Interview

In this interview Serge Bouchardon resumes his many activities in the realm of digital media. Besides a professional background in e-learning and the activity as researcher and professor he has also authored a book about electronic literature and several literary works. He explains why in his book he chose the theories of structuralism to analyse a topic that reaches out to post-structuralism or post-modern theories. Furthermore he describes the way the aesthetics of the literary text changes in the digital context. He then ponders about the status of electronic literature in the field of academia and talks about his current projects.

Pedro Barbosa recalls in this interview his memories of the first studies and works of electronic literature back in the 1970s when he was a student at the University of Porto. Starting from considerations about his collaborative works he makes a comparison between printed literature tradition and the age of new media focusing on the paradigmatic change of this very transitional period with live in and the differences of the creative work. Furthermore he makes an interesting statement on regard of the aesthetics of new media by comparing works of electronic literature with the oral tradition. In the end he mentions some of the milestones of electronic literature that he considers important.

In this interview Michael J. Maguire also known as clevercelt writes about his development in the field of electronic literature both as creative writer and academic scholar. He gives some insights into the work of programming, his interest for computer games and the Phd thesis. The interview stands out for the many references to other authors.

Riccardo Giovanni Milanesi is creator and author of the two Web Series L’Altra (The Other Girl, 2011) and FableGirls (2012). In thi interview he explains how the work for the realization of L’Altra were carried out, an online project which was co-created with users/readers on FaceBook e published in real time. Moreover he announces the new Web Serie Vera Bes (2013).

In this interview Domenico Chiappe describes his works of both electronic literature and print literature published between the years 2000-2012. He gives insight into the interesting collaborative work for the work of electronic literature and ponders about the difference of the two forms of expressions: the printed book and new media. His then articulates discourse about the language of new media taking in account the SMS Literature and his concept of hiperphonia. On regard of the new possibilities provided by new media technology, he maintains that there should be a certain balance and harmony of the audio-visual effects and the written texts.

Fabrizio Venerandi is author of two novels published in form of hypertextual ebooks and also co-founder of the publishing house Quintadicopertina. In this interview he talks about the book series Polistorie (Polystories) and about the basic ideas that inspired this project. Recalling the experience he made with the groundbreaking work on the first MUD in Italy in 1990, Venerandi describes the relations between literature and video games. Starting from a comparison between print literature tradition and new media, at last, he faces the problems of creation and preservation of digital works.

Leonardo Flores tells about his beginnings in the field of electronic literature and his current project on electronic poetry. He then makes an in-depth description of the paradigmatic change from printed literature to electronic literature with special attention on the expectations of readers who are new to new media works and the tradition, so to speak, of experimentalism in literature. With the same accuracy he ponders about the status of science of electronic literature and ends the interview with some considerations about the important issue of preservation.

Rui Torres is Associate Professor at University Fernando Pessoa (UFP) in Porto and also author of several works of digital poetry. In this interview he explains how he started working in this field and where his inspiration comes from. Furthermore he explains why he sees the works of electronic literature as literary experiments and his concept of aesthetics taking in account his privilege for multimedia and the active participation of the readers in the creation of some his works. In the end he makes some considerations about preservation and archiving of works of electronic literature.

In this interview, Carlo Cinato, author of the hypertext novel L’uomo senza cappello e la donna con le scarpe grigie (The man without a hat and the woman with grey shoes) and curator of the blog Parolata, explains how he started getting interested in electronic literature and how he conceived his novel. Through the study of hypertextual and non sequencial books in printed form he discovered a new way of writing which was adaptable to the technical possibilities of the web and the ebooks. According to Cinato there are analogies between literary works of the print tradition and the digital tradition, but in particular the latter are characterised by the possibility of making a leap inside the text. The hypertextual structure alters the role of the reader, the materiality of the text, the way of reading and the way to write for an author. Moreover Cinato sees the writing of the novel as an experiment. It was an occasion to write by using one of the seven hypertext links he has pinpointed. In the end he explains in which way the hypertextual structure changes the way of reading and how it can be installed also in ebooks.

(Source: Interviewer's abstract)