digital arts

Electronic literature exists in a perpetual state of flux, due to its reliance on digital technology; with the rapid progression of processing power and graphical abilities, electronic literature swiftly moved from a reliance on the written word into a more diverse, multi-modal form of digital arts practice. The literariness of early electronic literature is manifest: the work was primarily textual, the centrality of reading paramount. The current crop of electronic literature--with its audio-visual, multimodal nature--calls into question the literariness of this work, however, as is evidenced by this year's call for papers. I propose that this ambiguity as regards literariness and written textuality in electronic literature disadvantages the field, in both academic circles and in the search for a wider reading audience. If electronic literature as field is to assert and validate its position within the greater literary tradition, links between electronic literature and past literary achievements need to be uncovered and illuminated. In this paper, I will explore the connections between works of postmodernism (in particular, experimental authors such as William Gaddis and Thomas Pynchon, and authors explicitly critiquing their own craft, such as Paul Auster), and electronic literature. In doing so, I hope to uncover a richer, more nuanced background for the literary in the traditions/practices of print and oral cultures, rather than in arts where the literary may or may not be present. Literature qua literature is currently present only as a minority element in works claiming the status of electronic literature, and it is therefore unlikely that literary studies will set itself up for reading just this sub-genre within an as yet minority arts practice. Turning to the works of Tom LeClair and Joseph Tabbi, postmodern novels are seen as coming into existence at a time when the world was on the brink of the globalized, world system. LeClair writes of the art of excess, in which the "recognition of radically new and massive information in the world and the impulse to represent this information are. . . the ultimate motives for the art of excess" (48) in postmodern novels. Tabbi, building off of LeClair, understands Gaddis and Pynchon as not only accurately representing a globalized world of excessive information, but also as representing the cognition developing out of this world system. My paper will explore how we can understand our own contemporary world system through works of electronic literature. If postmodern authors turned to their own material supports--the written language marked on a page through the course of a particular writer's thinking--then how are we to understand electronic literature as representing a certain mode of consciousness, especially considering electronic literature's distinct marginalization of the written word? My paper will offer close readings of earlier works of hypertext fiction and new works of electronic literature (published in 2012), in an effort to uncover the uniquely literary accomplishments of chosen texts/authors writing in a medium in which the literary is not always evidently manifest.

(Source: Author's Abstract)

The increasing presence of digital media forms our new understanding of community and calls for a closer examination of the culture of networks we are participating in. A central point of interest concerning our culture becomes the convergance of Arts, Entertainment, and Digital Interactive Media Technologies. These change the way we perceive arts, daily news or have an impact on how we communicate with each other. In his new book, Roberto Simanowski refers to Gerhard Schulze's socio-logical theory of the Event Society (Erlebnisgesellschaft, 1992), observing that nowadays social events ostensibly take place on the Internet. Along with discussions on the politics of the World Wide Web and its participatory values, Simanowski focuses on the significance of digital media in artistic practices. He considers interactive art as a key to the understanding of the event society. Choosing a hermeneutic approach to analyse "processing signs" in arts, Simanowski defends participatory art against Adorno's notion of distraction. The author prooves, in a number of case studies, that interactive art calls for both immersion and cognitive reflection.

Rita Raley’s Tactical Media covers the “spectrum ranging from direct action (e.g., denial-of-service attacks and game space interventions) to symbolic performance (e.g., data visualization)” (150).  Raley ties together a movement which eschews grand narratives and the contrapuntal teleological declarations of manifestos, identifying a strain of media activism that is, to use deCerteau’s term, “tactical”.  What ties these practices together is a combination of “virtuosic performance and cultural critique” (Raley 150).  As Raley maintains, and as the work reflects, tactical media is characterized not by its ability to instigate a widespread revolution, rather it is in the ability of relatively powerless operators, through skill and creativity, to turn systems of power against themselves, exposing, however fleetingly, the illegitimacy and injustice of their own authority. 

The text covers three chief thematic areas which are seem to roughly characterize the dominant subjects of tactical media: Chapter 1: Border Hacks (which addresses the vast pool of tactical media that has arisen to critique the politics of globalization and human migration), Chapter 2: Virtual War (which focuses on those works which exist to raise critical consciousness about war and conflict), and Chapter 3: Speculative Capital (which deals with works that aim to shed light on the practices of global financial markets).   In addressing these three areas, Raley does not necessarily confine “tactical media” to such subject matter, rather she highlights the chief discursive threads whose point of convergence to form a critique of neoliberalism.  Here is where this activist movement is able to establish its center, if it can be said to have one at all.

But beyond offering a useful delineation of “tactical media” and a strong theoretical frame from which it can be understood, Raley’s work points to the limitations of such work.  In reviewing the corpus of works selected and the movement’s general rejection of generalities in favor of short term, ephemeral, and technologically facilitated acts of opposition, one cannot help but notice the tension that exists between an art movement that is overwhelmingly in solidarity with the dispossessed, yet seems to resist statements of solidarity in theoretical matters, which believes in the power of art and the symbolic to intervene in the construction of reality, yet doubts the possibility of human-generated interventions we call revolutions. 

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Tactical media describes interventionist media art practices that engage and critique the dominant political and economic order. Rather than taking to the streets and staging spectacular protests, the practitioners of tactical media engage in an aesthetic politics of disruption, intervention, and education. From They Rule, an interactive map of the myriad connections between the world’s corporate and political elite created by Josh On and Futurefarmers, to Black Shoals, a financial market visualization that is intended to be both aesthetically and politically disruptive, they embrace a broad range of oppositional practices.

In Tactical Media, Rita Raley provides a critical exploration of the new media art activism that has emerged out of, and in direct response to, postindustrialism and neoliberal globalization. Through close readings of projects by the DoEAT group, the Critical Art Ensemble, Electronic Civil Disobedience, and other tactical media groups, she articulates their divergent methods and goals and locates a virtuosity that is also boldly political. Contemporary models of resistance and dissent, she finds, mimic the decentralized and virtual operations of global capital and the post-9/11 security state to exploit and undermine the system from within. 

Emphasizing the profound shift from strategy to tactics that informs new media art-activism, Raley assesses the efficacy of its symbolic performances, gamings, visualizations, and hacks. With its cogent analyses of new media art and its social impact, Tactical Media makes a timely and much needed contribution to wider debates about political activism, contemporary art, and digital technology.

(Source: University of Minnesota Press catalog copy)