source code

Computer source code has become part of popular discourse. Code is read not only by programmers but by lawyers, artists, pundits, reporters, political activists, and literary scholars; it is used in political debate, works of art, popular entertainment, and historical accounts. In this book, Mark Marino argues that code means more than merely what it does; we must also consider what it means. We need to learn to read code critically. Marino presents a series of case studies—ranging from the Climategate scandal to a hactivist art project on the US-Mexico border—as lessons in critical code reading.

Marino shows how, in the process of its circulation, the meaning of code changes beyond its functional role to include connotations and implications, opening it up to interpretation and inference—and misinterpretation and reappropriation. The Climategate controversy, for example, stemmed from a misreading of a bit of placeholder code as a “smoking gun” that supposedly proved fabrication of climate data. A poetry generator created by Nick Montfort was remixed and reimagined by other poets, and subject to literary interpretation.

Each case study begins by presenting a small and self-contained passage of code—by coders as disparate as programming pioneer Grace Hopper and philosopher Friedrich Kittler—and an accessible explanation of its context and functioning. Marino then explores its extra-functional significance, demonstrating a variety of interpretive approaches.

(source: mit press)

I consider the role of the source code of generative literature in the process of meaning making. The significance of code in the cultural meaning of generative works means the source code becomes a key factor to explore in literary studies. I use Critical Code Studies (Marino) which rejects the practice of only analyzing the output of electronic literature and instead proposes to look at code from a humanities perspective as an integral part of coded literature. To specify this emerging field specifically for generative literature, I propose a distinction between three levels on which the code is involved in the meaning-making process of generative literature: the linguistic level, the literary level. and the cultural level. On the linguistic level, I draw from structuralism, using Jakobson's notions of selection and combination as outlined in "Two aspects of language and two types of aphasic disturbances". Generative literature shows the meaning of language explicitly via selection and combination of linguistic units, and adds to this process a literary meaning employing the process of chiasm and overwriting. To do justice to the complexity of the materiality of coded literature on a literary level, I link this to Brillenburg et al's reference to Lyotard's notion of chiasm as excess of meaning and Dworkin's notion of neglected perspectives. Moreover, the source code is positioned as a trope for objectivity, as it does not embody the same cultural biases as one expects from intention-typical research. On a cultural level, I argue that source code is positioned as a trope of objectivity, as the randomness of generation supposes an emptiness of cultural bias.

(author abstract)

I consider the role of the source code of generative literature in the process of meaning making. The significance of code in the cultural meaning of generative works means the source code becomes a key factor to explore in literary studies. I use Critical Code Studies (Marino) which rejects the practice of only analyzing the output of electronic literature and instead proposes to look at code from a humanities perspective as an integral part of coded literature. To specify this emerging field specifically for generative literature, I propose a distinction between three levels on which the code is involved in the meaning-making process of generative literature: the linguistic level, the literary level. and the cultural level. On the linguistic level, I draw from structuralism, using Jakobson's notions of selection and combination as outlined in "Two aspects of language and two types of aphasic disturbances". Generative literature shows the meaning of language explicitly via selection and combination of linguistic units, and adds to this process a literary meaning employing the process of chiasm and overwriting. To do justice to the complexity of the materiality of coded literature on a literary level, I link this to Brillenburg et al's reference to Lyotard's notion of chiasm as excess of meaning and Dworkin's notion of neglected perspectives. Moreover, the source code is positioned as a trope for objectivity, as it does not embody the same cultural biases as one expects from intention-typical research. On a cultural level, I argue that source code is positioned as a trope of objectivity, as the randomness of generation supposes an emptiness of cultural bias.

(author abstract)

