Digital literature will be important in 21st century canon. Print and electronic literature deeply influence one another. Since print has become so involved in contemporary media, there is anxiety that print will soon be outdated. Studies show that people are reading less and doing other activities instead, such as surfing the Web or video games. Digital literature can be seen as "print in the making." In an attempt to outdo electronic literature, print uses these strategies:
Imitation - print uses comparable devices to digital technology, many of which need degitality to be less expensive or even possible.
Intensification - intensifying the specific tradtions of print, even when other media is available
These are the characteristics around with imitationa dn intensification are at work:
1. Computer-mediated text is layered -In other words, there is some text that the user almost if ever sees 2. Computer-mediated text is multi-modal 3. In computer-mediated text, storage is separate from performance -For instance, a book is the means of storage and of performance. With electronic literature, storage is in files and performance is usually by another means. 4. Computer-mediated text has fractured temporality -In other words, a user has little to no control over how quickly the text becomes readable
Digital images, unlike photography, do not require an original object.
Human agency is increasingly dependent upon intelligent machines to carry out intentions and provide data from which human decisions are made.
There is debate as to the similarity between human cognition and computer cognition, whether human though can be broken down into metaphorical ones and zeroes, or that human cognition contains an element that computers lack.
Correlations between the relationships between the texts can be revealed by activating channels of communication between embodied practice, tacit knowledge, and conscious thought.
The knowledge added by the correlated microstructures of philology (human linguistics and literature) and binary code (computer language) interpolates (inserts) computer language into the heart of human inscription.
Also correlated are the enactments of time through the time-based digital remediation of the texts. The fleeting transliteral morphs reveal phonemic and graphemic relationships.
How the transliterations work can be determined through different sensory modalities and different ways of knowing entwined together with machine cognition and agency.
Intuitive knowledge of letter forms define space and inflect time. What the user’s imagination constructs verses what is actually visible.
The Phenomenology of Reading is changing. -agency is distributed between the user and the interface -spacial perception is transformed -the cognition of the computer -The text is both a window into the computer's performance and a writing surface to be decoded. -Programmers intention PLUS the computer's underlying architecture as a symbolic processor. [we are living and acting within intelligent environment]
Hayles Chapter 1 This chapter is called “Electronic Literature: What is it?” In the chapter Hayles defines Electronic Literature like this: “generally considered to exclude print literature that has been digitized…’digital born,’ a first generation digital object created on a computer and (usually) meant to be read on a computer” (3). Hayles then discusses the different categories of electronic literature, mentioning generative art, “whereby an algorithm is used either to generate texts according to a randomized scheme or to scramble and rearrange preexisting texts” as one of the leading forms of electronic literature. She also mentions hypertext fiction, interactive fiction (which is similar to hypertext fiction, but encompasses more game-like elements), interactive drama, and digital art. Halyes says that it is important to recognize “the specificity of new media without abandoning the rich resources of traditional modes of understanding language, signification, and embodied interactions with texts” (24). But she stresses that electronic literature isn’t print, code must be run in order to read it.
The last 7 pages continue the discussion of House of Leaves. The beast that stalks the halls of the house is discussed, and it’s decided that the beast represents nothingness. A discussion of the House itself begins. The House, according to Hayles’ reading, can represent the relationship between human and computer. In destroying Holloway the House takes his madness into itself and begins to destroy the rest of its occupants. Hayles compares this to the way that computers are, with greater frequency, being allowed to both make decisions and to aggregate the information humans use to make decisions, creating (potentially) a mutually destructive cycle.
Hayles makes a distinction between the human mind and computers: human cognition is mediated by emotions and bodily processes. The Beast talked about earlier represents the House’s (and thus computers’) inability to recognize form and meaning in the information that they can so quickly process.
Hayles Ch 4 (Pages 139-146)--Recursive Interactions Between Practice and Articulation
Overall, this section is about the notion of combining human intuition with computational capabilities, and the how these aspects are very beneficial to electronic literature. Hayles explains that many "authors" use electronic literature to their advantage, focusing on the phonetic capabilities of language and its co-mingling with binary programming. Read on if you feel like you want a more in-depth explanation:
Hayles begins by explaining the Tachistoscope, a technology that explored the effects of subliminal messaging. She continues by addressing William Poundstone's Project for Tachistoscope which utilizes a flash version of subliminal messaging to further the narrative of his text. Hayles states that this text is an example of how Poundstone's Flash project is evidence of the success in human and computer interaction in the creation of a text, as well as the necessity of such cooperation.
