definition of e-lit

Rather than taking a lit-crit approach to a single piece of e-literature, we used this session to collect and discuss “e-lit in the wild”: works that we have found that often don’t have ties to the academic or artistic circles we traditionally look to for electronic literature. We created a Google Doc list of works we have come across that make interesting artistic and narrative uses of digital spaces, including customer reviews of products, interactive web comics, online bulletin boards, Reddit users, indie games and more.

We began with Lyle discussing the items on the list so far, and why, to her, they qualified as “e-lit”. The discussion quickly branched into topics such as: defining e-lit, finding e-lit, the evanescence of art, the use of “1st/2nd/3rd generation e-lit” as classification, and what the digital medium means for linguistic arts. We found common ground in the notion that some work cannot be separated from its medium of origin without loss of coherence, and that various media shape their texts in a myriad of meaningful ways.

In the first part of the paper, examining different implicit or explicit conceptions of digital literature (combinatory in relationship with IA, combinatory in relationship with Max Bense, generation in relationship with Automatic treatment of language, animation in relationship with programmed forms, hypertext in relationship with the French Theory…), I argue that digital literature does not exist as an object but as a field in the sense of Bourdieu. As it is not an object, we cannot define it. As it is a social strength and movement, it cannot begin no end, we can only name it, or not, in a symbolic language. As a field, it obeys inside symbolic conflicts as they appear from the inside, as an heterogeneous domain. But as a field, it acts into the society – from the outside it appears as a consistent structured domain.

Even if it is not an object, main internal cultural practices of the field (publishing, exhibition, teaching) need to have a “knowledge” of what is a “digital text”. In order to avoid the use of an impossible definition, I propose in the second part of the paper to measure a “digital degree” of a work. I try to do this by exploring Alckmar Dos Santos’ suggestion that we could define the coordinates of each work in a metric abstract space and then make measures by using classical statistic methods on them. I will show how, using the theory of programmed forms I have developed in the procedural model, we can represent categories of works in a metric space, not as points but as plane figures, and then define such a degree. The result would differ from Dos Sants’ result if Alckmar really develops his idea. I do not measure a “digital literary” index but the “distance” between the work and the form it could have if it was a video or a printed work. This “analogic reference” can be built by recording the multimedia aspect of the work. The “digital degree” of the work does not treat its literary aspect, it only characterises its divergence with analogic classical works.

(source: ELO 2015 Conference Catalog)

Primary Text: Marko Niemi’s Stud Poetry, a demo of which would run during the presentation.

The paper opens with a brief discussion of the inherently conservative nature of the ELO’s definition of electronic-literature and the critical tendencies which this encourages. It has a strong focus on those critics who identify the forms which electronic literature has taken as an extension of modernist experimentation in the Twentieth Century, while disregarding the new possibilities which programmable media furnishes the poet with.

These possibilities are manifest in Niemi’s Stud Poetry, a text which has been consistently overlooked since its publication, perhaps because it presents a challenge to the dominant critical trends. Stud Poetry cannot fully be understood in terms of print-based modernist experimentation, Dada or Burroughs, because it would be impossible to achieve without a computer program. Niemi wrote the code which ‘writes’ each poem/game.

‘The text’ is thus suspended somewhere in between each iteration as it appears to the user, and the overarching structure provided by the code. Niemi selects the program’s vocabulary, the rules which it must adhere to, the inputs which a user can make, and the probabilities which determine the text’s production, but remains one step removed from the text as it appears on screen. Some control, in the shape of the buttons at the bottom of the screen, is given over to the user- who plays the role of glamorous assistant to Niemi’s conjurer and follows his prompts as the poem/game progresses.

The only serious attempt to critique this relationship as it exists within Stud Poetry is available on C. T. Funkhouser’s New Directions in Poetry website after it was omitted from the print version. Funkhouser’s reading is fundamentally flawed as he misreads the code and believes it impossible to learn from each hand. The value of the words is calculated only once, at the beginning of the game and not at the beginning of each hand as Funkhouser has it. Through experience of the text, the user gains increasing control of it as they understand the value of each word, and can predict with increasing accuracy the way the poem/game will proceed, while recognizing that an element of uncertainty is involved. The element of competition quickly creates a narrative.

With its random-generation and interactivity, Stud Poetry is authored by Niemi without being controlled by him. He uses internet poker as a form, as a print poet might use a sonnet, but his is the more radical utilisation as it challenges what can be conceived of as literature, and where ‘the text’ may be in a work of this kind. His poem/game embodies the challenge which electronic literature poses to print literature, and should be recognised with discussion at a major conference rather than becoming an anomaly or outlier of the Electronic Literature Collection.

(Source: Author's abstract at ELO 2013)