Book (monograph)

J. Yellowlees Douglas looks at the new light that interactive narratives may shed on theories of reading and interpretation and the possibilities for hypertext novels, World Wide Web-based short stories, and cinematic, interactive narratives on CD-ROM. She confronts questions that are at the center of the current debate: Does an interactive story demand too much from readers? Does the concept of readerly choice destroy the author's vision? Does interactivity turn reading fiction from "play" into "work" - too much work? Will hypertext fiction overtake the novel as a form of art or entertainment? And what might future interactive books look like?

(Source: Book jacket)

"Bodies in Code explores how our bodies experience and adapt to digital environments. Cyberculture theorists have tended to overlook biological reality when talking about virtual reality, and Mark B. N. Hansen's book shows what they've been missing. Cyberspace is anchored in the body, he argues, and it's the body--not high-tech computer graphics--that allows a person to feel like they are really "moving" through virtual reality. Of course these virtual experiences are also profoundly affecting our very understanding of what it means to live as embodied beings. Hansen draws upon recent work in visual culture, cognitive science, and new media studies, as well as examples of computer graphics, websites, and new media art, to show how our bodies are in some ways already becoming virtual."

(Source: Publisher website)

This book takes a single line of code—the extremely concise BASIC program for the Commodore 64 inscribed in the title—and uses it as a lens through which to consider the phenomenon of creative computing and the way computer programs exist in culture. The authors of this collaboratively written book treat code not as merely functional but as a text—in the case of 10 PRINT, a text that appeared in many different printed sources—that yields a story about its making, its purpose, its assumptions, and more. They consider randomness and regularity in computing and art, the maze in culture, the popular BASIC programming language, and the highly influential Commodore 64 computer.

(Source: Publication website)

Traditional printed texts and hypertexts are not fundamentally different. Actually they have more in common than is commonly assumed, and they thus can be analysed well within the parameters of established categories of literary theory. Against this background it seems striking that a number of theoretical treatises by early hypertext theorists such as Landow, Bolter, or Joyce refer to the revolutionary character of this kind of writing, the amazing technological development that lies behind it, and the almost miraculous convergence of postmodern literary concepts and hypertext. These treatises can be criticised for foregrounding technological innovations to a disproportional extent, while lacking both elaborate theoretical foundation and support from actual close analyses of hypertextual narratives. Especially hypertexts which are published on the internet have not been accounted for in a substantial way. Therefore, the present dissertation aims to provide the necessary theoretical framework for a close literary analysis of hyperfiction on the internet.

Source: Author's Abstract

The study investigates manifestations of creativity in the history of the Russian Internet. It seeks to discover internal logic of the development of creative forms, to identify the factors that account for change and to analyse the relationship between Internet creativity and wider sociocultural contexts. Creativity is defined as production and communication of cultural value. On this basis an operational concept of Internet creativity is developed which allows identifying regularities in the phenomena which have been usually studied separately. Case studies concern the evolution of Russian online media, the virtual persona as an artistic genre, the Russian community on LiveJournal and Jokes from Russia web site. The theoretical issues include the role of cultural identity and social context as a shaping force of Internet culture; motivation for creativity; user contribution, collaboration and the interplay between personal and collective creativity; the opposition between official and non-official spheres in Russian culture; issues of censorship and free speech. The study develops theories which challenge or expand concepts established in research literature and provide a model for further research.

Source: citeseerx.ist.psu.edu

From Guy Debord in the early 1950s, to Richard Long, Janet Cardiff and Esther Polak more recently, contemporary artists have returned again and again to the walking motif. Debord and his friends tracked the urban ambiences of Paris to map the experience of walking at street level. Long trampled a path in the grass and snapped a picture of the result (A Line Made by Walking). Cardiff created sound walks in London, New York and San Francisco that sent the audience out walking. Mapping is a way for us to locate ourselves in the world, physically, culturally, or psychologically. Debord produced maps like collages that traced the “psychogeography” of Paris, while Polak and her team equipped nomadic Fulani herders in Nigeria and Cameroun (West Africa) with GPS devices and developed a robot to map their itineraries in the sand. Today, the convergence of global networks, online databases, and new tools for mobile mapping coincides with a resurgence of interest in walking as an art form. In Walking and Mapping, Karen O’Rourke explores a series of walking/mapping projects by contemporary artists. Some chart “emotional GPS”; some use GPS for creating landscapes made of data --“datascapes”-- while others use their legs to do “speculative mapping.” Many work with scientists, designers, and engineers. O’Rourke offers close readings of these projects--many of which she was able to experience firsthand--and situates them in relation to landmark works from the past half-century. She shows that the infinitesimal details of each work she considers take on more significance in conjunction with others. Together, they form a new entity, a dynamic whole greater than the sum of its parts. By alternating close study of selected projects with a broader view of their place in a bigger picture, Walking and Mapping itself maps a complex phenomenon.

Trans. of Genette, Gérard: Seuils. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1987.

Paratexts are those liminal devices and conventions, both within and outside the book, that form part of the complex mediation between book, author, publisher, and reader: titles, forewords, epigraphs, and publishers' jacket copy are part of a book's private and public history. In Paratexts, an English translation of Seuils, Gerard Genette shows how the special pragmatic status of paratextual declarations requires a carefully calibrated analysis of their illocutionary force. With clarity, precision, and an extraordinary range of reference, Paratexts constitutes an encyclopedic survey of the customs and institutions of the Republic of Letters as they are revealed in the borderlands of the text. Genette presents a global view of these liminal mediations and the logic of their relation to the reading public by studying each element as a literary function. Richard Macksey's foreword describes how the poetics of paratexts interacts with more general questions of literature as a cultural institution, and situates Genette's work in contemporary literary theory.

(Source: Jacket copy)