literary system

This study centers around computer–based literature and texts that are gen-erated by algorithmic means. It originates from the obvious deficiencies of thecategories used by literary and media scientists to classify and analyze theobject in question.The leading thesis is that current methods and theories substantially relyon but scarcly reflect a certain media–technology: the book. According tothis the study starts with the fundamental terms of computer science: storage,transmission and computation as the basic categories for analysing computerbased texts and literature.The chapter "‘Funktionen"’ explains these terms technically and correlatesthem with functions within the traditional “book–based” literary system. Thechapter "‘Formen"’ checks their scope concerning formal categorisation of se-lected examples. Presented are not only current hypertexts but also literaryCD–ROMs and text generating programs. The chapter "‘Theorien"’ looks onwell established literary theories and describes specific deficiencies as well asaffinities to the basic terms of computer science.  Source: author's abstract

This paper originates from a conference paper presented and published in the book collection OLE Officina di Letteratura Elettronica. The here presented paper publication appears with minor edits.German net literature had an early and very public start through competitions organized in 1996-8 by the major newspaper Die Zeit and IBM, but was declared dead or stillborn immediately afterwards. Consequently, net literature became a subject of controversy between artists, theorists, and literary critics from which not only a strong community evolved but also a literary system. In this system, competitions served as public, peer-reviewed mediators for net literature and became an important feature of “post-processing.” Since the end of the 90s however, German net literature became slowly invisible. The lack of public awareness of net literature is common to many countries. Post-processing is a key for public visibility and according to Siegfried J. Schmidt et al. an important component in a literary system. In search of reasons for the state of invisibility of German net literature, I analyze mechanisms of post-processing in our community, which I regard as a literary system. This descriptive synopsis is the first paper in an upcoming series that opens up questions towards the role of peer-review, public reception, and artists' community-building.