Hayles explains how Millie Niss' text Sundays in the Park uses phonetic similarities to its advantage in making a political statement. She notes that Niss' text is multileveled, which allows the reader to explore and discover different aspects of it with further reading.
Finally, Hayles writes on Cayley's text Translation. She states that its worth lies in taking different ways of knowing, and weaving them together, both machine and human.
2nd half of Hayles Chapter 2: Hayles focuses on two different texts (“The Jew's Daughter” and “The Error Engine”) to highlight different examples of stream-of-consciousness digital literature. Hayles agrees with Daniel C. Dennett's model of consciousness, that contrary to a central self and the belief that our consciousness stems from this central self, that one's consciousness comes from different perceptions, memories, processes, etc. that are sutured together to form consciousness. Hayles refers to the comparison Dennett makes between the sub-cognitive processes of the brain and the even lower mechanical processes of a computer to show that “The Jew's Daughter” is a piece of electronic literature that mimics this process of consciousness creation. “The Jew's Daughter” changes its text when you click on certain words, and each new page has similar phrases and words but their context is completely changed. With “The Error Engine” this is taken a step further: instead of moving the mouse over words and there being essentially a link (that will always change to the same new words and phrases) that changes the text, an algorithm is used by the computer, and the computer chooses from a possible list of words the next words and phrases the reader will encounter. With this example, the computer is actually functioning as a sub-cognitive agent. The chapter closes with an overview and Hayles saying that “contemporary literature...is computational.”
Hayles Chapter Two first 1/4 • Almost all books are first digital, and then they are printed • The computational nature of literature is most evident in e-literature • Electronic literature is formed by computational programs • Computation is not peripheral or incidental to electronic literature, but central to its performance. Dynamic Heterarchies and Fluid Analogies • Everything computable must be reduced to binary code to be executed • This does not limit computers from creativity originality or cognition • Intermediation: a first level emergent pattern is captured in another medium and re-represented with the primitives of the new medium, which leads to an emergent result captured in yet another medium: “dynamic Hierarchy” Example is the mother’s womb. The fetus is changing the mother, but the mother is also changing the fetus. Both are bound in a dynamic heterarchy • Another example is a simple atom, they have protons and electrons, but when combined with another atom it creates a molecule. This creates a whole new product or element. • Just like atoms and molecules, Digital processes and anologue processes together perform more complex ways than the digital alone. They each have strengths, and when they work together, they perform synergistically with one another. • The computer and humans are bound together in complex ways • Since we are always connected, in a way technology is forming us and we are forming technology • Computers understand a language that we have created for them, so they are able to teach us, and we obviously teach them. According to anthropologist we have always been influenced by our technologies • People have created programs with “fluid analogies” instead of computers only recognizing a specific type of language, they understand and can adapt to certain types of analogies to process information. • Electronic literature, performs an action that binds together the author and program, or player and computer. It links the human understanding with computer sub-cognition. • The player, or human, is not interacting with a strict set of rules, but a fluid mix of different possibilities or analogies. • Because eliterature can rearrange the wording of author’s works, it gives the computer a certain type of agency. • The computer creates intermediating dynamics in a way a book can not.
This chapter focuses on how the human subject and the machine can work together in a digital world. In choosing either side, you take credit away from the great possibility either subject has to create and accomplish great things. Hayles discussed Kittler, who looks not only at the rhetoric of an online world, but also at the technological needs to produce such technology (such as hard drives, internet, etc.). Kittler is able to see how the hard elements of electronic literature affect the rhetoric and language used within it. Kittler also looks at the history and development of language and sound in relation to a technological world. Hayles identifies Kittler’s theory as “Kittlerian media theory,” and she continues analyzing why Kittler’s theory and the influences on his theory development (war, ideology, economic constraints). Hayles also discusses the impact of media and embodiment in determining our situation. Both must be used, because embodiment and media each fall short when used alone. This essentially means that Hayles believes that there needs to be an intricate and intertwined relationship between machine and human. They must rely on each other to gain insight and experience and that relationship must stay open and reactive.
