digital culture

Roderick Coover and Scott Rettberg reflect on the cultural values, political debates, power structures and architectures of exploitation underlying much of contemporary digital culture. As digital artists and collaborators, they also identify aesthetic reactions that actually combat what they critique. But for this to happen, we need literary works that are themselves produced, and actively circulating within digital environments.

The research community of electronic literature is exercising more and more influence in the field of digital culture and there is a growing body of research on the literary, computational, and cultural aspects of born-digital writing, but research into the specific impact of platforms on the production of digital writing has been very limited and often relegated to a peripheric rank. However, platforms play an essential role in shaping the genres and practices of electronic literature that needs to be investigated more deeply to develop better understanding of how our tools and machines shape digital culture. My talk has the objective to reflect the importance of the interface in literary production. At the border of technology and literature, where format and content matter, what is the status of the tool in the creation of works of electronic literature? I will recall the principle that electronic literature is subordinate to the tools it uses and will demonstrate how coding participates in the recognition in the field of digital humanities. I will take the example of the project DHonsite2019, that takes place in Cotonou, Benin, in May 2019 to show how the interface participates in the construction of digital works, no longer remaining on the periphery of literary production. The DHonSite project aims to collaboratively forge a new vision of creative and critical practices of digital forms across cultural differences. Putting in perspective its neutrality and attributing to it the ambition to constitute a space for dialogue and interpretation around texts, the interface thus becomes an element of culture that allows a rebalancing of forces in the field of digital humanities.

Despite the burgeoning interest in the creation of imaginative spaces in AR and VR, very little focus has been given to sound. This paper borrows aspects of cinema studies and cultural geography to argue that sound can create a discursive environment and a queer space in Augmented Reality (AR). Referring to Michel Chion’s Audio-vision (1990), and Steven Shaviro’s Post-cinematic affect (2010), I explore how the assemblage of aural, visual and haptic in AR pieces, such as Caitlin Fisher’s ‘Chez moi’ (2014), create what Lev Manovich (2001) calls ‘hybrid spaces’, spaces visually disjointed but semantically connected. In ‘Chez moi’, Fisher invites the viewer to put on their headphones and watch the video on their smartphone while walking down Hayden street in Toronto, where the lesbian bar Chez moi was located when Fisher was a teenager. The audiovisual piece augment the physical reality of the viewer through a montage of various media forms, such as Fisher’s voice over, images of news reports, and fictitious audio and images. While the rhythm of Fisher’s voice dictates the pace of the viewer as they walk, her words build an affective past, a queer space. The voice over and ambient sounds enact a multilayered space that accommodates marginalised bodies and redefines the limits of centreperiphery. Although sound is often situated at the peripheries of the visual in the viewer’s experience and in analytical work, sound immerses the viewer in a new (virtual) space, and imprints meaning on the viewer’s both physical and virtual environments. The multilayered reality of ‘Chez moi’ in this way recalls Janet Cardiff’s AR-vanguardist photographic audio walk ‘Her long black hair’ (2004) ten years prior. The aural, visual and haptic assemblage of Fisher’s and Cardiff’s pieces disturb the ‘conceived space’ of Toronto’s streets, and produce queer ‘lived spaces’ (in Henri Lefebvre’s terms, 1981) by generating resonances between past and present space-times. This paper shows how Fisher’s assemblage transforms the established ‘powergeometry’ of space (Doreen Massey, 1994), as it creates an affirmative queer space ELO2019 University College Cork #ELOcork 52 accommodating the ‘[fragile] women’s culture’ that Fisher at once praises and bemoans. At the intersection of cultural geography, cinema studies, and digital culture, this paper attempts to understand how digital media call to the imagination to invoke possible futures (Appadurai 1996; Braidotti 1996), and to constantly (re-)make space.

Guest lecturer by Greg Niemeyer at the University of Bergen, May 02, 2018. As the University of Bergen develops a new strategy to become a leader in innovative approaches to digital media and culture, the Berkeley Center for New Media provides a compelling model of cross-campus engagement.

The University of Bergen program in Digital Culture, the departments of Media, Art, Design, and Media City Bergen are pleased to welcome Greg Niemeyer, the co-founder of the Berkeley Center for New Media, to UiB. Professor Niemeyer will give a presentation on BCNM's innovative interdisciplinary approach to critical and artistic engagement with new media.

The Berkeley Center for New Media (BCNM) is a focal point for research and teaching about new media. It is led by a highly trans-disciplinary community of 120 affiliated faculty, advisors, and scholars, from 35 UC Berkeley departments, including Architecture, Philosophy, Film & Media, History of Art, Performance Studies, and Music; the Schools of Engineering, Information, Journalism, and Law; and the Berkeley Art Museum. BCNM is located at a global center for design and information technology and based in a public research university known for alternative thinking.

The mission of BCNM is to critically analyze and help shape developments in new media from cross-disciplinary and global perspectives that emphasize humanities and the public interest.

A presentation by Piotr Marecki of UBU lab at Jagellionian University, and a discussion of different lab models for e-lit and digital culture.