Anthology of Belén Gache's net-poems produced between 1996 and 2006 and one of her most widely known pieces. Here she proposes the exercise of reading as a decoding task as well as a ludic activity. The fourteen net-poems in this anthology are rooted in the historical avant-gardes, using strategies as randomness, tautology, appropriations, and are influenced by concrete and conceptual writing.
"This poem from the Wordtoys allows any user to rewrite Don Quixote through its interface. As the famous Borges's Pierrre Menard would do, here, regardless of what a user enters into the word processor that is offered to us as the poem's interface, the program returns Cervantes's text. The keystrokes that one carries out on the keyboard stop corresponding to the output shown on the screen, this being totally out of the control of the now writer-creator."
-Alex Saum-Pascual
"Este poema de los Wordtoys permite a cualquier usuario reescribir el Quijote a través de su interfaz. Tal como haría el famoso Pierrre Menard de Borges, aquí, independientemente de lo que una usuaria introduzca en el procesador de texto que se nos ofrece como interfaz del poema, el programa le devuelve el texto de Cervantes. Las pulsaciones que una lleve a cabo en el teclado dejan de corresponderse al output que se muestra en la pantalla, estando este totalmente fuera de control del ahora escritor-creador."
-Alex Saum-Pascual
#Postweb
Alex Saum-Pascual
The appearance of new technologies and their exponential growth for several decades has changed our way of understanding knowledge. Although it is already a topic that is part of the contemporary background, it is worth remembering that digital culture and the possibilities of the internet have meant a radical change, only comparable, according to Alejandro Baricco, to the printing revolution.
The incorporation of the network and transmedia resources into the literary environment is fostering new poetics; new forms of textuality that, according to Joan-Elies Adell, go beyond the book and turn the computer or any mobile device into the natural space of the work. Hypertext, interaction, video game ... The very essence of literature is changing. Writers who think of the word in conjunction with HTML code, geolocation, processing or other programming tools. With their creations they come to expel us from our areas of literary comfort.
We are talking about jobs designed for the network, that new agora. We are talking about hypermedia works that, in contrast to orality or printed tradition, investigate within what Ernesto Zapata defines as electronality. We are talking simply about literature in the post-Gutenberg era.
In the 17th century, Leibniz proposed to create an encyclopedia that would bring together all the fields of human knowledge. This led him to be interested in the works of Raimundo Llull, Athanasius Kircher or John Dee and to anticipate the ideas of Vannevar Bush or Ted Nelson by several centuries.The book of the end of the world is also constituted as an encyclopedia, only, in this case, it is an unfinished and open corpus, providing a questioning about the space of identities and differences according to which we distribute, recognize and name our world.Reminiscent of Aloysius Bertrand, Marcel Schwob, or medieval bestiaries, The Book of the End of the World proposes the creation of different possible worlds, autonomous universes, each with its own order, laws, and regularities.The inclusion of hypertext works and the link to the book's site on the Internet emphasize the notions of non-linearity and bifurcation implicit in the conception of the work.
En el siglo XVII, Leibniz propuso crear una enciclopedia que reuniera todos los campos del conocimiento humano. Ésto lo llevó a interesarse por los trabajos de Raimundo Llull, Athanasius Kircher o John Dee y adelantarse en varios siglos a las ideas de Vannevar Bush o Ted Nelson.El libro del fin del mundo se constituye igualmente como una enciclopedia sólo que en este caso se trata de un corpus inacabado y abierto, proporcionando un cuestionamiento acerca del espacio de identidades y diferencias según las cuales distribuimos, reconocemos y nombramos nuestro mundo.Con reminiscencias de Aloysius Bertrand, Marcel Schwob o los bestiarios medievales, El libro del fin del mundo plantea la creación de diferentes mundos posibles, universos autónomos, cada uno con su propio orden, leyes y regularidades.La inclusión de trabajos hipertextuales y el vínculo con el sitio del libro en Internet enfatizan las nociones de no linealidad y bifurcación implícitas en la concepción de la obra.
This work started to be built in the year 2013, out of scripts, texts writing, musical composition, and a crime investigation (aside from the compilation of images from the web) that I carried out during previous years as if gathering pieces from a puzzle. “Hotel Minotaur” first was entitled “It`s Enough to Open a Hotel`s Doors” and I first started to visualize it when writer Fernando Marias, invited me to be part of his anthology “Solitude is the Home of the Monster” (Imagine Press, 2013), with a multimedia piece. To facilitate the reader`s turn from paper to the digital space a QR (Quick Response Code) in the book`s Codex was added.
