hermeneutics

Engagement with public databases has become a leading way for scholars, artists, and readers alike to encounter works of electronic literature as well as get an overview of the field. Although acknowledged as an important and difficult process, database construction is, in practice, too often underestimated as merely a preparatory task in Digital Humanities. Through the conception of database criticism, I provide a critical apparatus to approach databases in terms of qualitative and aesthetic characteristics.

Considering public databases as media texts, I take a digital hermeneutic approach to the reading strategies involved in engaging with databases. What follows is the presence of databases as cultural artifacts that are themselves studied in humanities and social science frameworks. It is in the interest of both the quality and esteem of the databases to develop ways to study and evaluate them parallel to academic reviews of monographs and edited collections.

I offer a media-specific framework of four core vectors for database criticism: data and scope, experience, aesthetics, and labor. Building on Critical Data Studies, database criticism needs to identify the means and objectives of the database and thing along with those in reviewing the data. But a database is so much more than its data. A good database incites the pleasure of anticipation and this is determined by both the user and browsing experience. This is linked to the aesthetics of the database, which includes the accessibility of the database at its core. Finally, the explicit evaluation of labor addresses which value is placed on various tasks of developing and maintaining an academic database.

My call for database criticism opens up ways to revalue the databases as dissemination of research and provide the opportunity to highlight all elements that we wish to be part of the field going forward.

Gadamer draws heavily on the ideas of Romantic hermeneuticists such as Friedrich Schleiermacher and the work of later hermeneuticists such as Wilhelm Dilthey. He rejects as unachievable the goal of objectivity, and instead suggests that meaning is created through intersubjective communication.

Gadamer's philosophical project, as explained in Truth and Method, was to elaborate on the concept of "philosophical hermeneutics", which Heidegger in his Being and Time initiated but never dealt with at length. Gadamer's goal was to uncover the nature of human understanding. In the book Gadamer argued that "truth" and "method" were at odds with one another. He was critical of two approaches to the human sciences (Geisteswissenschaften). On the one hand, he was critical of modern approaches to humanities that modelled themselves on the natural sciences (and thus on rigorous scientific methods). On the other hand, he took issue with the traditional German approach to the humanities, represented for instance by Dilthey and Schleiermacher, which believed that correctly interpreting a text meant recovering the original intention of the author who wrote it.

In contrast to both of these positions, Gadamer argued that people have a 'historically effected consciousness' (wirkungsgeschichtliches Bewußtsein) and that they are embedded in the particular history and culture that shaped them. Thus interpreting a text involves a fusion of horizons (Horizontverschmelzung) where the scholar finds the ways that the text's history articulates with their own background. Truth and Method is not meant to be a programmatic statement about a new 'hermeneutic' method of interpreting texts. Gadamer intended Truth and Method to be a description of what we always do when we interpret things (even if we do not know it): "My real concern was and is philosophic: not what we do or what we ought to do, but what happens to us over and above our wanting and doing".

(Source: wikipedia)

Natural language generation (NLG) – the process wherein computers translate data into readable human languages – has become increasingly present in our modern digital climate. In the last decade, numerous companies specialising in the mass-production of computer-generated news articles have emerged; National Novel Generation Month (NaNoGenMo) has become a popular annual event; #botALLY is used to identify those in support of automated agents producing tweets. Yet NLG has not been subject to any systematic study within the humanities.

This paper offers a glimpse into the social and literary implications of computer-generated texts and NLG. More particularly, and in line with the ELO 2018 Conference’s 'Mind the Gap!' theme, this paper examines how NLG output challenges traditional understandings of authorship and what it means to be a reader. Any act of reading engages interpretive faculties; modern readers tend to assume that a text is an effort to communicate a particular pre-determined message. With this assumption, readers assign authorial intention, and hence develop a perceived contract between the author and the reader. This paper refers to this author-reader contract as ‘the hermeneutic contract’.

