Article in a print journal

By Scott Rettberg, 21 August, 2014
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Pull Quotes

For the last ten years or so, artists have changed their media to suit this situation, to the point where the media have broken down in their traditional forms, and have become merely puristic points of reference. The idea has arisen, as if by spontaneous combustion throughout the entire world, that these points are arbitrary and only useful as critical tools, in saying that such-and-such a work is basically musical, but also poetry. This is the intermedial approach, to emphasize the dialectic between the media. A composer is a dead man unless he composes for all the media and for his world.

By J. R. Carpenter, 23 June, 2014
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Journal volume and issue
6.3
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Abstract (in English)

In support of their belief that the truest test of a methodology is to apply it to a new set of questions/practices, Barbara Bridger and J.R. Carpenter embark on a conversation about Carpenter’s computer-­generated dialogue: TRAINS.MISSION [A.DIALOGUE]. As they attempt to find language appropriate to an extended notion of dramaturgy capable of both contributing to and critiquing a digital literary practice, their calls and responses to one another come to perform the form and content of the dialogue in question. The resulting discussion provides an example of putting performance writing methodology into practice.

Pull Quotes

JR

Perhaps the truest test of a methodology is to apply it to a new set of questions/practices. From the outset, Performance Writing recognized that one of the areas of its investigation would be the impact of the digital on the creation and display of writing.

BARBARA

And perhaps Performance Writing’s insistence on the active participation of language in the formation of meaning can contribute to the development of a dramaturgical practice capable of moving beyond traditional engagement with research, documentation and scripting and into a more integrated, generative role? I was asking this question and I was looking for something…. for some link… for a practice that spoke differently to these elements and this meant that I was more than ready for a particular conversation with JR Carpenter.

BARBARA

JR was describing a project she was working on called TRANS.MISSION [A.DIALOGUE] – a computer-generated dialogue, written in a programming language called JavaScript which, she said, generated a script for a poli-vocal performance. Listening to her description, I realized two things: one - that she was interpreting the word ‘script’ in a way that I had not considered before, and two - that my ‘expanded’ definition of dramaturgy might also encompass digital textual practices. I began to attempt a dramaturgical response.

By Alvaro Seica, 14 May, 2014
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89-102
Journal volume and issue
14:1
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0806-5063
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Abstract (in English)

This essay reflects on the shift of user interaction operated by online literary archives and databases. One can easily recognize a change of scenery happening in the current networked world, given the way authors and general public produce, catalog, tag, access, research, analyze, preserve and share knowledge.
In the field of electronic literature, the creation of several collaborative and open access databases attests this trend. For this purpose, I review two of them: the PO.EX Digital Archive of Portuguese Experimental Literature and the ELMCIP Electronic Literature Knowledge Base. My aim is to contribute to an informed view on how these online literary databases are shaped and are shaping the field: What is their scope? How do they operate? What kind of navigation and user input exists? Why should they really matter?
Finally, I use these insights to develop some considerations concerning the relations between memory and archive, and different perspectives on electronic literature preservation.

(Source: Author's Abstract)

By mez breeze, 6 May, 2014
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Abstract (in English)

This essay takes us into the bloody world of Quake, an online multi-player game, where we discover a thriving virtual community. Breeze also investigates what happens when members of this virtual community go offline in Wollongong, Australia.

Pull Quotes

The sense of shared purpose and behaviour exhibited by online Quake gamers indicate that this is one type of virtual community that has strong binding ties, which have developed through the evolution of the game from a single player template to a multiplayer environment.

By Alvaro Seica, 20 February, 2014
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Pages
148-171
Journal volume and issue
35.1 (Autumn 2008)
ISSN
0093-1896
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Abstract (in English)

New media, like the computer technology on which it relies, races simultaneously towards the future and the past, towards what we might call the bleeding edge of obsolescence. Indeed, rather than asking, What is new media? we might want to ask what seem to be the more important questions: what was new media? and what will it be? To some extent the phenomenon stems from the modifier new: to call something new is to ensure that it will one day be old. The slipperiness of new media—the difficulty of engaging it in the present—is also linked to the speed of its dissemination. Neither the aging nor the speed of the digital, however, explains how or why it has become the new or why the yesterday and tomorrow of new media are often the same thing. Consider concepts such as social networking (MUDS to Second Life), or hot YouTube videos that are already old and old email messages forever circulated and rediscovered as new. This constant repetition, tied to an inhumanly precise and unrelenting clock, points to a factor more important than speed—a nonsimultaneousness of the new, which I argue sustains new media as such.

(Source: Author's Introduction)

By Alvaro Seica, 13 December, 2013
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11-42
Journal volume and issue
1
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Abstract (in original language)

A teoria quântica, originariamente concebida como teoria física para ser aplicada à estrutura íntima da matéria e às propriedades paradoxais das micropartículas (electrões, protões, átomos, moléculas), encerra pressupostos filosóficos que abrem uma nova maneira de pensar a realidade. Sabemos o risco que comporta a extrapolação, tantas vezes fantasiosa, desta teoria para outros níveis de organização do real. No entanto, Lothar Schäfer (químico quântico) é peremptório em afirmar que não é só no campo da microfísica que tais propriedades se manifestam: “As moléculas são a base da vida e as moléculas são sistemas quânticos. Todas as coisas, pequenas ou grandes, existem em estados quânticos.” E o matemático Roger Penrose corrobora: “A mecânica quântica está omnipresente mesmo na vida quotidiana, e encontra-se no cerne de muitas áreas de alta tecnologia, incluindo os computadores electrónicos.” Longe a pretensão de invadir um domínio que não é o da nossa competência – são os pressupostos epistemológicos desta teoria que aqui nos importam, não a sua operacionalidade científica. Por isso não levaremos a nossa ousadia muito para além do direito de citar, propondo uma homologia entre o modelo quântico e a teoria do texto, homologia cuja aplicabilidade ao texto gerado por computador se nos afigura particularmente rica de potencialidades. As textualidades inauguradas com o advento da informática, caso do texto virtual, do texto automático, do texto generativo ou do hipertexto, requerem uma correspondente forma outra de encarar o texto e a construção do sentido.

(Fonte: Resumo do Autor)

By Alvaro Seica, 6 December, 2013
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Pages
181-188
Journal volume and issue
2.1
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Abstract (in original language)

Uma vez fundado o Centro de Estudos sobre Texto Informático e Ciberliteratura na Universidade Fernando Pessoa, unidade de investigação transdisciplinar que se propõe desenvolver não apenas uma reflexão teórica mas também uma prática criativa assente nas novas modalidades de texto nascidas com o advento da informática e das novas tecnologias digitais - com particular destaque para o texto automático, o texto dinâmico e o hipertexto - será oportuno explorar aqui uma delimitação definitória destes conceitos no seu âmbito de aplicação.

(Fonte: Introdução do Autor)

By Alvaro Seica, 4 December, 2013
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121-132
Journal volume and issue
11.2
ISSN
1382-5577
Record Status
Abstract (in English)

This article introduces EJES, vol. 11, issue 2, "New Textualities." It briefly outlines the relation between theoretical and technological changes that has led to a re-examination of textual forms in the digital age. Texts as both social text and technotext are tentatively explored in the context of remediation and proliferation of textual materialities that defines contemporary culture. The six articles contained in this issue deal with specific aspects of this linguistic and literary context, in which texts, metatexts and tools for analysing texts are fostering a new critical awareness of textual phenomena and textual representation.

(Source: Author's Abstract)