procedural literacy

This essay analyzes the functioning of a text that was designed to be read in a private context, that uses the computer as an active tool during the reading, and that can be published on a permanent medium such as CD-ROM. The work is approached in its dual functioning mode: synchronic and diachronic. A functional model is proposed, which involves an analysis of the functions that operate in the communication process between the reader and the author. In this model, the work appears as a process and no longer as an object. The reading and the materialization of the object read become interdependent. The author analyzes the relationships between readability and faithfulness in the resulting work, properties that may be incompatible in the final text.

Source: Author's Abstract

This article discusses the changing role of literature in the contemporary media landscape. Literary scholarship may well maintain its importance in the digitalizing world, but this requires it to engage in an open dialogue with cultural and media studies. It is important that more attention is paid to contemporary literature as well as to new media offering significant pedagogical possibilities, which should be better acknowledged. The article's main focus is on the emerging field of digital literature. Cybertextuality, especially, is fundamentally changing our notions of the integrity of a literary work, reading, writing and interpretation. I attempt to describe and put into context one sample case of cybertextuality, The Impermanence Agent by Noah Wardrip-Fruin et al. Finally, I discuss some of the practical problems faced by teachers who introduce digital literature in their classrooms.

(Source: Author's abstract)

Reprinted in Online Learning Vol 2: Digital Pedagogies (Sage, New York, 2011)

The creativity support community has a long history of providing valuable tools to artists and designers. Similarly, creative digital media practice has proven a valuable pedagogical strategy for teaching core computational ideas. Neither strain of research has focused on the domain of literary art however, instead targeting visual, and aural media almost exclusively. To address this situation, this thesis presents a software toolkit created specifically to support creativity in computational literature. Two primary hypotheses direct the bulk of the research presented: first, that it is possible to implement effective creativity support tools for literary art given current resource constraints; and second, that such tools, in addition to facilitating new forms of literary creativity, provide unique opportunities for computer science education. Designed both for practicing artists and for pedagogy, the research presented directly addresses impediments to participation in the field for a diverse range of users and provides an end-to-end solution for courses attempting to engage the creative faculties of computer science students, and to introduce a wider demographic—from writers, to digital artists, to media and literary theorists—to procedural literacy and computational thinking. The tools and strategies presented have been implemented, deployed, and iteratively refined in real-world contexts over the past three years. In addition to their use in large-scale projects by contemporary artists, they have provided effective support for multiple iterations of ‘Programming for Digital Art & Literature’, a successful inter-disciplinary computer science course taught by the author. Taken together, this thesis provides a novel set of tools for a new domain, and demonstrates their real-world efficacy in providing both creativity and pedagogical support for a diverse and emerging population of users.