Throughout the last seven years, Ormstad experimented with both moving images and letters, conceived narratives, and styles that according to him reflect a continuum of the printed work he created in the 60’s. If the continuum also holds true for concrete poetry and poetry-films in general is a question addressed in my talk.
Polish digital literature has a rich tradition to build on: from Polish experimental literature to avant-guarde filmmakers associated with Warsztat Formy Filmowej (Film Form Workszop) of the 1970s, including Bruszewski and the Oscar winner Rybczyński. Other precursor phenomena include Jan Potocki's “Rękopis znaleziony w Saragossie”, interwar avant-garde and the work of concretist artists like Stanisław Dróżdż. Poland's contribution to the developemnt of world hyperfiction was the notion of sylwa (from the latin silva rerum), "a form more capacious”, very popular in XX century literature. The description of this form by Czesław Miłosz inspired Michael Joyce to write an essay on this subject. Polish digital literature develops alongside the phenomenon of liberature, which, since its beginnings in 1999, influences our understanding of the digital medium. A rather isolated position on the international scene and a separate, unique historical background contribute to the distinctiveness of Polish digital literature. The most important authors from this field (including Radosław Nowakowski, Robert Szczerbowski, Wojciech Bruszewski and Katarzyna Giełżyńska) will be presented during the lecture.
An amalgamation of a series of lectures presented at Acadia University, Dalhousie Art Gallery and the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, tracing the influence and use of maps in the web-based works of J. R. Carpenter.
Notions of place pervade my fiction writing and maps have long featured prominently in my web-based electronic literature, operating (often simultaneously) as images, interfaces and metaphors for place. My most recent work involves the mapping my most immediate surroundings, my Montréal neighbourhood, Mile End. Entre Ville [2006] and in absentia [2008].
I moved to Montreal in 1990 and have lived in the Mile End since 1992. I have been using the Internet as a medium for the creation and dissemination of experimental texts since 1993. I made my first web-based writing project in 1995. And I made my first Montreal-based project in 2006. Given my preoccupation with place, why did it take me so long to take up the topic of Montreal in my work?
Rompendo com “a literatura dominante, oficial, consagrada, académica e mesmo clássica”, a poesia experimental (concreta, visual, sonora ou cibernética) não peca por “menos estruturação, menos elaboração estética, menos conceptualização, ou menos ambição cultural”. Mas parece ser, continuando a adaptar a proposta de Arnaldo Saraiva ao assunto de que nos ocupamos, marginalizada por razões de “ideologia literária” e de “economia do mercado editorial”. Na verdade, mais do que uma literatura marginal, a poesia experimental tem sido uma literatura marginalizada: pela cultura literária, pois o experimentalismo promove “o desrespeito das leis clássicas, a novidade nas técnicas ou nos motivos, a contaminação dos géneros, (...) a complicação estrutural”; e pelo marketing literário, pois este não consegue compartimentar, nos formatos convencionados pelo mercado, poesia que vai sendo publicada em folhetos, catálogos, registos de acontecimentos, graffitis, fotocópias, objectos, jardins, CD-ROMs, na Internet ou em outros espaços virtuais e artificiais.
(Source: Author's Abstract)
Visiting Artist Talk presented by CE3C Lab at Alberta College of Art and Design, 7 February 2013.
JR Carpenter has been using the internet as a medium for the creation and dissemination of experimental texts since 1993. In this lecture she will explore much earlier works of Electronic Literature dating back to the 1950s, setting a critical and historical context for the vibrant and experimental field that we find today. She skilfully excavates layers of computer/ communication/network history to offer insight into contemporary practices. Through commentary, analysis, historical images, and examples new and old of computer-generated texts and other non-traditional forms of writing, speaking, and interacting, this talk takes a practice-led approach to navigating the ever shifting creative, critical, and political terrain of this fast-growing form of digital-expression.
What I really want to talk to you about today is the contemporary literary practice of crating and performing computer-generated narratives. But the word generation so heavily implies regeneration. It’s difficult to know where to begin. Text generation is the oldest form of literary experimentation with computers. A number of influential books, chapters, essays, and papers currently circulating in the emerging field of electronic literature begin this way. But I want to start a little further back than that, before the dawn of the computer, and outside the traditional realm of the literary...
Den papirbaserte boka har beveget seg inn i en tid hvor ungdommen påvirkes i en multimedia-verden. Tradisjonell lineær fortelling, der en definert forfatter lager et ferdig produkt, tilbys alternative muligheter. Web'en utvikler seg fra å være skriftbasert til større bruk av bilder og lyd, og nye arbeider kan gi leseren mulighet til å delta i utviklingen av fortellingene. Denne utviklingen trenger vi ikke se som en kamp mellom to alternative løsninger. Den elektroniske litteraturen sier noe om samtiden som samtidslitteraturen ikke kan på samme måte, den kan øve leseren opp til det nye århundrets komplekse medie- og tekstunivers.
The talk discusses a series of characteristics of contemporary literature: multimodality, co-creativity, location-awareness, and tactility. Looking at digital narratives, particularly from the ELMCIP Anthology of European Electronic Literature I explore these four dimensions of what I call the polyaesthetic nature of contemporary culture. In addition, I present a locative media narrative that I am creating with Jay David Bolter and Michael Joyce, using the AR browser Argon.