Book (M.A. Thesis)

The aim of current thesis is to propose an applicable model of an archive for works of digital and electronic literature in the context of a media laboratory that would document, collect, preserve and maintain works by native artist/authors in the Turkish scene. This thesis is both intended as a co-mediation that investigates and critiques the material infrastructure of the contemporary archival practices with a trajectory on the now-speculative forms of archival evolution such as DNA- storage through a media archaeological observance of existing examples of media laboratories that focus on the preservation of works of digital and electronic literature; and, rendered as a proposal for an actual archival project that would be utilized so as to establish a certain media laboratory for the archival, collection, documentation, preservation and maintenance of such literary works that defy the print-culture-bound dimension of traditional humanities. It aims to encourage the mediated thinking. By employing works of digital and electronic literature as digital objects, it also provide an ontological grounding for the media inherent thereof. Throughout the thesis, a media archaeological critique is reached in terms of contemporary archival studies through the notion of World Literature, that is the base of Comparative Literature, in order that a sense of interdisciplinary practice may be developed with media studies at large and computational arts for the betterment of knowledge preservation, and sharability thereof.

Keywords: Archive, Digital Literature, Electronic Literature, Media Archaeology, Media Laboratory

A deep analysis on the birth of Italian Electronic Literature in the 90's, with a special focus on "Ra-Dio", the first Italian hypertextual novel, written by Lorenzo Miglioli.

The work aims also to analyze the development of electronic literature by examining the work of associations such as ELO and ELMCIP, and to highlight the connections with Italo Calvino's postmodernist theories about combinatory literature.

This thesis explores how various computer programs
construct poems and addresses the way several critics
respond to these computer generated texts. Surprisingly,
little attention has heretofore been paid to these programs.
Critics who have given the matter attention usually focus on
only one of the myriad programs available, and more often
than not, such scholarship concludes with a disparagement of
all such projects. My work reexamines computer generated
poetry on a larger scale than previously exists, positing
some conclusions about how these texts affect contemporary
theories of authorship and poetic meaning.
My first chapter explicates the historical debate over the
use and limits of technology in the generation of text,
studying similitudes between certain artistic movements and
computer poetry. This historical background reveals that
the concept of mechanically generated text is nothing new.
My second chapter delineates how the two main families of
computer poetry programs actually create these texts.
Computer programs combine existing input text, aleatory
functions, and semantic catalogues, which provides insight
into how humans both create and interact with these
programs. At the same time, this study illustrates the
difficulty in defining the level of intention and influence
by individuals on the textual product, and therefore these
texts challenge our traditional notions of authorship and
the value of poetry. My third and final chapter argues that
contemporary literary theory and poetics creates the
conditions under which computer generated poetry can pose as
a human product. The success of these programs to deceive
readers about the origins of the text becomes clearer with
the results of a survey I conducted in which the respondents
were fooled by the machine more often than not. This
possibility of machine-created text masquerading as human
art threatens many critics, who quickly dismiss the process
and its results as non-poetic, but I conclude that since the
computer complicates foreknowledge of origin in some
contemporary poetic forms, this intrusion by the machine
prompts us to reconsider how we traditionally value and
interpret poetry.

The Intruder, Dakota and Faen. Nå har de senka takhøyden igjen. Må huske å kjøpe nye knebeskyttere are regarded as considerable works within the field of electronic literature. The works are made by Natalie Bookchin, Young Hae-Chang Heavy Industries and Tor Åge Bringsværd, and have strong bonds to the literary tradition. While using different aspects of the digital media to convey their stories, the three texts are retelling stories from earlier works of literature. The Intruder is built on a short story by Jorge Louis Borges, Dakota is a reading of Ezra Pounds Canto I and II and the third text is a html-version of a print short story by Bringsværd. With great variation in their use of different modalities, such as images, sound and animation, the retelling of these narratives are shaped by the digital works different semiotic meanings and materialities. By using a comparative method, the close readings of these works is more specifically examining: How does the digital texts physical material and context contribute to shaping the narration in The Intruder, Dakota and Faen. Nå har de senka takhøyden igjen. Må huske å kjøpe nye knebeskyttere? Through comparing these three digital works I look at the way they form their narratives and emphasize the act of reading, through means such as intertextual references and the remediation of older media.