NLG output in its current state brings the hermeneutic contract into question. The hermeneutic contract’s communication principle rests on two assumptions: that readers believe that authors want them to be interested in their texts, and that authors want readers to understand their texts. Yet the author of a computer-generated text is often an obscured figure, an uncertain entanglement of human and computer. How does this obscuration of authorship change how text is received?

This paper will begin with an introduction to, and brief history of, NLG geared towards those with no previous knowledge of the subject. The remainder of the paper will review the results of a series of studies conducted by the researcher to discern readers’ emotional responses to NLG and their approaches to attributing authorship to computer-generated texts. Studies have indicated that a sense of agency is assigned to an NLG system, and that a continuum from authorship to generation is perhaps the most suitable schema for considering computer-generated texts. Who is responsible for the text? Are computer-generated texts worthy of serious literary analysis? What do computer-generated texts reveal about human creativity and lived experience?

The paper will conclude with an argument for why consideration of the social and literary implications of NLG and computer-generated texts is vital as we venture deeper into the digital age. Computer-generated texts may not just challenge traditional understandings of authorship: they may engender new understandings of authorship altogether as readers explore the conceptual gap between human and computer language production.

In Gerard Genette’s (1993; 1997) narratology, “rheme” is contrasted with “theme.” While themes are symbolic indications of what texts mean, rhemes are super-formal indications of texts themselves. The title of this article is highly thematic because it indicates much of that what is being discussed; a title like “Only an Article” would be highly rhematic due to its lack of indication of the subject matter at the expense of non-reflective form.

Veli-Matti Karhulahti has recently argued that the aesthetics of the videogame phenomenon are better understood through “rhematics” than the rhetoric of “meaning” that has so far dominated the analysis of cultural products, especially within literary studies:

While [videogame play] is essentially meaningless – there is no decipherable message to be understood – it is not senseless: there is a sensation to be understood. What exchanges (or more correctly, comes into being) is data that cannot be made known by signs. This sensible nonsense gives shape to an aporetic rhematic [that] cannot be understood by means of any conventional interpretative discipline, a new discipline is needed; a rhematic discipline. (Karhulahti 2013)

This paper introduces rhematics as an analytic tool that facilitates comprehending the multiplicity of aesthetic ends in electronic literature. It is suggested that the rhematics of electronic literature operate on two levels, the conceptual and the material. As the former has already been mapped out extensively by literary theorists through “poetic” functions (e.g. Burke 1941; Jakobson 1960; Eco 1989), the present focus is on the latter and its “configurative” functions (see Aarseth 1997; Eskelinen 2012). The material manipulation of electronic literary works is thus examined as an intrinsically rewarding mode of interaction that is not guided solely by hermeneutic methods of interpretation but also by cybernetic engagement (see Iser 2003).

The configurative competency of the e-reader, it is argued, must hence be taken as a serious contextual factor in electronic literary analysis. This also calls for an ontological problematization: if reading and literature are identified as noematic or hermeneutic entities, do extranoematic configurative aspects not conflict with the ‘literariness’ (cf. Randall 1988) of electronic literature?

(Source: ELO 2015 Conference Catalog)

Electronic poetry encompasses works very different from one another. Talking about electronic poetry as if it were just one creative form seems to be inaccurate. On the other hand the interest to be had in electronic poetry seems to reside exactly in the diversity which electronic poetry has to offer to its reader.
This paper will feature an empirical approach to electronic poetry. The aim of this paper is a two-fold goal. On the one hand it will study the “development” of electronic poetry, and our hypothesis is: the text is disappearing in e-poetry; and on the other it will compare e-poems written in different languages to see if there are differences of style in composing e-poetry.
By comparing some of the e-poems published in the Electronic Literature Collection Vol. 1 and 2 we will try to see if there have been any changes in creating electronic poetry in more than a decade (“Windsound”, by John Cayley was first published in 1999); and if yes how e-poetry has changed and is changing. The two mentioned goals are strictly connected since in the Second Volume of the Electronic Literature Collection 7 languages are represented by works, besides in English and French, in Catalan, Dutch, German, Portuguese and Spanish. Do different cultural backgrounds and literary traditions still affect the creation of a kind of poetry that for its medium seems to be global? And if so, how?
By using the descriptive approach systematic aspects of electronic poetry will be singled out in order to trace the changes in e-poetry. A hermeneutic and analytic work will also be done. Finally, by locating rhetorical figures, new media-figures, emerging aesthetic forms we will try to describe the new text puts forward by e-poetry.

