Article in an online journal

Due to the constant threat of technological obsolescence, documentation practices of archiving and database construction are of vital importance, to warrant that artists and scholars can continue developing and understanding this field of practice and study. To this end, multiple e-lit databases are being developed in the context of research projects.Within the field of Digital Humanities, database construction is too often regarded merely as a preparatory task. But from the perspective of its developers, the e-lit database is both a research space, a form of dissemination, and a cultural artefact in itw own right. By no means neutral containers, database carry out diverse processes including storage, distribution, and exposition. Scholarship and artistic practice entangle: scholars attempt to document and research a field. Artists interrogate the database structure in their works, and the production of databases further develops the field, which leads to more (varied) creation and dissemination of electronic literature.This article examines how the database form increasingly in-forms and infiltrates electronic literature and becomes an aesthetic in its own right. We compiled a research collection in the ELMCIP (Electronic Literature as a Model for Creativity in Practice) Knowledge Base, consisting of works that reflect on the fact that they are part of a database, by taking on its formal characteristics. We consider how scholarship and artistic practice entangle: scholars attempt to document and research a field, and artists interrogate the database structure in works and the production of databases develops the field, which leads to more (varied) production of electronic literature.We analyze three works of electronic literature: Identity Swap Database by Olia Lialina and Heath Bunting (1999), Dictionary of the Revolution by Amira Hanafi (2017), and Her Story (2016) by Sam Barlow. Embedded in the database, these works reflect a variety of roles for databases in digital culture. Our analyses will shed light on the multifarious roles that databases play in the field of electronic literature—as storage of information, platforms for dissemination, artistic artefacts, and as a methodological tools for critical thinking about the construction of the field itself. In particular, we focus on three functions of databases that are amplified by electronic literature: reflection on online appropriation of identity and data use; commemoration or preservation; and an exercise in empathy.

Text in its nature and very architecture is anxious, it is neurotic. It is only held in a seemingly apparent stasis. A work with text is never truly finished but ceased. The paragraph is a shivering mass of bent lines as is a single sentence. The systematic function of text is to infer a voice in a code of bent lines and spaces between. The sculptural nature of the lines of letters is akin to an exhibition of forms encoded with implied speech and thought. It also is like the ground awaiting crack and quake, like the sky waiting to break open in rain, like the nervous shudder of breeze from calm.

Read more: http://www.neme.org/texts/text-is-not-static 

The hypertext fiction writer tries to spin compelling story strands, laboring with textures and colors in the hope that a compelling reading fabric will be wrought from them. Yet however vibrant and interesting the threads themselves may be, if the digital loom is too hard to operate, the fabric may not get made. Tim McLaughlin understands this well. His Notes Toward Absolute Zero (Eastgate Systems, 1995) offers not just quality writing but also an unusually accessible hypertext implementation. I have found that these qualities make it an especially good introduction to the genre for neophyte hyper-readers. Notes has been particularly reliable in producing satisfying story cloth for students in the hypertext literature class I have taught for several years.

I consider the role of the source code of generative literature in the process of meaning making. The significance of code in the cultural meaning of generative works means the source code becomes a key factor to explore in literary studies. I use Critical Code Studies (Marino) which rejects the practice of only analyzing the output of electronic literature and instead proposes to look at code from a humanities perspective as an integral part of coded literature. To specify this emerging field specifically for generative literature, I propose a distinction between three levels on which the code is involved in the meaning-making process of generative literature: the linguistic level, the literary level. and the cultural level. On the linguistic level, I draw from structuralism, using Jakobson's notions of selection and combination as outlined in "Two aspects of language and two types of aphasic disturbances". Generative literature shows the meaning of language explicitly via selection and combination of linguistic units, and adds to this process a literary meaning employing the process of chiasm and overwriting. To do justice to the complexity of the materiality of coded literature on a literary level, I link this to Brillenburg et al's reference to Lyotard's notion of chiasm as excess of meaning and Dworkin's notion of neglected perspectives. Moreover, the source code is positioned as a trope for objectivity, as it does not embody the same cultural biases as one expects from intention-typical research. On a cultural level, I argue that source code is positioned as a trope of objectivity, as the randomness of generation supposes an emptiness of cultural bias.

(author abstract)

In this paper, I investigate the database characteristics of electronic literature that makes them into social forms. Database structures are both fragmented and relational, displaying hypertext characteristics. I approach The Atlas Group Archive and haikU, two works of electronic literature, as examples of material and conceptual databases in order to explore the database function so saturated in our daily life. Both works highlight a database aesthetics, although the ways they do so are polar opposites. I analyze the works within the framework of digital hermeneutics, continuously considering the relationship between text and context, between parts and whole. I demonstrate how AGA is an explicit database, supposedly showing a 'complete' archive, whereas haikU is an implicit database that hides the corpus of sentences. I show the sociality of the databases, thematizing both the human process behind database formation as a whole, as well as how the individual elements influence the perception of the overall database. Finally, I take my findings to a broader perspective and consider what AGA and haikU can teach us about the materiality, conceptuality, and sociality of the omnipresent structure of the database.(Source: abstract in ACM Digital Library)

"Don't Eat the Yellow Hypertext: Notes on Figurski at Findhorn on Acid" is a personal essay by Richard Holeton that describes the creative process behind the acclaimed hypertext novel Figurski at Findhorn on Acid.

In 1996, Holeton took part in Robert Kendell's online writing class on "Hypertext Poetry and Fiction" at the The New School for Social Research. The first draft of Figurski at Findhorn on Acid was produced as his class project. Holeton continued to refine the novel over the next five years, releasing the first full version through Eastgate publishers in 2001.

Holeton's essay was published online as a supplement to Robert Kendell's article "Minding the Frontier: Teaching Hypertext Poetry and Fiction Online," which appeared in the Kiaros special issue on Computers and Writing in 1998. In the article, Kendell cites Holeton as one of those students who felt at home working in the hypertext form because he treated it as a "natural outgrowth of the way [he has] already been reading and writing" (Kendall online).

Holeton's essay offers many insights into the production of the iconic hypertext work, including the history of the various drafts and an outline of the planned structure. The essay is, itself, a hypertext work, with a clickable table of contents and numerous links that offer supplementary information and make connections between subjects.

Works Cited

Holeton, Richard, "Don't Eat the Yellow Hypertext: Notes on Figurski at Findhorn on Acid" Kairos, vol. 3, no. 2, 1998, http://technorhetoric.net/3.2/response/Kendall/holeton/. Accessed 29 Oct. 2019.

Kendall, Robert, "Minding the Frontier: Teaching Hypertext Poetry and Fiction Online" Kairos, vol. 3, no. 2, 1998, http://technorhetoric.net/3.2/binder.html?response/Kendall/Kendall.html. Accessed 29 Oct. 2019.