participation

The development of the cultural field of electronic literature faces significant challenges today. As everyday network communication practices and habits of media consumption change, they impose expectations on how narratives are expressed, experienced and interacted with by readers and users. These expectations produce an imperative to accommodate additive and emergent participation processes that influence how narratives are structured. It is increasingly important to strike a balance between authorial agency and user generated content, between the core creative vision of a cultural creator and the contributions of casual participants, between narrative coherence and improvisational interactions. Resolving these antinomies is crucial in order for the field of electronic literature to support both the development of popular digital fiction and a continuing tradition of experimental literature.

In this paper I develop a comparative, multi-layered analysis of network narratives – prose narrative works imagined within and created for a media ecology characterized by networked computing devices, socially mediated interactions, and participatory culture. Using narrative theory and network analysis I explore how the iOS application The Silent History and selected network narratives incorporate additive participatory feedback loops and processes that enable user generated content to be embedded within the narrative that subsequent users engage with. Conditions for the inclusion of user-generated content vary among network narratives, and are typically constrained programmatically or editorially with respect to type, quantity, or subsequent accessibility. The participatory and emergent characteristics of network narratives shape and are shaped by various aspects of the narrative, including the expression of story as discourse, the navigational interface, production circuits, distribution and publishing models and whether and how multimedia elements play a role in the work. These elements of network narratives can be understood as topological strata, and by investigating the homologies and interdependencies between them, this study clarifies how additive participation can be incorporated into a compelling narrative without undermining coherence.

(source: ELO 2015 Conference Catalog)

textopia is a design experiment situated in humanist media studies, and based on a simple idea: Making it possible for someone who is walking through the city with a mobile phone to listen to literary texts which talk about whichever place she is walking by. The aim of this exercise has been to explore the relationship between places and literary texts – not just what the relationship is and has been, but what it can be in the new medium. Inspired by the ideas embedded in hermeneutics, open source philosophy and agile software development, I have outlined a methodological approach that I call "agile media design". In the course of the practical process I have ialso dentified three key principles for locative media design, summed up in the "G-P-S" model: Granularity, Particiation and Serendipity. Together they describe the unique characteristics of designs like textopia – a category I call "annotative, locative media". The textopia system is a hybrid approach which combines an interest in desveloping open, participatory media with literary analysis of the contributed texts – as well as theoretical and conceptual arguments about the nature of locative media. A commissioned work has been created for the Oslo International Poetry Festival. My literary analysis points to two features that may constitute key characteristics of this "locative literature": A strong deictic effect when directly addressing the reader as "you" – and a strong focus on counterfactual description and the invocation of absences. In further attempts at facilitating participation, a concept for doing creative writing as a game has been developed in order to integrate a playful exploration of the urban environment with the act of writing locatively. This is seen in relation to Jane McGonigal's work on creativity and community in ubiquitous games.

In Stewart's presentation he will set out his theoretical understanding of computer-mediated textuality (an understanding that is derived from the dialogic philosophy of language described by Mikhail Bakhtin and others).

In particular, he will report on how his research has identified a number of different rhetorical practices used by contemporary author-participants of computer-mediated textual art that focus on making readers actively aware of their participation in the work. He has classified these forms of rhetoric in the following ways:- 1. Active Participation of the Reader-Participant through Selection; 2. Active Participation of the Reader-Participant through Contribution; and3. Participation of the Reader-Participant by their Presence;

Stewart will illustrate these three types of rhetoric, by drawing examples in the recent work of Simon Biggs, Talan Memmott, and Alan Sondheim, as well as from his own work 'gas' (developed at Textlab 2003).

He will conclude by noting that a dialogic understanding of computer-mediated textuality flags up the significant cultural value of these works.

To summarise, Stewart will first argue that these works are valuable because they encourage their reader-participant's to become aware of their contribution to the work being read. He will then argue that this participative aesthetic has wider cultural value because it encourages the reader-participant to become more aware of their participation in every aspect of their world.

(Source: Author's abstract, Incubation3 conference site, trAce archive)

"A Pen" is a Letterist exploration of text as a tool for writing, rather than as the result of writing. It is about the interpenetration of code and language in programmable media to imbue letters and words with behaviors and allowing poems to emerge from these. It is about creating tools for readers to become involved in the process of shaping the poems that arise from these processes. It is the latest expression of Jim Andrews' exploration of the visual characteristics of written language, and the capabilities of computers to both render and reinvent statuesque letters as dancing signifiers. 

This dissertation investigates the current state of digital poetry generators. The study argues that today’s poetry programs embody a new stage distinct from second- generation digital literature. The new stage projects a “dynamic network aesthetic,” reflective of four trends in Web 2.0 cultural production: the potential for mass aggregation; the adoption of participatory platforms; the instability of textual material; and the unpredictability of individual actors. The chapters interrogate the ways in which the four characteristics emerge in three categories of poetry generators: programs that manipulate user input; programs that manipulate Internet text; and programs that generate autonomous content. Corresponding with the three categories, three theorists of the machine inform the discussion. Donna Haraway, Jean Baudrillard, and Gilles Deleuze each provide apt approaches to twenty-first-century technology. However, each theorist also demonstrates the ways in which recent models of the machine do not yet fully account for the “dynamic network aesthetic” of the Internet era. In addition to the theoretical discussion, each chapter addresses the design and output of eight poetry generators. The readings suggest that poetry generators, like contemporary technologies in general, advance towards increasingly autonomous cognitive abilities. Emphasizing the cultural value and literary merit of poetry generators, the discussion aims to validate poetry generators’ place in literary studies, in addition to demonstrating a strong connection between contemporary cultural trends and current poetic practice. The dissertation concludes by imagining a potential field of study dedicated to poetry generators. The conclusion calls for further investigations of a “dynamic network aesthetic,” and foregrounds the need to consider future literary machines.