* Should the body be subjected to the machine, or the machine to the body? * Friedrich A. Kittler * Literature acts on the body but only within the horizon of the medium’s technical capabilities. * After 1900, media differentiated data streams into distinct technologies: o Acoustic (phonograph) o Visual or Optical (film) o Writing or Textual * Kittler - “Man is split up into physiology and information technology.” o In other words, machines become an extension of man o “Communications technologies of the day exercise remote control over all understanding and evoke its illusion” * David E. Wellbery calls this idea of Kittlers “the presupposition of exteriority.” * Hayles thinks that “making social formations interior to media conditions is deeply flawed.” * Kittler’s media theory fails to explain how media changes come about. * Hayles thinks that media alone cannot be the cause of complex things such as war etc. * Communities of Time * Cultural Dynamics interact with the media conditions to codetermine their specifities. Example of trading currency. * If media alone are not enough to determine our situation, neither is embodiment (or “us” being located within our bodies alone, and computers, in this case, not being an extension of our bodies) * In Hansen’s view, it is humans, not machines, who provide, transmit, and interpret meanings. “If all humans were to spontaneously to disappear, machines might still operate, but this would be entirely without meaning.” * Hayles is sympathetic to Hansen’s view, but doesn’t think it’s enough. * In the end, Hayles thinks it should be a safe mixture of both “humans determining meaning” and “machines determining meaning”.
This section gives examples of how elements of digital literature have also crept into print novels. Examples are given from two texts (Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and The People of Paper). In the first novel, there are parts of the text where text has been exchanged for numerical codes, like one dialing numbers on a telephone which can represent any one of three letters. Hayles mentions that there are close to three pages of this nearly indecipherable code which could show some of the failures of modern language to express our modern situation. In another part of the same novel, the author overlaps lines of text which show the desperate, frenzied mind of the speaker in a way that normal text could not. In the second novel, the author shows how he (as the author) does not always have access to the minds of the characters by showing black boxes to represent this blocking off.
Hayles continues discussing the format of The People of Paper and talks about the blocking out of passages of text in order to show the ability of some to block their thoughts from others. This is a sort of comparison to computer layering (of information). Hayles continues to explain how various texts imitate the digital world (one house in a story is so complex and changing that it cannot be inhabited, much like how the digital does not need to be based on a physical representation of an object). In short, more contemporary texts attempt to imitate or mirror the digital world by using unique printing techniques and similar text constructions.
Chapter 4: Revaluing Computational Practice: Humans are advanced, and the advanced technology of computers allows humans to artistically create to our full extent. Computers should not be used just by software techies, but by all people -- and we can interact with computers to a greater extent than any other medium, and in a way, they interact with us too, which helps us to experience, explore, and create to a previously unknown level.
Chapter 1. Electronic Literature is Not Print (30-39): After decades of debate, stemming from the two electronic literature works, Michael Joyce’s afternoon: a story and Stuart Moulthrop’s Victory Garden, we can now see a more clearly identify the distinction between print and electronic literature. Some have argued about the novelty of hypertexts as a strictly electronic. Some have debated the application of such in deconstruction. Others helped to outline defining principles for new media and mark up languages, both directly related to electronic literature. And many, many more have sought to define the different aspects of print. The arguments in an of themselves clearly suggest that electronic literature has enough novelty of its own to amply distinguish it from print literature.