(Source: ELO 2013 Author's abstract)

Contemporary “format disruptions” (Savikas) lead to a new experience and practice of scholarly publishing: it is global, virtual, and instantaneous. How does this apply to electronic literature? Elit works exist in a field of publication, characterized by circulation, commentary, and archiving. They are subject to complex corporate toolchains, software updates, social media, etc. The work is no longer just the work but the entirety of this field. Publication is no longer a single event or a single thing. Think of this in terms of Luhmann’s systems theory: the differentiating distinction between artistic production and critical discourse is shifted; the difference made by artwork - its “poetics” - is now systematically linked to critical discourse.

Our essay is a call for editors and publishers of works on / about elit to become active participants in the process of creating the entire work and in creating the field around works of elit. Traditionally editors were invisible, working in the background. By contrast, the contemporary publishing situation - as well as the specifics of publishing on elit - enables publishers and editors to address the global with local realities of writers, the virtual with the material concerns of the text, and the instantaneous with the measured need for critical reading. We look at two case studies. The first is a discourse analysis of existing publications on elit. Scholarly publishing is already in a tight reflexive relation with elit works (e.g. the ELD). We recognize these contributions, but we also examine how in many cases the unevenness of the existing field of critical discourse re-distributes and re-names these works as dealing with “new media” or “electronic culture,” or similar topics. Our second case study is Po.Ex, a collection of essays on intermedia and cybertext by authors from Portugal, currently being co-edited with Rui Torres, and due to be published in 2013 by the Computing Literature series - releasing print and ebooks - developed at West Virginia University, in collaboration with the University of Paris 8. The three primary contributions of the book are: 1) a historical model of elit within a continuum of avant-garde writing stretching back to the Middle Ages; 2) a hermeneutic model for finding meaning in electronic literature through intermediality; and 3) a semiotic model for the computer as the cybernetic extension of human creativity and as an enabling medium for merging writers with readers as mutual authors (as wreaders). While these essays demonstrably shaped the field of elit, especially in Europe, their influence is limited because new generations of artists, critics, and students of elit do not have access to the works. Our case studies shows that scholarly publishing as a critical practice can address such limitations. Our overall claim is that publishing can organize and create the field of discourse for elit. We conclude with proposals and questions for future directions of critical publishing on elit.

(Source: Authors' abstract ELO 2013: http://conference.eliterature.org/critical-writing/editing-electronic-literature-global-publishing-system)

Cyborg Tactics and Perilous Hermeneutics in Lexia to Perplexia Shifts in materiality across space¬—from monitor to cell phone screen, from private bedroom to public bus—alter experience and sway meaning. But time also entails an expectation of change that sometimes never comes: works of electronic literature often go without the steady updates to security, appearance, and functionality that corporate software enjoys, turning into strange ruins that, if not broken, carry that possibility. Eight years after the publication of Katherine Hayles’s Writing Machines, my paper returns to one of the book’s case studies, Talan Memmott’s Lexia to Perplexia, with the goal of investigating the effects of the passing years on the hermeneutics instilled in the user by the text. Focusing on the instability that time and software evolutions have sown, I argue that in this uncertain environment, the recourse of the user is a heightened emphasis on investigation, experimentation, and attempted recovery. With these motivations in mind, I turn to various palimpsests in the text, features of Lexia that straddle the divide between the literary technique and the glitch. Palimpsests are marks of the broken Web, a layering generally born not from experimental poetics but coding errors, and in puzzling over their status and possible meanings, the user explores the tactics required/allowed/prohibited in their interpretation. Full engagement with the text requires that the user turn to capabilities of the computer beyond the browser—copying and pasting, modifying human memory, extending human sight: becoming a good cyborg. The interactive text is read by doing, and in Lexia doing entails experimentation and brings with it the possibility of danger. As the text’s content foregrounds human-machine intersections, the enactment of these tactics brings the text’s meaning closer to the body of the user—in painting a potentially perilous picture of human-machine interactions, the old and possibly broken text may be more effective than its original, new and shiny, manifestation(Source: Author).

