30 | 2003

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Editorial
Eskelinen, Markku (2003) , S. 1-2
Enter the Cut-up Matrix: Some notes on Man and machines in the (Swedish) 1960’s
Ingvarsson, Jonas (2003) , S. 1-11
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.
Is There a Place for Digital Literature in the Information Society?
Koskimaa, Raine (2003) , S. 1-11
Finland and other Nordic countries in many ways belong to the forerunners in the development of the so-called information society. For the time being, the level of development towards the information society has mainly been measured by technological and infrastructural qualities - the amount of computers available, the coverage of wide band connections etc. It looks like the substance side of the equation has been largely forgotten. Information still is, to a large extent, published and distributed as books. Libraries, as well organized archives of literature with well educated personnel, can be even seen as one of the corner stones of the information society. Especially so in the Nordic countries, where the public library system has traditionally been widely acknowledged and respected. Currently, there is a serious discussion going on about the future role, strategies, and foci of public libraries: should they stick to their traditional role, or should they remodel their services toward portal-like gateways to virtual archives. One more characteristic of Nordic culture should be mentioned here, which is the high appreciation of literary knowledge, accompanied with literacy rates reaching towards 100 percent. All this put together creates an interesting test bed for the case of digital literature. The infrastructure is there, the literary culture and literacy is there, and public access to literature, both print and digital, is well organized. Only one thing lacks, which is the digital literature itself. The central question in this paper is, why is it so -- does the (almost) non-existence of digital literature in countries where the circumstances seem to be as close to the ideal as one can imagine seriously undermine the belief in the digital literature in general? Or is it rather, that too strong a literary culture is foremost an obstacle for the development of digital literature? I will take a closer look at projects carried on in Finland, in order to promote digital literature (such as lending ebook devices out from public libraries; providing pupils with 'e-bags', publishing national bestsellers in ebook format, establishing literary fora in the Internet, etc.), and seek out what has been learned from these experiments. Also, I will take a look at similar projects in Sweden, Denmark and Norway, which all share, by and large, the same qualities of well-developed information society and strong belief in literary knowledge. Through this survey I'll try to find some tentative answers to the questions if there is, indeed, a place for literature in the information society, and if there is, where is it, and how would that literature look like.
Moving text in avant-garde poetry: Towards a poetics of textual motion
Ikonen, Teemu (2003) , S. 1-14
Recent innovations in digital environments may suggest that the possibility to manipulate the literal movement of the text could be one of the essential variables separating digital literature from printed literature. This bipolar distinction between digital and print media hides, however, a complex historical background. A fuller comprehension of movement as a variable in literature calls for the clarification of the historical development from the "analogies of movement" in printed literature to the innovations in video art, experimental film and multimedia poetry. In classifying types of textual movement at least the following questions are relevant: What can be kinetic in the poetic text? How does the movement take place? Where does it take place? What is the result of the movement? And finally, what (or who) makes the text move? The article develops conceptual divisions that make answering these questions possible and thus helps to make the question of the specificity of digitally manipulated movement more precise.

Browsing 30 | 2003 by Subject "digital literature"

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