelling entitled "Gaming, World Building, and Narrative," where students used a wiki and a Google map to collaboratively create a sprawling post-apocalyptic world that they then explored via a tabletop role-playing game. Students responded enthusiastically to the course, as shown in their responses to a survey asking them to reflect on this experimental method. I then connect the theory of incremental storytelling and narratives derived from role-playing games to my creative dissertation, Calypsis: A Hypertext Fiction, and how it might serve as inspiration for others to experiment with creating a collaboratively built world.

There are numerous essays and reviews on German-language electronic literature, which run from the mid nineties to the present day. Most of these texts, however, are written in German – a language that is no longer accepted and common as an universal language for science.

In order to present the overview of German language electronic literature, we filtered out some historical lines that may explain better how the development of individual genres came about. A good starting point may be the very first experiments of authors with computers to generate electronic poetry, a subject the international community mostly agrees upon.

The following model of historical lines of development is suggested:

• Concrete Experiments
• Collaborative Writing and Authoring Environments
• Hypertext: From Hyperfiction to Net Literature
• Code Works
• Blogging and more  

A historical analysis shows that these  five lines of net literature are based upon two prior German strands going back to philosophical, poetical and artistic experiments in the 1960s: On the one hand, the Stuttgart School by Max Bense with exponents Reinhard Döhl and Theo Lutz, the latter producing a first example of digital poetry in 1959. On the other hand, the computer graphics experiments of 1960 and the punched-card linker projects by artists Kurd Alsleben and Antje Eske in Hamburg.

• Stuttgart School or Group (Bense/Döhl/Lutz etc.) > Stochastic Texts
• Hypertext/ Mutuality (Alsleben, Eske) > Computer Graphics, Linker

 The presentation for ELO Paris 2013 introduces this model of lineage for the development of German-language electronic literature. Taking time- and textspace constraints in consideration, the foucus is set on the strand „I Stuttgart School“ and the line „1. Concrete Experiments“. For all other lines the sympathetic reader finds  descriptions and historical examples in the essay „From Theo Lutz to Netzliteratur“ in Cybertext Yearbook 2012.

 The presenter has been part of the net literature community that spans Germany, Austria and Switzerland as a researcher, publisher and artist for twenty years.

(Source: Author's abstract, 2013 ELO Conference: http://conference.eliterature.org/critical-writing/lineages-german-lang…)