Interview

By Daniele Giampà, 12 November, 2014
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Abstract (in English)

TheCoevas Strumentist di Parole is an group of authors or, as they define themselves, a literary band which created an interactive novel called TheCoevasIo interattivo (TheCoevas I interactive). The novel which was published in 2011 on the blog of the authors is accompanied by a medium-length documentary and is also published in form of printed book. Another characteristic of the novel is the variety of the online versions: iWork Apple, Powerpoint and pdf. As they explain in the interview, the project as a whole is conceived as an experiment of different ways of expressions and the work of writing is similar to the musical composition of a band. The very freedom of creativity is granted to the readers who can choose various audio-visual effects and narrative paths following their emotional and individual choices according to the demands of extemporaneity.

Abstract (in original language)

TheCoevas Strumentisti di Parole è un gruppo di autori o una band letteraria, come si definiscono loro, che ha creato un romanzo interattivo intitolato TheCoevasIo interattivo. Il romanzo che è stato pubblicato nel 2011 sul blog degli autori è accompagnato da un mediometraggio ed è anche stato pubblicato in forma di libro cartaceo. Altra particolarità del romanzo è la varietà delle versioni online: iWork Apple, Powerpoint e pdf. Come spiegano nell’intervista, il progetto nell’insieme è inteso come una sperimentazione di diverse forme espressive e il lavoro di scrittura è simile a una composizione musicale di una band. Questa libertà creativa viene concessa anche ai loro lettori che possono scegliere diversi effetti audio-visivi e percorsi narrativi in base a scelte emotive e individuali secondo le esigenze dell’estemporaneità.

By J. R. Carpenter, 17 March, 2014
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Abstract (in English)

Electronic Literature is a loaded and slippery category. It is rather dryly defined by the Electronic Literature Organization (what other art form needs a governing body?) as “works with important literary aspects that take advantage of the capabilities and contexts provided by the stand-alone or networked computer.” Does this mean everything or nothing?

If there’s one person who knows the ins and outs of e-Lit as a category and an institution, it’s J. R. Carpenter. The Canadian artist, writer, performer – and myriad other titles – first logged onto the internet in November 1993, and has been deeply invested in making work both online and off ever since. This work floats across all mediums: zines, novels, hypertext fictions and performances, all referencing and circling back on each other.

In February 2013, writer Elvia Wilk took part in a writing residency at the Banff Center called In(ter)ventions: Literary Practice at the Edge, a yearly program where J. R. is a member of faculty. Banff is also an important place in the development of J. R.’s work; it was during a 1995 residency there that she made her first hypertext project. Recently Elvia and J. R. caught up with each other in London to re-hash many of the issues they talked about while together at Banff – dissecting various (misleading) terms in the e-Lit field, going over projects both new and old, discussing code as performance writing, and ending up on a chain of imaginary islands.

Pull Quotes

EW: Code writing is a performance in which the text performs itself very literally.

JRC: It’s a great methodology to apply to something like digital literature, because you’ve got so many different processes happening at once. N. Katherine Hayles talks about the digital text as being “event-ialized.” I contact a server, and that server contacts another server somewhere, which sends something back, and then the source code performs in the browser, which calls on various aspects of the CPU to make activity happen…so it’s not just one text, it’s a text that’s distributed through what Deleuze & Guattari would call a “machinic assemblage.” This is how I think of the computer-generated texts and code narratives in my work.

By J. R. Carpenter, 17 January, 2014
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November 2013 marked twenty years since artist, writer, performer, and researcher J. R. Carpenter first began using the internet as a medium for the creation and dissemination of experimental texts. This interview examines the material, formal, and textual traces of a number of pre-web media – including the LED scrolling sign, the slide projector, and the photocopy machine – which continue to pervade Carpenter’s digital work today.

Pull Quotes

Andrea Zeffiro: Could you set the scene, so to speak, as to what lead you online in 1993?

J.R. Carpenter: In 1993 I was in my third year of a Bachelor in Fine Arts at Concordia University in Montreal. I was majoring in Studio Art with a concentration in Fibers Structures and Sculpture. I was making stuff. Drawing, painting, sewing, crocheting, collage, book works, found object installations, assemblage. I didn’t own a computer. I was dead set against them. I hadn’t always been. I had a Commodore 64 as a kid that I mostly used to play text adventure games. One summer I spent a week at a Turbo Pascal Computer Camp. In retrospect, that was probably part of a cheaper-than-a-babysitter childcare scheme. I was a bit of a math wiz up until the 10th grade or so, after which point a succession of truly terrible math teachers turned me off. By the time I got to art school I had no idea what went on inside a computer. I had the impression that they were for other people and controlled by other people. Plus, they were expensive. I was extremely poor, and generally, however unwittingly, a Marxist. I had a roommate who had a computer. He spent a lot of time with it. Not even he could explain to me what went on inside of it. In the kitchen one morning he announced that he had renamed his hard drive Hard Dick, which certainly didn’t help matters.