This dissertation aims at comprehending interactivity in the digital work of art, through the perspective of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology. For such, I combine a general
objective – that of mapping mechanisms and strategies of interactivity in digital poetry – and
a specific objective – that of reading Rui Torres’ work Amor de Clarice – with the intention of better understanding both through their constant dialogue, on how they intercross, as to finally comprehend the process of interaction in digital work of art. For this purpose I return to
poems from the Iberian and Brazilian Baroque, Portuguese Experimentalism and French OuLiPo; being these, printed creations in which material construction and medium (physical support) are held as signifying elements of the work, as parts of the construction of meaning, which proposes to the reader a program to be understood for and in the act of reading, in which the procedural aspect of writing and reading become evident. To show how this occurs I utilized texts from writer-critics such as Ana Hatherly, Italo Calvino, Georges Perec, and Raymond Queneau, in whose works one may perceive this procedural aspect. In the final stage, I return to the digital medium and its techniques to examine, through phenomenology, the proximity between creation and interaction as expressive acts in the world, as the encountering of horizons, as acts that solicit us to inhabit the medium, allowing us to bring objects to our bodies and allowing them to participate in our being in the world.

(Source: Author's Abstract)

The investigation subject of this dissertation is the configuration of erotic verbal lyrism and erotic virtual lyrism based on reflection sonnets by Florbela Espanca (1894 – 1930) and digital verses/poems by Rui Torres (1973). The sonnets were selected from Poemas Florbela Espanca, by Florbela Espanca and organization by Maria Lúcia Dal Farra and the digital verses/poems “Amor-mundo, ou a vida, esse sonho triste” from the electronic address www.telepoesis.net, by Rui Torres. Our purpose is to analyses the lyrism produced by both authors, indicating likeness and differences that the two lyrical forms manifests. The research problem-question was: is there a fusion between erotic verbal lyrism produced by Florbela Espanca and the erotic virtual lyrism produced by Rui Torres ? Or even better, assume that Florbela’s poetry produces a erotic lyrical voice, and the Rui Torre’s poetry, a virtual lyrical voice, we can tell that Torre’s poetry dialogues with the Florbela’s eroticism ? To conduct the investigation were selected the hypothesis: Rui Torres make use of in a virtual way, in his poems, poetics procedures from erotic verbal lyrism florbeliano, developing a dialogue with Florbela Espanca poetry; Rui Torres, in the moment he establish a fusion between his lyrism and Florbela’s, extended the florbeliano lyrism and reveal lyrical potency from the virtual environment. The critic and theorist are based on the specialist studies from the portuguese poet, like Maria Lúcia Dal Farra, erotic and poetic studies by Georges Bataille and Octavio Paz, researches from the literary and digital environment like Lúcia Santaella and Joan Campás. Among conclusions, stand out that sensuality, in both poets, is metaphorically represented, impelling the course from the erotic voice. The poetic speech manifests advocate of the representation and fruition from desire and pleasure.

(Source: Author's Abstract)

The project of dissertation “Le Livre and the Sintext: The simulation of Mallarmé’s dream through the digital poetics of Pedro Barbosa” intends to evidence the connection between these two works, apart in time line but very intimate considering their poetic ideals: the unfinished Mallarmé’s work "Le Livre", ideated on XIX century and the digital text
synthesizer, “Sintext”, anthological cyberliterary project, conceived by Pedro Barbosa and
José Manuel Torres in 2001.
Mallarmé’s masterpiece, the poem “Dice Thrown Never Will Annul Chance”, is probably the closest poetic experience of the “Livre”. This poem is, first of all, a poetic process, which the verses, distant one from the other and printed in various typefaces lead to a not lineal and limitless reading that offers the reader many entries and exits.
The research approaches, at first, the development of cyber literature from hypertext’s
paradigm by going trough the multimedia digital poetics, the ergodic literature until focusing
literary occurrences generated from a computer: the digital poetry, the generative literature
and the hyperfiction, according to Pedro Barbosa's proposal.
In this trajectory, authors like Jay David Bolter, George Landow, Jacques Derrida, Lev
Manovich, Lúcia Santaella, Giselle Bielguelman, Janet Murray, Espen Aarseth, Pedro Barbosa,
Chris Funkhouser, Rui Torres e Jorge Luiz Antônio are related.
The dissertation proceeds with a presentation of the French poet’s poetic work, and it
proposes a comparison between the “Sintext” and the “Livre”, by coming into view the
coincident points between these works, with the support of the work of the authors Maurice
Blanchot, Jacques Scherer, Arlindo Machado, Octavio Paz, beside the others before
mentioned.
The climax of the project is a poetic experimentation in a digital medium wich Mallarmé’s
poem “Dice Thrown Never Will Annul Chance” is submitted to a text engine similar to the
“Sintext”. The process is put into practice by a combinatorial operation with the verses of
poem; it will enable innumerable possibilities of re-combining the verses, amplifying the
meaning of the work and playing, by the digital poetics, the multiple and infinite book once
conceived by Mallarmé.

(Source: Author's Abstract)