terminology

Alan Bigelow tells in this interview how he started publishing online works of digital poetry around the year 1999 and where his inspirations for his work come from. Furthermore he explains why he chose to change from working with Flash to working with HTML5 and in which way this decision subsequently changed his way of writing. Then he considers the transition from printed books to digital literature from the point of view of the reader also in regards of the aesthetics of digital born literature. In the end he gives his opinion about the status of electronic literature in the academic field.

Pedro Barbosa recalls in this interview his memories of the first studies and works of electronic literature back in the 1970s when he was a student at the University of Porto. Starting from considerations about his collaborative works he makes a comparison between printed literature tradition and the age of new media focusing on the paradigmatic change of this very transitional period with live in and the differences of the creative work. Furthermore he makes an interesting statement on regard of the aesthetics of new media by comparing works of electronic literature with the oral tradition. In the end he mentions some of the milestones of electronic literature that he considers important.

This piece is an attempt to hasten the death of the 'electronic' in 'electronic literature' — to re-cognize it as a dead metaphor — as the prelude to an agonistic meditation on my generation's anticipation of the death of literature itself, with 'the literary,' potentially, waiting in the wings (and published elsewhere, elsewhen, elsehow).

(Source: Author's Abstract)

In this interview Michael J. Maguire also known as clevercelt writes about his development in the field of electronic literature both as creative writer and academic scholar. He gives some insights into the work of programming, his interest for computer games and the Phd thesis. The interview stands out for the many references to other authors.

Entry on electronic literature providing a history of the term and exploring its contended usage.

Electronic literature is a generalized term used to describe a wide variety of computational literary practices beneath one broad umbrella, defined by the Electronic Literature Organization as “works with important literary aspects that take advantage of the capabilities and contexts provided by the stand-alone or networked computer.”

The term is somewhat fraught, and often challenged as not sufficiently or accurately descriptive to suit the more taxonomically minded of its scholars and practitioners. By way of reduction and assemblage, one might patch together definitions of “electronic” and “literature” in a way that makes some sense: “electronic literature is the result or product of literary activity carried or performed using the computer.” But of course, that would leave us with most literary activity that takes place in the contemporary era.  What is really meant by “electronic literature” is that the computer (or the network context) is in some way essential to the performance or carrying-out of the literary activity in question.

(Source: Author's introduction)

This piece is an attempt to hasten the death of the 'electronic' in 'electronic literature' — to re-cognize it as a dead metaphor — as the prelude to an agonistic meditation on my generation's anticipation of the death of literature itself, with 'the literary,' potentially, waiting in the wings (and published elsewhere, elsewhen, elsehow).

(Source: Author's abstract)

Respondents at 2008 ELO Conference

Joe TabbiUniversity of Illinois Chicago, USA Scott RettbergUniversity of Bergen, Norway Stuart MoulthropUniversity of Baltimore, USA

This article presents a critical review (not a rejection) of the concept of “ergodic literature”when applied to computer and video games. Therefore it goes back to some ofthe sources Espen Aarseth triggered when he appropriated the term from physics in1997 for the subject of cybertext and explains the necessary consequences of the term“ergodicity” for literature and games when it is not merely used metaphorically. A morecautious use of terms and concepts from other disciplines is suggested, especially as theterm “ergodic” in physics has a different but relevant meaning in the context of thesegames. The article tries to mediate between some of the general anthropological claimsof cybertext theory/game studies and the understanding of “ergodic systems” in thermodynamics and statistical physics. The problems that result from this mediation can beseen as symptomatic for the challenges of game studies in the more general mediationbetween different perspectives on games.

