Digital literature is based on tensions that contribute to establishing its specificity: tension on the devices, on the programmed writing, on the media and on the aesthetic experience. The word tension does not necessarily mean conflict, but rather suggests the deconstruction of the obvious on both sides; it can be a creative tension.
- Tension on devices
Digital literature stresses the tension between the cultural, literary and artistic forms inherited from the printed world and those born with the Digital. The tension regarding devices does not only refer to the tension between the digital medium and the printed medium, but also to the tension between the various devices used to render the work (in the framework of an installation or a performance e.g.).
- Tension on the programmed writing
A program makes it possible to define in advance the manipulation of units that will be executed automatically. On the other hand, writing can be defined as a system of expression that reflects thinking. One can thus identify a tension between the program (which is an automatic manipulation of symbolic inscriptions) and writing (which is a device used to externalize memory and thinking). On the one side a form of closure, on the other the possibility of the expression of meaning. The challenge is to create a space for new meaning from an initial impossibility. There is thus a tension between programming and writing, which is a creative tension.
- Tension on the media
Technically, thanks to the digital, all media (linguistic text, image, sound, video) are encoded in the same way, i.e. in binary form. But from a semiotic point of view, they retain properties inherited from cultural traditions. Thus tension arises between the technical potentialities made possible by the digital and the semiotic properties of these different media, as well as the way they make sense together and are transformed by this inter-semiotisation.
- Tension on the aesthetic experience
There is a tension between the contemplation of the revealing of meaning and the physical action which is necessary for this revealing. Indeed the creations of digital literature often rely on devices in which the reader acts, composes, constructs. Is this experience, which is based on gestural activity, compatible with an aesthetic experience - or even an aesthetic revelation? The creative tension here is between the openness to meaning which requires the reader to be ready and available, and the closure of the device which requires him/her to be be busy, active, engaged. The device has to entail an aesthetic experience, which can not only be based on “doing”.
I will show these tensions through examples. All these tensions are not new with digital literature, but they are probably raised anew. It is on the basis of these creative tensions that digital literature can build its identity and consider new perspectives.
(Source: Author's abstract)