The increasing presence of digital media forms our new understanding of community and calls for a closer examination of the culture of networks we are participating in. A central point of interest concerning our culture becomes the convergance of Arts, Entertainment, and Digital Interactive Media Technologies. These change the way we perceive arts, daily news or have an impact on how we communicate with each other. In his new book, Roberto Simanowski refers to Gerhard Schulze's socio-logical theory of the Event Society (Erlebnisgesellschaft, 1992), observing that nowadays social events ostensibly take place on the Internet. Along with discussions on the politics of the World Wide Web and its participatory values, Simanowski focuses on the significance of digital media in artistic practices. He considers interactive art as a key to the understanding of the event society. Choosing a hermeneutic approach to analyse "processing signs" in arts, Simanowski defends participatory art against Adorno's notion of distraction. The author prooves, in a number of case studies, that interactive art calls for both immersion and cognitive reflection.

In this study, I have chosen "hypertext" as the central concept. If we define hypertext as interconnected bits of language (I am stretching Ted Nelson's original definition quite a lot, but still maintaining its spirit, I believe) we can understand why Nelson sees hypertext "as the most general form of writing". There is no inherent connotation to digital in hypertext (the first hypertext system was based on microfilms), but it is the computerized, digital framework - allowing the easy manipulation of both texts and their connections - which gives the most out of it. In addition to the "simple" hypertexts, there is a whole range of digital texts much more complex and more "clever", which cannot be reduced to hypertext, even though they too are based on hypertextuality. Such digital texts as MUDs (Multi User Domains - text based virtual realities) are clearly hypertextual - there are pieces of text describing different environments usually called "rooms" and the user may wander from room to room as in any hypertext. At the same time, however, there are several other functions available for the user, she may talk with other users, write her own rooms, program objects performing special tasks, or, solve problems and collect game points.

 Hypertextuality and hypertext theory do not help us much (if at all) in understanding this kind of textual functionality. For that we need cybertext theory. Cybertextuality is - as Espen Aarseth has defined it - a perspective on all texts, a perspective which takes into account and foregrounds the functionality of all texts. From the cybertextual point of view all texts are machines which perform certain functions and which have to be used in a certain way. Also, the reader may be required to perform some functions in order to be able to read the texts, or, she may be allowed to act as an active participant inside the textual world.

Cybertextuality, then, is not only about digital texts, but because digital form allows much more freedom to textual functionality, there is much more need for cybertext theory in the field of digital texts than in print text. (1) So, keeping in mind cybertextuality is a perspective on all texts, we can use the term cybertext in a more limited sense to refer to functional digital texts - this means that all digital texts are not necessary cybertexts (plain text files like in the Project Gutenberg archives, or, e-texts in pdf format are no more functional than average print texts).

