Incomplete record (stub)

Over the past half century, computing has profoundly altered the ways stories are imagined and told. Immersive, narrative, and database technologies transform creative practices and hybrid spaces revealing and concealing the most fundamental acts of human invention: making stories.The Digital Imaginary illuminates these changes by bringing leading North American and European writers, artists and scholars, like Sharon Daniel, Stuart Moulthrop, Nick Montfort, Kate Pullinger and Geof Bowker, to engage in discussion about how new forms and structures change the creative process. Through interviews, commentaries and meta-commentaries, this book brings fresh insight into the creative process form differing, disciplinary perspectives, provoking questions for makers and readers about meaning, interpretation and utterance. The Digital Imaginary will be an indispensable volume for anyone seeking to understand the impact of digital technology on contemporary culture, including storymakers, educators, curators, critics, readers and artists, alike.

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Table of contents

AcknowledgementsIntroductionThe Digital ImaginaryPart One: DatabaseInterviewsConnections And Coincidences In The End: Death In Seven Colors: A Conversation With David ClarkEmotional Proximity Through Inside The Distance: A Conversation With Sharon DanielCommentariesStuart Moulthrop: Now What: Sharon Daniel And David Clark On The Digital Imaginary. Judith Aston: The Readerly And The Cinematic: Hybrid Reconfigurations ThroughDigital Media Practice. Part Two: ArchiveInterviewsPry As A Cinematic Novel: A Conversation With Samantha GormanThe Generative Archive Of Encyclopedia: A Conversation With Håkan Jonson And Johannes Heldén.CommentariesLisa Swanstrom: The Taxonomy Is Imprecise.Geoffrey C. Bowker: Reading The Endless ArchivePart Three: MultimodalityInterviewsAuthorship In Inanimate Alice and Letter To An Unknown Soldier: A Conversation With Kate PullingerThe Metamorphoses Of Front As A Narrative Told Through Social Media Interface: A Conversation With Donna Leishman.CommentariesAnastasia Salter: Collaborative Voices: Kate Pullinger's Digital Authorial Voice. Mark C. Marino: What Holds Electronic Literature Together? MetacommentariesIllya Szilak: Do Cyborgs Dream Of Iphone Apps? The Body And Storytelling In The Digital Imaginary. Nick Montfort: Computational Literary Practices And Processes And Imagination.AfterwordSteve Tomasula: Haunting The Digital Imaginary. BibliographyIndex

(Source: Publisher's catalog copy)

I consider the role of the source code of generative literature in the process of meaning making. The significance of code in the cultural meaning of generative works means the source code becomes a key factor to explore in literary studies. I use Critical Code Studies (Marino) which rejects the practice of only analyzing the output of electronic literature and instead proposes to look at code from a humanities perspective as an integral part of coded literature. To specify this emerging field specifically for generative literature, I propose a distinction between three levels on which the code is involved in the meaning-making process of generative literature: the linguistic level, the literary level. and the cultural level. On the linguistic level, I draw from structuralism, using Jakobson's notions of selection and combination as outlined in "Two aspects of language and two types of aphasic disturbances". Generative literature shows the meaning of language explicitly via selection and combination of linguistic units, and adds to this process a literary meaning employing the process of chiasm and overwriting. To do justice to the complexity of the materiality of coded literature on a literary level, I link this to Brillenburg et al's reference to Lyotard's notion of chiasm as excess of meaning and Dworkin's notion of neglected perspectives. Moreover, the source code is positioned as a trope for objectivity, as it does not embody the same cultural biases as one expects from intention-typical research. On a cultural level, I argue that source code is positioned as a trope of objectivity, as the randomness of generation supposes an emptiness of cultural bias.

(author abstract)

Glitching the Poem was presented at the 2016 elo conference.

Action session day 1 was a session held at the 2016 ELO conference.

3:15-4:45: Action Session Day 1MacLaurin D111

• Digital Preservation, by Nicholas Schiller, Washington State University Vancouver; Zach Coble, NYU
• ELMCIP, Scott Rettberg and Álvaro Seiça, University of Bergen; Hannah Ackermans, Utrecht University
• Wikipedia-A-Thon, Liz Losh, College of William and Mary