cultural producers

It is often said that the field of electronic literature is “author driven”. Many established e-literary artists produce their work on their own, publishing it on their personal website, promoting and often even writing interpretations themselves. This however is not the only model present in the global field of digital born literature. The poster is devoted to the Polish institution Korporacja Ha!art and the model of production of e-literature in Poland. The institution is an NGO that runs a professional publishing house, which has published over 500 traditional books, ebooks and audiobooks. It also runs a sort of laboratory for the production of digital born literature by the leading artists in the field in its area of the world. The producer activities of the institution also involve the publication of translations of classic first generation hypertexts (on CDs, which were distributed conventionally through bookstores) and second generation work accessible online. Apart from production itself, Korporacja Ha!art puts an emphasis on building context around the works: its organizes publicity, meetings, reading lessons and, finally, several conferences and a festival, during which works are premiered, presented and discussed. The aim of our poster is to present an analysis of the work model, financing strategies, distribution channels and creation of context around this kind of producer activity. The output is based on the analysis of documents, interviews with artists and producers and our own working practice. We will share the good production practices the organization has developed, and discuss aspects of the economy of the field in our local context. In doing so, we hope to introduce in to the study of electronic literature a new approach, borrowed from the methodology developed by John T. Caldwell in film studies. It is an approach centered around the study of what is called the production culture. Here, we shall apply it to the analysis of the field of production of works of digital literature.

More than ever, our cultural institutions are in process. A precarious state that necessitates an ouroboros of approach: we compose even as we are composed. Composing with technology only yields up further process as our predominant cultural artifact. How must we determine its literary value? We must learn to unmake. We must interrogate process through the lens of process. By examining how our cultural artifacts are composed, we may further reveal their stakes. The following presents a beginning survey and comparative analysis of how different writers have composed with/through/among technology to produce cultural artifacts. This study is by no means exhaustive; however, even among few volunteers, there already are interesting trends and divergences.

As writers we are cultural producers. Often with a split mind, we reflect on the result of our labor even as it is born. In this connected world of manifold process, it is difficult to divorce ourselves completely: especially, if our writing follows the trend of content that comments on its form. Don't we, as practitioners of writing that takes advantage of emerging technology, have a stake in suggesting what it can be? What it can do? Submissions and suggestions were graciously provided through the community and personal correspondence. Why isn't reflective commentary by writers on writing a more visible resource? Hopefully, even as a small overview, this paper will serve as a community repository of such commentary.

There were expected and unexpected findings. I expected to find evidence of "split-mind composition". The process of composing Digital Literature demands not only a consideration of language as content, or data, but also the formation/composition of that data to a concrete degree. I expected that the technologies selected as writing mediums would have their own meanings and literary potentials that could be read through the way they produce a text. Part of the body of the text produced is the current of what the technology brings to it. To a lesser extent, I expected varying degrees of hacktivist aesthetic: writers co-opting technical platforms to reflect culture back at itself. I did not expect the undertones of writer/machine struggle to be as prevalent. Findings show gradients of tension between writer and machine control of the system. In some ways, the writer is one embodiment of manifold process, synapse firing, always executing. They are one process set to "interrupt" the system. Yet, "writers write what writing wants. And in that writing the very form of the writer is rewritten" (Johnston).

Source: http://conference.eliterature.org/critical-writing/community-repository…