Now we can better define the scope of this study. The theoretical framework is a combination of cybertext theory and more traditional theory of literature. The focus is on hypertext fiction, even though several other text types - digital and non-digital, literary and non literary, fiction and poetry - are also discussed. To deepen the understanding of hypertext fiction and its reading, quite of lot of attention is paid to the evolutionary line of print fiction which seems to be a major influence in the background. That aspect explains the first part of the subtitle, "From text to hypertext", with an emphasis on the transitory phase we are witnessing. On the other hand, the approach is open to the latent aspects of the hypertexts discussed, which already refer to the wider cybertextual properties - because of that the "and Beyond". In the main title, "Digital Literature", literature is used in a narrow ("literary") sense. The method is inductive in that through scrutinizing individual, concrete exmples, a more general understanding of the field is sought after. Through not trying to include all the possible digital text types in this study I aim to be more analytic than descriptive.

This work should be seen as a collection of independent papers - some of them are previously published, some are still waiting for a proper forum. Most of them have started as seminar papers. I have used the opportunity to make some corrections and changes to the articles previously published (mainly to reduce redundancy, or, to add materials cut out from the publications) - thus, the chapters of this study are not identical with published versions.

In the first chapter of this study I will give a description of the various traditions behind digital literature, of characteristic properties of digital literature, and, the basics of cybertext theory. I consider various hypertext studies belonging as a part to the broader category of cybertext theory.

The second chapter, "Hyperhistory, Cybertheory: From Memex to ergodic literature", is an overview of cybertext theory, circling around Aarseth's theory of cybertext and ergodic literature. Various other approaches are discussed, and integrated to the theoretical framework. For understanding cybertext theory, a historical glance to the development of hypertext systems (and ideologies behind them) is necessary. The integration of hyper- and cybertheories is still very much in progress - hopefully this chapter contributes to that integration.

In the third chapter "Replacement and Displacement. At the limits of print fiction", several novels and stories are scrutinized from the cybertextual perspective. The aim of the chapter is to show the various ways in which print fiction has anticipated hypertextual practices.

The fourth chapter, "Ontolepsis: from violation to central device" focusses on the narrative device which I have dubbed ontolepsis. Ontolepsis covers different kinds of "leaks" between separate ontological levels (inside fictional universe). Metalepsis, the crossing of levels of embedded narration, is one type of ontolepses, and certainly so far the most studied one. There is a rather lengthy discussion of fictional ontology, and its relation to narrative levels, because these are essential topics in understanding the phenomenon of ontolepsis in all its forms. A science fiction novel, Philip K. Dick's Ubik, is used as an example, because its multilayered ontology serves perfectly in illustrating the multifarious nature of ontolepsis. In fiction, ontolepses have been seen as violations of certain conventions - the latter part of the chapter discusses how in hypertext fiction ontolepsis has become a central narrative device.

In the fifth chapter, "Visual structuring of hypertext narratives", three hypertexts, Michael Joyce's Afternoon, Stuart Moulthrop's Victory Garden, and Shelley Jackson's Patchwork Girl, are analyzed stressing their navigation interfaces and use of "spatial signification". Narratological questions are also foregrounded.

Chapters six and seven, "Reading Victory Garden - Competing Interpretations and Loose Ends" and "In Search of Califia" form a pair. They are rather lengthy analyses, or, interpretations, of Stuart Moulthrop's Victory Garden, and M. D. Coverley's Califia. In the end of Califia chapter, the question of interpreting hypertexts is discussed. Two forms of interpretative practice, hermeneutics and poetics, seem to have their own roles in regard to hypertexts.

The next chapter, "Negotiating new reading conventions" focusses on reading. In this chapter I'll look at how traditional reading conventions, on the one hand, still inform hypertext reading, and on the other hand, how hypertexts themselves teach new reading habits, and how new reading formations are negotiated.

The final chapter, "Hypertext Fiction in the Twilight Zone" is a kind of summary. It suggest that fiction based on "pure" hypertext may be closing its end, and at the same time, looks at the cybertextual means which have appeared to fertilize the field anew. In the horizon there are computer games, virtual realities and other massively programmed forms towering, but also a possibility for a new literature.

(Source: Author's Abstract)