Staging was possible due to the support of David Losada, who decisively contributed to the idea and the concept and brought the means of Maloka Media, and to the collaboration of Fidel Cordero (music), Jesus Jimenez (design and programming) and Paola Rey (production). Programming of “Hotel Minotaur” was brought to an end back in 2015 with subtle changes on both, text and interface and was part of the Conclusions to the Doctoral Thesis “Form and Core of the Multimedia Narrative” (Humanities, Carlos III University, brilliant cum laude, 2015).
It was first presented on the opening to the European Digital Literatures (House of Velazquez, Madrid, June, 2013) and since its advent it has been a subject to study, being included on the Ciberia Anthology (Madrid Complutense University). It has been translated into French by Christian Roinat and into English by Montague Kobbe.
Esta obra comenzó a construirse en 2013, a partir del guion, escritura de textos, composición de la música e investigación de un crimen (con la recopilación de imágenes en red) que realicé durante los años previos, como si reuniera piezas de un puzle. “Hotel Minotauro” se llamó primero “Basta con abrir las puertas de un hotel”, y comencé a visualizarla cuando el escritor Fernando Marías me invitó a participar en su antología “La soledad es el hogar del monstruo” (Imagine Press, 2013), con una pieza multimedia. Para que el lector pudiera saltar del papel al espacio digital se colocó un QR en el libro códice.
La puesta en escena fue posible gracias al apoyo de David Losada, que contribuyó de manera decisiva a la idea y el concepto, y aportó los medios de Maloka Media, y a la colaboración de Fidel Cordero (música), Jesús Jiménez (diseño y programación) y Paola Rey (producción).
“Hotel Minotauro” se terminó de programar en 2015, con sutiles cambios de texto e interfaz, y formó parte de las conclusiones de la tesis doctoral “Forma y fondo de la narrativa multimedia”(Humanidades, Universidad Carlos III, sobresaliente cum laude, 2015). Fue presentada por primera vez en la apertura de European Digital Literatures (Casa de Velázquez, Madrid, junio de 2013) y desde su aparición ha sido objeto de estudio, incluyéndose en la antología Ciberia (Universidad Complutense de Madrid). Ha sido traducida al francés por Christian Roinat y al inglés por Montague Kobbe.
"The Minotaur runs through the labyrinth. He follows the map that will take him to the woman who is capable of loving even a headless creature, and therefore, also a hybrid one like him".
"He's unaware of these paths. The labyrinth expands, or he loses his memory".
Work on We Descend began in 1984, when five words came unbidden into my mind: “If this document is authentic…” I had no idea what the phrase signified: Who’s saying this? What document? Why wouldn’t it be authentic? How would it be authenticated? By what authority? How would that authority be established? Where did the document come from in the first place? As I pondered these questions, a clutch of fragmentary writings began to appear under my hands — via the standard tech at the time: fountain pen, notebook paper, clipboard.
(Source: http://thenewriver.us/we-descend/)
The fragments generated by that original five-word phrase were eventually transferred from paper to a desktop Macintosh using Storyspace, an early hypertext authoring environment. Eventually, Volume One of We Descend reached publication in 1997 as a standalone computer application, distributed on floppy disk by Eastgate Systems. Twenty years later (in the wake of at least three revolutions in digital tech), Volume Two appeared here in The New River, built in HTML & CSS for reading on any internet device.
Luis Correa-Díaz se pregunta en esta serie de ensayos si la literatura electrónica está o no hoy por alcanzar esa velocidad de escape de la fuerza gravitacional de la literatura tradicional. ¿Cómo se negocia en esta época el valor literario, el estatus de lo escrito, la desaparición o permanencia del libro en esta etapa de transición y adaptación literaria?Pareciera haber en español una escasez de discursos críticos e iniciativas de estudio que den cuenta de estas significativas mutaciones culturales. De allí la especial importancia de este libro que se presenta de referencia obligada, especialmente para los estudios de obras iberoamericanas, en los que se centra esta publicación.
(Source: Belén Gache, Publisher's website)