Computer-mediated Writing?

"Today we are living in the last age of print" Jay David Bolter

"Our entire collective subjective history - the soul of our societal body- is encoded in print" Sven Birkerts

 

Being Digital

As Richard Wise pointed out the being digital is important to the production and aesthetics of text because it makes them "amenable to manipulation by a computer".

This marks a significant change - from the “the marble finality of an immaculate typescript” described by Vladimir Nabokov in Pale Fire to...something else (perhaps)!

Opening the Space Guide

http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/transition

Despite their persistent identity crisis, all computer-mediated writings do have at least one thing in common – they must be viewed through the medium of an electronic display, usually a screen but sometimes just audio, via a PC or Mac, a laptop, a PDA, a mobile phone, data projector, or perhaps even a giant outdoor image. Their uniting characteristic is that the computer is an essential component of the writing and without it the work would not exist.

• Connectivity

• Interactivity

• Computability

What were the forerunners of computer-mediated writing?

• Experimental Literature?
• Dada?
• Oulipo?
• Concrete Poetry?
• Sound Poetry?
• Fluxus?
• Jacques Derrida
• Concept Art?
• Dungeons and Dragons?
• Role-playing Games?
• Graphic Novels?
• I Ching?

Some Examples

1. Small Poems by Peter Howard
2. Not Poems by Adele Aldridge
3. Bembo's Zoo by Roberto de Vicq de Cumptich
4. Oh by Dan Waber, Jennifer Hill-Kaucher & Reiner Strasser
5. Xylo by Peter Howard
6. Shopping List by Helen Whitehead
7. Lotus Blossom by Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries
8. The Stone Wall by Terry Persun
9. Cog by Loss Pequeño Glazier
10. 253 or Tube Theatre, a novel by Geoff Ryman
11. What Fits? by Adrienne Eisen
12. Uncle Roger (2003 Revised Edition) by Judy Malloy
13. Safara in the Beginning by Christy Sheffield Sanford
14. redridinghood by Donna Leishman
15. The Virtual Disappearance of Miriam by Martyn Bedford and Andy Campbell
16. The Unknown - William Gillespie, Scott Rettberg, Dirk Stratton, Frank Marquardt
17. Michael Atavar
18. Vniverse by Stephanie Strickland
19. Self Portrait(s) [as Other(s)] by Talan Memmott
20. Postcards from Writing by Sally Pryor
21. Swarm by Jane Prophet
22. War Room by Alan Sondheim and Simon Mills
23. soundpoem three by Jörg Piringer
24. Grammatron by Mark Amerika

Polymedia?

Word and Image in Computer-mediated work: sites for thinking about polymedia

http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/Review/index.cfm?article=118

 

We suggest that one of the distinguishing features of electronic or new media literature is that it is - or can be - polymedia, and that one of the things that makes it "new" is not only that it often contests distinctions between poetry, prose, exposition, and other literary genres, but that it borrows ideas and approaches (mixing and re-mixing them) from the art world. 

 

Indeed, reading and looking at electronic literature as it is produced and played out among texts, audiences, and institutions is a powerful reminder that the meaning of the term "literature" itself is always up for grabs - and that "electronic" literature, whatever the future might hold for it, is the site of many important conversations, struggles, and debates.

 

Collaboration or Community?

Lost http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/lost

Dawn Quilt http://www.literaturequilt.org/dawnquilt/submissions.cfm

Dawn is the same, yet different, in every part of the world. Every day, the rising of the sun animates the colours, sounds and perfumes of each country.

In The Dawn Quilt, writers in Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Sri Lanka capture the moment when their countries turn to face the sun, providing a striking series of windows into contemporary dawns across South Asia.

We hope you enjoy exploring this glowing patchwork of images. Hidden behind each window you will discover a short piece of prose interpreting South Asia at dawn.

 

Is the whole more than the sum of its parts?

 

What else is computer-mediated writing?

• mobile phones?

• installation?

• video and computer games

 

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  Copyright © Gavin Stewart 2005