Chapter One: Genre of Electronic Literature - Electronic text remains distinct from print in that it cannot be accessed until it is performed and commended by properly executed programming code; this immediacy of code to the text’s performance helps us understand electronic literature as a literary and technical production. - Genres of Electronic Literature emerge 1) from the different ways users experience them and 2) from the structure and specificity of the underlying code. - There is a variety of genres in electronic literature, including the types associated with print literature and adding some genres unique to networked and programmable media. - Hypertext Fiction: started of being written in Storyspace, but as new authoring programs became more advanced and developed, the more tools authors have to produce hypertext fiction, including design and other multimodal media like videos and images and songs. - The nature of electronic literature has changed with the movement to the Web. - Classical hypertext works, then contemporary or postmodern. The later works had a wider variety of navigation schemes, interface metaphors, and multimodal features. Began to include hybrid forms of hypertext fiction, like narrative that emerge from a collection of data. The hyperlink is distinguishing feature, especially in classical. - Interactive Fiction: has stronger game elements. The distinction between games and electronic literature isn’t always clear, b/c games have narratives, and many electronic literature has game elements. Interactive fiction cannot proceed without input from the user. - essential elements of interactive fiction: interactor (is the user); parser (the computer program that understands and replies to the interactor’s input); and a simulated world where the action takes place. Expands the idea of literary through using visual displays, graphics, animations, and modifications of traditional literary devices. It also explores the creation of three-dimensional space, especially with text display, movement, color, etc. - e.g.) metaphors: the similarities are not through verbal comparison of two objects, but rather functional similarities combined with the player character’s actions--an embodied metaphor.
Introduction: Literature has evolved in the past, and is evolving now with the digital age, though we think it's in "crisis." There are concerns about the quality of digital literature. E-literature is "digital born," created for a digital format. It takes advantage of the capabilities of a computer. It must build on and also modify literary traditions. E-literature is a hybrid form, a "hopeful monster" created from other media.
Preservation, Archiving, Dissemination: E-literature is fluid, hard to perserve. Technology changes over time. Can't build on traditions, like in print. Some archive groups available. They advice creators to use open systems, community-directed systems, and plain text when making digital literature. Another expert suggests all E-literature use XML, which has a wide range of options, and could make archiving easier.
Hayles Chapter Four Part 1 * Revealing and Transforming * Human/Machine communication is now standard. Often to talk to other humans we use machines to facilitate our communication. * Lit shows us what we don't know. It also transforms what we do know into what we don't know yet. * There is a diff between knowing how to do something and being able to explain how to do it - know how to type, can't draw an accurate pic of a keyboard - know how to ride bike, can't explain the mechanics or how to do it * Much of our learning is unconscious; we develop a "technological nonconscious"
- Once electronic literature achieved three-dimensional imaging, we move being immersed in three-dimensional spaces through other environments off the desktop. - e.g.) email novels, short fiction delivered serially over cell phones, and locative narrative (location-specific narratives keyed to GPS technology), and virtual reality. - With this kind of immersion, the page becomes more than a surface with words. It is transformed into a playable space, where we can actively participate. - Playable Media: computer games and other interactive works with game-like elements. - Interactive Dramas: performed for live audiences in gallery spaces; site specific, with present or remote actors. Many have general scripts, and actors improve much of the story. Can also be performed online. - Conventions of Electronic Literature: maintaining rising tension, conflict, and denouement in interactive fiction (where user determines sequence) can be difficult for writers. Two sides to argument: 1) Giving the audience control of the creative process in writing may undermine the narrative experience, 2) but being involved in that process may also enhance narrative involvement by inviting the readers to be the creator. - These constraints within electronic literature have encouraged authors to: explore nonnarrative forms of writing, experiment with randomizing algorithms, and try different ways of letting the audience control some aspects of the creative process.
Hayles- Chapter 2 Intermediation: from page to screen (pp. 43-85) Meaning making as a spectrum of possibilities with recursive loops, entangling different positions -> “the meaning of information is given by the process that interprets it” (i.e. MP3 player interprets a digital file to produce audible sound, that reaches the human ear, which then hears and appreciates it as a meaningful composition…underlying the conscious attribution of meaning are many interrelated interpretation processes- such as: modulations by sound waves acting on ear drum, to excitation of neuron groups in the brain, to narrations of consciousness etc. etc. ) “Aboutness” -> becomes a cascading series of recognition from subcognative processes to sophisticated knowledge etc. Kinds of minds: • Cells having a mind- they provide the ground more complex operations and high level cognition emerge. Like humans, intelligent machines also have multiple layers of processes, from ones and zeros to sophisticated acts of reasoning and inference. Mediation: (In humans and intelligent machines) internal cascading processes of interpreting information and therefore giving it meaning…through intermediating dynamics, a richer picture emerges of multiple points of connection at many different levels between and among these two different kinds of cognizers. In E-Lit, dynamics evoked when text performs actions that bind author & program and then player & computer, into a complex system which = intermediating dynamics.
