critical reading

By Alvaro Seica, 7 September, 2020
Publication Type
Language
Year
ISSN
1553-1139
License
CC Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives
Record Status
Abstract (in English)

“Electronic Literature [Frame]works for the Creative Digital Humanities,” edited by Scott Rettberg and Alex Saum-Pascual, gathers a selection of articles exploring the evolving relationship between electronic literature and the digital humanities in Europe, North and South America. Looking at the combination of practices and methodologies that come about through e-lit’s production, study, and dissemination, these articles explore the disruptive potential of electronic literature to decenter and complement the DH field. Creativity is central and found at all levels and spheres of e-lit, but as the articles in this gathering show, there is a need to redeploy creative practice critically to address the increasing instrumentalization of the digital humanities and to turn the digital humanities towards the digital cultures of the present.

Conceived as an ongoing conversation, rolling out 2-3 articles each month until the end of the year, all contributions are tackling at least one of the four following areas: Building Research Infrastructures and Environments, Exploring Creative Research Practice, Proposing Critical Reading Methodologies, and Applying Digital Pedagogy.

(Source: editors)

Description (in English)

This collaborative project brings together the narrative practice of Joanna Howard and John Cayley’s digital language art research on the reading of subliteral differences. Particularly in certain fonts, differences of less-than-a-letter distinguish certain pairs of English words – hearing/bearing, litoral/literal. Howard composes brief narratives laced with words from these pairs such that, when the subliteral differences are realized, the narratives are developed, subverted, folded in on themselves: bearing the literal traces of narrative experiences within which tiny formal differences, actualized by digital affordances, generate aesthetic and critical reading.

There are six distinct micro-narratives in this piece, tagged as: "lascaux", "ars", "murder", "mars", "order", and "noir". Arrow keys or mobile device gestures can be used to move through the work and from one narrative to another. For each, an intertitle is shown and then the narrative itself which oscillates slowly, back and forth, between its two narrative 'phases' or (subliterally differing) 'states.' If a keyboard is linked, and while a narrative is being shown, it is possible to use the 1 thru 6 keys to access one of the others according to the order of 'tags.'