38 | 2008

Now showing 1 - 12 of 12

Distributed Cognition in/at Work: Strickland, Lawson, and Ryan's SLIPPINGGLIMPSE
Hayles, N. Katherine (2008)
slippinglgimpse by Stephanie Strickland and Cynthia Jaramillo stages a three-way conversation between poem-texts, with phrases appropriated from photographers, videographers, and programmers, with Paul Ryan's videography of dynamic fluid systems, with complex algorithmic interactions between text and dynamic images. The two main conceptual issues at stake here, as I see it, are 1) the relationship between human and non-human cognizers, and 2) the intricate play between dynamic and static systems. The first involves natural systems such as wind/water interactions, human readers/writers, and machine cognizers; the second involves emergent patterns amidst continually changing flux (and implicitly, electronic text vs. print). There are also meta-issues involving interactions between the two main issues, for example, how deterministic machine operations can nevertheless lead to emergent and unpredictable results, and how human cognizers excel in recognizing patterns amidst noisy systems (perceiving the emergent patterns as such).
Four Statements on Digital Literature
ohne Autor (2008)
All participants were asked for a statement about exiting and bothering aspects of digital literature and to name their favorite piece of digital literature and non-digital art. They were encouraged not to think too long and to be poignant and radical with their answers. 1. This aspect of digital literature excites me most. 2. This aspect of digital literature bothers me most. 3. My favorite work of digital literature. 4. My favorite work of non-digital art.
List(en)ing Post
Raley, Rita (2008)
Mark Hansen and Ben Rubin’s Listening Post is at once a post (site) for ‘listening to the web’, an installation comprised of 21 columnar posts (suspended chain-circuit displays), and an algorithmically manipulated series of chat posts (messages). It is postmodern, post-linear, post-print, and post-literate. With regard to the post-literate, this paper will ask what Listening Post has to tell us about new forms of electronic English. The conjunction of colloquial speech and processing languages in this installation brings into sharp contrast the relations between textual ambiguity and the singularity of programming commands, which cannot function with multiple significations. In sum, my reading will address the project’s post-ness; listening in the sense of both conversation and sound art; and the aesthetics of listing.
Looking Behind the Façade: Playing and Performing an Interactive Drama
Schäfer, Jörgen (2008)
Following the ongoing debates between ‘ludologists’ and ‘narratologists’, the "interactive drama" Façade is apparently a response to widespread unease with mainstream computer games. By balancing between features of interactivity and (neo-)Aristotelian theory of drama, the developers Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern aim at enabling hybrid aesthetic experiences that combine elements of gameplay and performance. My paper explores how digital media require hybridizations of literary genres as well as reconfigurations of the complex interplay of human and non-human ‘actors’ – and it tries to point at both the opportunities and problems of these hybrid forms from the perspective of literary and performance studies.
On Genre Theory and Popular Arts
Jannidis, Fotis (2008)
Computer Games have long been viewed as a preparatory hell for juvenile deliquents before they blossom into rampage killers. But this view has changed not the least because nowadays most people under 30 have actively played games. Nevertheless there still seems to be a deep gap between computer games and art. My talk will try to close the gap by using concepts developed in the studies of popular culture to describe the new and already famous game S.T.A.L.K.E.R. in relation to the paradigms of the ego-shooter genre. In contrast to the Cultural Studies approach and their focus on the reception process, this talk will focus on the game and view it as a work of modern popular art and try to contribute to a hermeneutics of this kind of art.
Reading Digital Literature: Synopses of an US-German Conference
Simanowski, Roberto (2008)
Reading the Discursive Spaces of TEXT RAIN: Transmodally. A Précis
Ricardo, Francisco J. (2008)
Many multimodal digital works now transcend established conventions and forms of literature’s essentially textual character by transforming, within their own structure, the presence and nature of text so that it is experienced in a new function, less lexically than in concert with other modalities. A proverbial instance of this transmodal text is exemplified by Utterback and Achituv’s Text Rain. I begin with a distinction over the de-modalization that characterizes “pure literature” and move toward the larger ecriture that occupies the discursive spaces of this transmodal work, in a reading that defines itself around experiential poeisis and against interpretation.
The Art of Poetry Machines
Gendolla, Peter (2008)
The history of machine-aided poetry from Swift to Roussel, Bense, the Oulipo-group and David Link's Poetry Machine 1.0* represents the idea of aesthetic creativity as an interplay between ‘poetic’ algorithms and ‘human’ control of the poetry-generator, with more or less interesting results. By examining Christopher Strachey's Love Letter Generator and confronting it with traditional poetry, the talk attempts to ascertain whether in this way it is possible to isolate or retrieve the literary process.
The Demon Machine
Wenz, Karin (2008)
The demon machine is a semiotic machine, combining different sign systems into a new meaningful whole. Although each of the 79 parts of this art work are complete forms in themselves, they are also integrated into a whole - playing with the uses of the two words “demon” and “machine”. Some of the 79 small forms will be analyzed exemplarily. The use of the different sign systems but also their integration into the interface and the (limited) interactive potential will be described. The artwork can be seen as a continuation of montage and collage as used since the avant-garde. The demon machine is highly intertextual / intermedial: a poetic work, a thought experiment and a theoretical reflection on Maxwell’s demons at the same time.
The Scope for a Reader: The Poetry of Text Generators
Funkhouser, Chris (2008)
Syntext, developed by Pedro Barbosa and Abílio Cavalheiro in the early 90s (later partially re-versioned on the World Wide Web), is a collection of fifteen computer programs from the 70s, 80s, and 90s that automatically generate various styles of poetry in DOS. Though the texts made by each of the programs are thematically unrelated, through these pioneering works by Barbosa, Nanni Balestrini, Marcel Bénabou, and others, each of the predominant fundamental attributes of text-generators is clearly divulged. Syntext, despite being primitive on the surface, powerfully brings to light the expressive possibilities, versatility, and variation within permutation texts, and provides sufficient evidence upon which a typology of computer poems can be established.
What is and to What End Do We Read Digital Literature? Opening Words
Simanowski, Roberto (2008)
Traditional literature dreamt of readers who are the heros of the text they read - and are killed while reading. Digital literature indeed bridges the gap between the world of the narrative and the world of the recipient. Here the reader can kill and being killed. This introduction to the US-German conference Reading Digital Literature talks about the differences between print and digital literature. It explains why digital literature is only digital if it is not only digital, why the code is not the text unless it is the text, to what extent a hermeneutics of digital signs requires a new methodological approach, and holds that "digital literacy" after all is still inevitably based on reading skills.
Works discussed
ohne Autor (2008)

Recent Submissions