ekphrasis

In this article, the significance of the rhetorical and modern definitions of ekphrasis will be discussed through the lens of digital literature and art. It attempts to reinscribe the body in ekphrastic practice by adding touch to the abstracted visualism of the eye, and emphasize defining features of the ancient usage: orality, immediacy and tactility. What I call the digital ekphrasis with its emphasis on enargeia, its strong connections with the ancient definition, and on the bodily interaction with the work of art, conveys an aesthetic of tactility; digitalis=finger. By tracing and elucidating a historical trajectory that takes the concept of ekphrasis in the ancient culture as a starting point, the intention is not to reject the theories of the late 1900s, but through a reinterpretation of ekphrasis put forward an example of how digital perspectives on classic concepts could challenge or revise more or less taken-for-granted assumptions in the humanities. In this context ‘the digital’ is not only a phenomenon that could be tied to certain digital objects or used as a digital tool, but as an approach to history, with strong critical potential. The aim is to show that one of the most important features of our digital culture is that it offers new perspectives – not only on current technology – but also on literary, cultural and aesthetic historical practices.

(Source: Author's abstract in DHQ)

Following the concept of "remediation" and the premise that "all of our examples of hypermediacy are characterized by this kind of borrowing, as is also ancient and modern ekphrasis" (Bolter and Grusin, 1999: 44-45), I would like to take under consideration a literary work of Portuguese poet Vasco Graça MouraGiraldomachias / Em demanda de Moura (co-author Gérard Castello-Lopes; 2000). The main idea is that this particular tipographic object not only illustrates the vitality and liveliness of modern ekphrasis (in this case setting up the relation between poetry and photography, these late made by the photographer which is the coauthor of the book) but for the most part underpins the concept of hypertext. My understanding of this notion is (an almost) direct result of my study, investigation and analysis of Theodor Nelson's works and thinking, especially Literary Machines (1981), to a great extent for the present book: in my perspective, this book is a hypertextual literary machine, considering that "By hypertext I simply mean non-sequential writing. A magazine layout, with sequential text and inset illustrations and boxes, is thus hypertext" (LM, 1993: 1/17).

This thesis is about the poetic edge of language and technology. It inter-relates both computational creation and poetic reception by analysing typographic animation softwares and meditating (speculatively) on a future malleable language that possesses the quality of being (and is implicitly perceived as) alive. As such it is a composite document: a philosophical and practice-based exploration of how computers are transforming literature, an ontological meditation on life and language, and a contribution to software studies. Digital poetry introduces animation, dimensionality and metadata into literary discourse. This necessitates new terminology; an acronym for Textual Audio-Visual Interactivity is proposed: Tavit. Tavits (malleable digital text) are tactile and responsive in ways that emulate living entities. They can possess dimensionality, memory, flocking, kinematics, surface reflectivity, collision detection, and responsiveness to touch, etc…. Life-like tactile tavits involve information that is not only semantic or syntactic, but also audible, imagistic and interactive. Reading mediated language-art requires an expanded set of critical, practical and discourse tools, and an awareness of the historical continuum that anticipates this expansion. The ontological and temporal design implications of tavits are supported with case-studies of two commercial typographic-animation softwares and one custom software (Mr Softie created at OBX Labs, Concordia) used during a research-creation process.

Existing scholarship on interactive fiction (IF, also known as the text adventure) tends to treat it as a video game genre and/or as a category of electronic literature. In this essay I argue that IF can be understood as participating in traditions of visual prose and ekphrastic textuality, insofar as IF consists of room and object descriptions which direct the player to visualize the things they describe. Unlike traditional ekphrastic literature, however, IF also asks the player to take practical actions in response to the images he or she visualizes. During the commercial era of IF, ekphrasis was the most effective means available of providing players with immersive visual experiences. However, graphical video games have now surpassed IF in this area. Therefore, in order to justify the continued existence of IF, contemporary IF authors have been forced to conceive of the visuality of IF otherwise than in terms of the logic of transparency. One strategy for doing this, exemplified by Nick Montfort's game, Ad Verbum, is to abandon visuality almost entirely and emphasize IF's linguistic and textual qualities. An alternative strategy, exemplified by Emily Short's game City of Secrets, is to assert that IF is visual in a non-transparent way, because IF offers visual experiences which are user-generated rather than pre-rendered.

(Source: Author's abstract)

This study investigates Anglophone digital poems, created with and disseminated through digital computer media, for their visual, kinetic, and textual practices. I seek to articulate an analytic method grounded in close readings of selected poems. I have chosen to focus on poetic practices that raise questions about spatiality, temporality, kineticism, and word-and-image construction. My chief interest lies in how poetic form is orchestrated and what forms of engagement these digital constructions present the reader with. Underlying the main arguments of this study is an understanding of literary works in general as materially, culturally, and historically situated entities. Such “attention to material” is brought to bear on the digital poems that I analyze. Building upon N. Katherine Hayles’s notion of a “media-specific analysis,” I propose a materially specific analysis. In line with this proposition, I investigate particular properties of three clusters of poems. I propose terms such poemevents, cinematographic poems, and visual noise poems. A common feature of digital poems is the multisensory experience created through visual, auditive, tactile, kinetic, and textual artifice. The reader’s level of interaction is often of utmost importance. To articulate the different roles that the reader has to take on, I use two compound terms: reader/user and reader/viewer/listener. I argue that the active embodied engagement that is required of the reader/user in some digital poems and the denial of an active participation in others is part of the works’ materiality. Digital poetry as a field is expanding; it would not be too daring to claim that the exploration of the writing of poetry in the age of new media has only begun. I conclude the thesis by looking forward to what might lay ahead, how literary scholarship can be inspired by digital poetic work, and the questions about literary materiality that it poses.

 See thesis presentation at http://stream.humlab.umu.se/index.php?streamName=bornDigital