Meta-analogy: as human cognition is to the creation and consumption of the work, so computer cognition is to its execution and performance. Intermediating dynamics link human understanding with computer (sub)cognition through cascading processes of interpretation that give meaning to info. Humans interact without a rigid rule set but with a fluid mix of different possibilities. Fluidity may arise from unexpected effects that are possible when different functionalities within the software are activated simultaneously. Intermediation with works of contemporary e-lit reveals how they achieve their effects and how these effects imply the existence of entangled dynamic hierarchies binding together humans and intelligent machines. E-lit is an evolution- not entirely new. It was influenced by literature in print etc. that preceded it. Also, in e-lit, techniques (such as conflicting plot lines) are not totally original- there were pre-cursers- but just with its implementation in an electronic medium. Interactivity: “reader” and “player” – depends on structure and potential outcomes of interactivity.
Chapter 1- Genres of Electronic Literature (pgs. 18-30, beginning with paragraph starting with "Generative art,"). Generative art- an algorithm is used either to generate texts according to a randomized scheme or to scramble and rearrange preexisting texts. This can be art that is done by a machine. Randomization is a way to break the hold of the viral world and liberate resistances latent in language by freeing it from linear syntax and coherent narrative. In other words, machine art can be better in freeing our artistic limitations. Electronic Literature is beginning just as the book did. People are looking to explore different areas. They are in the process, still, of deciding what works hold artistic value. It also brings together diverse expertise so that the “aesthetic strategies and possibilities of electronic literature may be fully understood.” These developments have necessitated new kinds of critical practice, some call this, “electracy.” The author’s opinion is that the best critical practice will involve both recognizing the specificity of new media, mixed with the idea to not completely abandon the “traditional modes of understanding language, signification, and embodied interactions with texts.” In other words, a mix of new and old techniques will be the best way to a sound critical analysis of e-literature. He calls this balanced critical approach, “thinking digital.” The author then explores the new expressions of art that can be expressed through e-literature. He gives an example of, “The Dream Life of Letters,” in which the dream effect is illustrated by the movements and “behaviors” of the letters themselves. Then the example of “Faith” that we saw in class. He explains that the colors in “Faith” express a message in themselves that oscillates between logic and faith. Some examples of electronic literature are: hypertext fiction, network fiction, interactive fiction, locative narratives, installation pieces, “codework”, generative art, and Flash poem. These have only been around for about two decades.
A theoretical frame work in which electronic literature is understood as a practice that mediates between humans and machine cognition Both a literal description of the dynamics of human/computer interaction and a metaphor for such interactions Embodied Human vs. the Machine:
Hayles argues that neither the body nor the machine should be given absolute theoretical priority. Rather, she focuses on the interconnections between embodied writers and users and the intelligent machines that perform electronic texts.
The Machine is like a body as well and both the human and the machine are affected by one another. You cannot separate the two because of co-evolution.
Co-evolution: humans would not be what they are today without technology, and technology evolves based on how humans choose to use and transform them as well. Both are dependent on one another.
š I propose that some of the purposes of literature are to reveal what we know but don't know that we know, and to transform what we know we know into what we don't know?
š A recursive feedback loop explicit articulation, conscious thought and embodied sensorimotor knowledge
Our minds have neural plasticity; they begin with many synapses that are ready to be changed according to influences of outside sources. Children growing up in an age where media is a large part of their culture, are affected and changed physiologically to suit that environment.
"It is no exaggeration to say modern humans literally would not have come into exi
Embodied practices: "Embodiment will not become obsolete because it is essential to human being, but It can and does transform in relation to environmental selective pressures, particularly though interactions with technology."
"Technologies are embodied because they have their own material specificities as central to understanding how they work as human physiology, psychology, and cognition are to understanding how human bodies work."