This essay takes a media archaeological approach to putting forward haunted media as theory of mediation able to address contemporary networked writing practices communicated across and through multiple media, multiple iterations, multiple sites, and multiple times. Drawing upon Derrida’s invitation to consider the paradoxical state of the spectre, that of being/not-being, this paper considers the paradoxical state of long-distance communications networks. Both physical and digital, they serve as linguistic structures for modes of transmission and reception for digital texts. Composed of source code and output, these texts are neither here nor there, but rather here and there, past and future, original and copy. The in-between state has been articulated in terms of ‘medium’ in Western philosophy since classical times. The complex temporaility of this in-between state is further articulated in this essay through Alexander Galloway’s framing of the computer, not as an object, but rather as “a process or active threshold mediating between two states”. The theoretical framework for haunted media put forward in this essay is employed to discuss a web-based computer-generated text called Whisper Wire (Carpenter 2010). Whisper Wire 'haunts' the source-code of another computer-generated text, Nick Montfort's Taroko Gorge (2008), by replacing all of Montfort’s variables with new lists of words pertaining to sending and receiving strange sounds. Drawing upon heuristic research into Electronic Voice Phenomena, and citing Freud’s notion of repetition as a hallmark of the uncanny, Whisper Wire will be framed as an unheimlich text — a code medium sending and receiving un-homed messages, verse fragments, strange sounds, disembodied voices, ghost whispers, distant wails and other intercepted, intuited or merely imagined attempts to communicate across vast distances through copper wires, telegraph cables, transistor radios, and other haunted media.

The combination of dynamic screen presentations with integrations of visual and textual ciphers is a characteristic of a net projects´ group in Memmott´s work. "Lexia to Perplexia" (2000) provokes attention as a maturated example of this group. Memmott developed "Lexia to Perplexia" as a hyperfiction combining icons, parts of codes resp. punctuation marks and neologisms via DHTML and Javascript. Users can investigate the possible screen presentations of the ten source codes resp. chapters. Memmott´s combinations of textual parts with pictures reflect relations between users (as "remote bodies"), their screens and networks. This article on "Lexia to Perplexia" explains connections between the internal parts of the project and proposes some clues for the interpretation of (relations between) ciphers in the hope to facilitate reading and deciphering.

(Source: Author's abstract)

Code – The Language of Our Time, new media poetics, and p0es1s. The Aesthetics of Digital Poetry, are three widely regarded collections dealing with e-writing and its code from a humanist perspective. As an indication of how emergent this field of study is, in the several essays and papers that treat computer program code in these works, almost no actual code is presented for analysis or as concrete examples of the abstractions that their authors discuss.

This is altogether understandable. There was no aesthetic arc hovering over and guiding the transition from legacy print writing to e-writing. In fact there was virtually no transition. Ewriting was suddenly there (here). And its foundation, program code, was an immediate fact that few students of literature had been trained to understand. Before they could, a framework had to be built within which this new literature, whose tools of craft are so obscure and esoteric, could be reasoned about and judged. Program code problematizes literary study at its very essence—at the act of creation.

But now the absence of analysis of code itself (of the relationship of the character of a computer program to the quality of the surface art it enables, of the quality of the code driving a given ewriting text, or commentary on the craft of coding) threatens to impede continued progress. Ewriting is coming of age and has a growing audience and a critical mass of practicing artists, enough of both to sustain and demand such analysis. It’s time to address these issues as a way of contributing to the value of future works.

If there is such a thing as quality in a work of e-literature, it is a direct function of its software— indeed, every instance of e-writing is a software product. High quality e-literature implies high quality software. And if there is such a thing as quality in a piece of software, its measure must be intrinsic to its code. And the code of a computer program, as much as it represents an executable dynamic text, is also a record of its programmer’s philosophy of program construction, a metric of her understanding of the problem with which she has been tasked, and the very visible evidence of her mastery of the languages, computer and natural, she has used to translate the problem into text. The question then becomes Are there ways to make all of these things better?

(Source: Author's introduction)

I propose a digital poetics, which focuses on the possible digital transformations of writing and reading with examples from current cybertextual literature. The paper discusses how programming structures (algorithms, cybernetics, object oriented programming, hypertext) can be interpreted as literary forms. The outcome is a literary way to read programming structures and a discussion of a digital literary poetics.

Many works of electronic literature use text generation algorithms or interactive interfaces to present the reader with a different text upon each reading. Such variable texts can be difficult to analyze and discuss because it can be prohibitively difficult to take into account all possible permutations. The standard critical methodology for approaching these texts is to discuss excerpts from different readings, perhaps comparing passages that involve alternative renderings of the same textual content. While this approach can convey a general sense of the work and its possibilities for variation, it usually doesn't allow a thorough treatment of a complex work's structural framework. This essay presents a method for analyzing a work's source code to define the most important constant and variable properties of its constituent elements. It then applies the method to a generated electronic poem, "Snaps," by Dirk Hine. The source structure thus defined provides a springboard for critical interpretation of the work.