presence

This essay, focusing on a slice of Swedish prose fiction from the 1960-70's, raises some questions concerning the artificial subject, along with discussions of game theory and automation. Torsten Ekbom's "strategic model theatre" Spelmatriser för Operation Albatross [1966; Game Matrices for Operation Albatross] is the main object of study. The (often very bizarre) text fragments in this book are, fictionally, generated by a number of computers. The figures acting in this game are devoid of skeletons; they are merely bodies of information, produced by machines. In dialogue with (among others) Norbert Wiener, Lewis Mumford, John von Neumann and Marshall McLuhan, Ekbom's text is found to illustrate a broader context of cybernetics and subjectivity in the 1960's. Finally, by using the shift of epistemological dominant (described by N. Katherine Hayles) from "presence-absence" to "pattern-randomness", Ekbom's Game Matrices for Operation Albatross finds itself in an historically interesting intersection of subjectivity: the life of Man in the 1960's is becoming increasingly "coded" and "randomized", while the computer is still that huge Machine, not yet, as today, the subconscious of everyday life.

Source: Author's Abstract

The paper proposes a descriptive (i.e., non-hermeneutical/presence-driven) reading of the virtual reality work Screen by Noah Wardrip-Fruin et al. (2002) designed for Brown University’s CAVE. Because of the non-triviality of its demands, one might argue that Screen is as much about its theme (memory/forgetting) as it is a self-referential study on VR as a literary medium. In this context, seemingly incompatible notions such as those of "flickering signifiers" (Hayles, 1999) and “presence effects” (Gumbrecht, 2004) can operate as coextensive tropes of analysis. Are we to speak of a new phenomenology of language wherein processing protocols precede literary semiosis? Does proprioceptive awareness of the linguistic mark not also trigger a concurrent semiotic reaction obligatorily leading to an act of interpretation? Or is the immediacy of the de-anchored text in the CAVE more intimately related to what Gumbrecht characterizes as “being in sync” with the things of the world or, with a nod to Heideggerian ontology, Erleben (lived experience) that exceeds Wahrnehmen (perception) and precedes Erfahrung (interpreted knowledge)?

(Source: author's abstract)

From the publisher: How to interpret and critique digital arts, in theory and in practice Digital Art and Meaning offers close readings of varied examples from genres of digital art, including kinetic concrete poetry, computer-generated text, interactive installation, mapping art, and information sculpture. Roberto Simanowski combines these illuminating explanations with a theoretical discussion employing art philosophy and history to achieve a deeper understanding of each example of digital art and of the genre as a whole.

(Source: University of Minnesota Press catalog description)