contemporary writing

As new ways of sharing stories emerge, how does this impact on our writing processes, the ways in which they are informed by previous practices, and the development of new possibilities? Technologies shape stories (Zipes, 2012, p. 21), yet as digital texts take on ever more varied forms – multimedia, sensor-driven, embedded in objects and located in landscapes – contemporary writing practices remain linked to the production of the printed book (Bolter, 1991, p. 5). This paper considers opportunities and challenges in shifting from using only chirographic and typographic tools in writing practice to utilising methods from the oral tradition and other practices.

(Source: Abstract ICDMT 2016)

Crossing the tools of fluid dynamics with those of literary criticism, Gwen Le Cor casts a new light on contemporary writing in new media. Unlike first generation, “classical” hypertexts that were non-linear in the sense of using linked textual elements, Le Cor sees Strickland and Lawson Jaramillo’s poem, slippingglimpse, as a more “contemporary” instance of nonlinear writing that can be viewed (literally) as a “complex, nonlinear turbulent system.”