(Source: Author's abstract)

This thesis is about the poetic edge of language and technology. It inter-relates both computational creation and poetic reception by analysing typographic animation softwares and meditating (speculatively) on a future malleable language that possesses the quality of being (and is implicitly perceived as) alive. As such it is a composite document: a philosophical and practice-based exploration of how computers are transforming literature, an ontological meditation on life and language, and a contribution to software studies. Digital poetry introduces animation, dimensionality and metadata into literary discourse. This necessitates new terminology; an acronym for Textual Audio-Visual Interactivity is proposed: Tavit. Tavits (malleable digital text) are tactile and responsive in ways that emulate living entities. They can possess dimensionality, memory, flocking, kinematics, surface reflectivity, collision detection, and responsiveness to touch, etc…. Life-like tactile tavits involve information that is not only semantic or syntactic, but also audible, imagistic and interactive. Reading mediated language-art requires an expanded set of critical, practical and discourse tools, and an awareness of the historical continuum that anticipates this expansion. The ontological and temporal design implications of tavits are supported with case-studies of two commercial typographic-animation softwares and one custom software (Mr Softie created at OBX Labs, Concordia) used during a research-creation process.

Digital poet and researcher Chris Funkhouser attends E-Poetry 2009 in Barcelona and files a report on what he heard and saw.

author-submitted abstract: In the past, the “innovations” of electronic poetry often have been circumscribed in rather general terms; today, it seems important to characterize its stylistic, semantic and pragmatic devices with more precision. The traditional “figures of speech” have sometimes been considered as capable of achieving this aim. By denominations like “animated metaphor”, I have tried for example in my book Matières textuelles sur support numérique to describe “phenomena of meaning” in electronic literature, when animation effects enter in meaningful relations with the contents of words or letters. It is however undoubtedly dangerous to use a terminology which have been forged to characterize textual phenomena, whereas the signs of electronic texts are often based on various semiotic systems. In a recent article for the review Protée (which I also presented during the e-poetry seminar in Paris), while describing what I would call “figures of speech on media surface”, I sometimes continue to use traditional taxonomies; in order to avoid too dangerous analogies, I try in other cases to invent a new terminology. It appeared in particular important to me that these terms mark the difference with the technical processes which are used to produce animations: a morphing effect for example should not be considered as a figure; morphing only becomes a “figure” in relation to the content of the media to which it has been applied (I propose for example the term ciné-gramme for animations remembering the calligramme on paper medium, the term sporulation when an element appears by an effect of graduated multiplication, the term emergence when a textual element appears gradually, and when this appearance transforms the meaning of the word). But electronic poetry not only explores textual animation. The experimentation with interactive forms constitutes one of the most frequent characteristics of electronic poetry - in particular when the poem has been published online. Confronted with animated medias, the critic can still find some references in traditional cinema theories; confronted with interaction, he really must invent. He can start again by testing traditional terminologies. Jean Clément suggests for example to apply the concept of metaphor to hypertext phenomena. Katherine Hayles proposes the term of “embodied metaphor” in order to characterize the relation between functional similarities and inter-actions in video games. Serge Bouchardon establishes connections between the hypertext and the « art of ellipse », identifying more specifically “figures of displacement”, “substitution” and “transformation”. When the contents of the interactive media, the interactive gesture and the contents transformed by the gesture enter in incongruous, impertinent relations, I propose to call these phenomena of meaning « figures of speech on media interface ». Most of the time, on electronic support, the relation between the interactive gesture and interactive and interacted media contents enters in perfect accordance with the « grammatical rules » of electronic the document. At the beginnings of the Internet, the possibility to interact with textual elements in a palpable way appeared certainly disconcerting, and it was perhaps legitimate to consider any hypertext as a stylistic device; today, the activation of a key word revealing a definition, the code word opening access on a bank account, the displacement of textual or iconographic elements in order to reconstitute a puzzle, do not surprise anymore. Informational or commercial writing on electronic supports aims at an immediate effectiveness. The interactive gesture facilitates the rapid access to the required information while making understand, in a palpable way, the complex relations between segments of information. The “style” of electronic poetry is based on an endangering of the « grammatical rules » established by social practices, on “a difference between sign and meaning” (Genette). Thus the “figures of media interfaces” that I will try to detect and to describe in this paper (by a close-reading of desordre.net), can be considered as revealing of the « poetic fact » in electronic texts.