programming language

In my essay titled “Third Generation Electronic Literature” I describe this new wave of electronic literature as one “based on social media networks and widely adopted platforms and apps” which is less interested in the Modernist, avant garde, or experimental poetics of 2nd wave elit. In 2019, I described that relationship between generations as analogous to popular culture versus high culture divides. More recently Nacher (“Weeding” 2020) and Berens (“Decolonize” 2020) initiated a conversation that connects 3rd gen elit to decolonization of the field, and I elaborated on that idea in my 2021 lecture, titled “Technological Imperialism and Digital Writing,” by discussing the history of digital technologies, their spread throughout the world, and how they establish an imperialistic and colonial relationship with the world, situating the US and its allies at the center of a global digital empire.My proposed paper will examine key open and proprietary platforms-- such as programming languages, the Web, Unicode, Flash, iOS, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram-- focusing on their spread, access, cultural and ideological underpinnings, potential for electronic literature, audiences, and adoption. It will advance the claim that all these technologies are hegemonic, historically privileging and centering the US and its allies in an uneven relationship to the rest of the world by creating dependence on the platforms they develop and profit from. This analysis will be supported by the research and critiques of digital infrastructure, search engine platforms, the semantic capitalism of interfaces, and digital colonialism by Domenico Piermonte, Safiya Noble, Christian Ulrik Andersen and Søren Bro Pold, and Herbert Shiller, respectively. In highlighting some of the dependencies and varying barriers to access these platforms create I will interrogate the notion that open platforms like the Web or programming languages are less complicit than private commercial platforms in creating and perpetuating digital colonialism.The essay will expand on the work of Eugenio Tisselli, Rui Torres, and Claudia Kozak’s by exploring how electronic literature uses, engages, and challenges digital technologies enacting strategies of resistance against the political, commercial, and cultural underpinnings of digital platforms. I conclude by discussing how electronic literature-- of all generations-- helps advance the common goals of widespread adoption of digital writing practices and decolonization of the field while interrogating the usefulness of generational frameworks when considered in a global context.

Chris Crawford walks through Deikto, an interactive storytelling language that "reduce[s] artistic fundamentals to even smaller fundamentals, those of the computer: addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division."

The source is the essay-review on www.electronicbookreview.com written by Chris Crawford

In 1994, Australian artist and poet Mez Breeze began to develop an online language she named Mezangelle. Using programming language and informal speech, Mezangelle rearranges and dissects standard English to create new and unexpected meaning. Mez Breeze's overall approach to codework—online experimental writing that explores the relationship between machine and human languages—is imbued with a sense of playfulness and creativity. Her Mezangelle poetry has appeared throughout the internet for the last two decades under multiple names and connected to different avatars. 

(Source: Author)

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.

Rui Torres is Associate Professor at University Fernando Pessoa (UFP) in Porto and also author of several works of digital poetry. In this interview he explains how he started working in this field and where his inspiration comes from. Furthermore he explains why he sees the works of electronic literature as literary experiments and his concept of aesthetics taking in account his privilege for multimedia and the active participation of the readers in the creation of some his works. In the end he makes some considerations about preservation and archiving of works of electronic literature.

This article has aims on mapping and analyzing aspects of computer science, on how they affect creation, aesthetic reception and operating mode of digital poetry. Specifically, it means to look at the programming language as part of the creation and constitution of the digital literary work, as that which stands behind what is shown to the reader, as a restriction and potentiality of creation, and as a signifier in a construction that has its own materiality as a giver of meaning And finally, it intends on comprehending up to what point the knowledge of these modes and mediums are necessary for both the creation and reception of the digital literary works.

English Reference: TAVARES, O. G. "Considerations regarding the source code of digital poetry". Revista de Letras, São Paulo, v.50, n.2, p. 447-467, jul. /dez. 2010.

(Source: Author's Abstract)