It was one of my Fibers professors who finally dragged me kicking and screaming online. In 1992 Ingrid Bachmann launched an exhibition at The Walter Phillips Gallery at The Banff Centre called A Nomad Web: Sleeping Beauty Awakes, which was among the first networked art projects in Canada as far as I know.

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By Alvaro Seica, 18 October, 2013
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Álvaro Seiça interviews Manuel Portela and Rui Torres on the Portuguese Electronic Literature Collection at ELMCIP.net. The conversation brings into question some of the important characteristics, influences and future directions of Portuguese E-Lit.

For more info: http://elmcip.net/research-collection/portuguese-electronic-literature-…

Video recorded on September 26, 2013, during the ELO 2013 conference "Chercher le Texte" at the ENSAD, Paris.

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By J. R. Carpenter, 15 October, 2013
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Sina Queyras interviews J. R. Carpenter about two prose poems, "I've Died and Gone to Devon" and "A Turn for the Cold".

Pull Quotes

SQ: These prose poems felt very performative to me, as if they were sliced out of the middle of a piece of theatre. I have never seen you perform, do you consider yourself a performance poet? Spoken word? Or, are these distinctions archaic? Does digital media poet cover all of the above?

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By Natalia Fedorova, 4 September, 2013
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Pull Quotes

Cildo Mierles Babel Tower
pictures and description: http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/cildo-meireles/c…
video
http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/cildo-meireles
Stephan Cornford Binatone Galaxy
http://www.scrawn.co.uk/18.html
John Giorno Dial a Poem
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/22/momas-dial-a-poem_n_1536156.ht…
Маяковский “Радио-агитатор”
http://mayakovskiy.ouc.ru/radio-agitator.html

• Сильдо Миерлес, бразильский художник, создатель инсталляции из радиоприемников «Вавилонская башня», говорит, что радио, включенное в темной комнате, для него в детстве, было возможностью путешествия в мир мечты. Что для каждого из вас означает радио?
• Технология, четко маркируя современное, несет в себе память о нем, медиа археология изучает то, как ушедшие технологии используются эстетически. «Радио-агитатор» Маяковского, посвященный ультра современной для него технологии, обращен во вне, кричит одновременно в «мильон ушей слухачей», «Радиостена» довольно тихо говорит со внутренним миром памяти. У Миерлеса и у вас радио говорят на разных языках, у Маяковского - на одном.
Текст группа «Орбита» известна соединением поэтического слова с технологиями (видео стихотворение «Света», компиляторная компьютерная игра «I-Text», инсталляция с факсом в режиме кольцевой печати «Right» и др). Какие возможности дает поэтическому слову радио?
• «Радиостена» состоит из нескольких треков разной длины с записью радио передач на разных языках, музыкой, шумами и стихами, которые совмещаются по принципу случайной выборки. Верно? При этом каждый трек записан на отдельной радиоволне. Как составлялся каждый трек и чем обусловлено их количество?
Как построено «Slow Show»?

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By Natalia Fedorova, 4 September, 2013
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I want to share simple truths with you” – an interview with Sergej Timofejev by SJ Fowler.

One of the most adventurous and groundbreaking poets in the Baltic, Latvia’s Sergej Timofejev is a fundamental part of the radical reconfiguration of his nation’s poetic culture and landscape in the last few decades. A urbane, grounded, naturalistic stylist, the power of his poetry has allowed him to implement numerous innovations in a region associated with formalism. Experiments with poetry and music / art installations / performance / video & even computer games, have seen his popularity soar in Latvia, though he remains a poet writing in Russian. In the 40th edition of Maintenant, Sergej Timofejev discusses the influence of Western culture, the healthy state of Latvian poetry and the reward of poetic collaborative innovation.

Pull Quotes

ST: When we started the Orbita, poetry readings were actually kind of gatherings of sad drinkers with beards who were dressed in big polo-neck sweaters. After or even during every poetry reading people got drunk and depressed. We didn’t like it this way. We never had a manifesto or something like a new poetical ideology. We just grow up in the tusovka where poets, artists and musicians were mixed. And that was quite natural to us – to make efforts to bring poetry into collaboration with other forms of culture, to find for poetry an equal position amongst these forms. But we just pushed some boundaries further, of course, not more. I think that poetry nowadays both in writing and performing can be also quite classically oriented. Poetry could be very different. We never said that every poet now has to record with trip-hop stars and to make videopoems. For some authors it suits well, for others – absolutely not. But if we are crossing boundaries we are getting new audiences which were not so “literature oriented” before, that’s for sure. When we were performing in the clubs some young people came after and said: “We are surprised, we never thought that modern poetry could be just about us and what we feel…”

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