Focuses on the relationship between lexia and how it incorporates itself into the experiences of the reader. In other words, how the lexia and content of online literature interacts with the reader's memories and how it affects us. This is different for everyone depending on past experiences. The specific words and details in these stories varies greatly in "The Jew's Daughter" and the "Error Engine" Some of the word choice is quite graphic, but it affects the reader at a fundamental level due to other types of media that are successfully integrated into the story. This would be impossible to preform with traditional literature, so it's evidence of the power and possibility of electronic literature in the 21 century. It might not take the place of traditional written literature, but it will become influential in many other aspects.
Chapter 4, Hayles explores the relationship between the knowledge of the body and the knowledge of the mind. Language is a mediation of our thoughts and we learn differently when we write than when we hear or read. We know and recognize more than our minds can really process and using our body in some way to tap that knowledge (like writing) increases our cognitive understanding and our knowledge base. Digital literature is great because it connects our body to our mind as we click and interact with the screen. However, we give over part of our agency as we interact with computers because our bodies begin to react to the stimulus without us actually being conscious of the act (keyboarding skills, mouse clicks, etc). Only disruptions in the process (page takes too long to load, error messages, etc) make us truly aware of our loss of agency, but the computer remains only a medium run by a program inputted by a programmer. "In electronic literature, authorial design, the actions of an intelligent machine, and the users' receptivity are used in a recursive cycle that enacts in microcosm our contemporary situation of living and acting within intelligent environments.
Chapter 3 With the advent of E literature a schism has developed between the user and the machine and whether the user or the machine is in charge and is being used. But Hayles argued that neither the body nor the machine be given absolute theoretical priority. She concentrated on the interconnections between embodied writers and users and the intelligent machines that preform the E literature. There are two forms of embodied practices; tacit knowledge and explicit articulation. “Some of the purposes of literature are to reveal what we know but don’t know that we know, and to transform what we know we know into what we don’t know?” A recursive feedback loop explicit articulation, conscious thought and embodied sensorimotor knowledge. The first proposition asserts that verbal narratives are simultaneously conveyed and disrupted by code. The second argues that distributed cognition implies distributive agency.
Is about the experience of the reader develops a relationship through lexia and content of the online literature which affects the reader’s memory. Depending on the word choice which can range from grotesque to lively it will affect the reader. Although online literature is different from traditional literature it cannot take the place of traditional literature. Hayles highlights two different texts in this chapter which are “The Jew’s Daughter” and “The Error Engine” as examples of stream-of-consciousness digital literature. Each has a different process of creation which leads the reader to view it in different ways.
Digital literature will be important in 21st century canon. Print and electronic literature deeply influence one another. Since print has become so involved in contemporary media, there is anxiety that print will soon be outdated. Studies show that people are reading less and doing other activities instead, such as surfing the Web or video games. Digital literature can be seen as "print in the making." In an attempt to outdo electronic literature, print uses these strategies:
ReplyDeleteImitation - print uses comparable devices to digital technology, many of which need degitality to be less expensive or even possible.
Intensification - intensifying the specific tradtions of print, even when other media is available
These are the characteristics around with imitationa dn intensification are at work:
1. Computer-mediated text is layered
-In other words, there is some text that the user almost if ever sees
2. Computer-mediated text is multi-modal
3. In computer-mediated text, storage is separate from performance
-For instance, a book is the means of storage and of performance. With electronic literature, storage is in files and performance is usually by another means.
4. Computer-mediated text has fractured temporality
-In other words, a user has little to no control over how quickly the text becomes readable
Digital images, unlike photography, do not require an original object.
Human agency is increasingly dependent upon intelligent machines to carry out intentions and provide data from which human decisions are made.
There is debate as to the similarity between human cognition and computer cognition, whether human though can be broken down into metaphorical ones and zeroes, or that human cognition contains an element that computers lack.
Cambria Varney
Correlations between the relationships between the texts can be revealed by activating channels of communication between embodied practice, tacit knowledge, and conscious thought.
ReplyDeleteThe knowledge added by the correlated microstructures of philology (human linguistics and literature) and binary code (computer language) interpolates (inserts) computer language into the heart of human inscription.
Also correlated are the enactments of time through the time-based digital remediation of the texts. The fleeting transliteral morphs reveal phonemic and graphemic relationships.
How the transliterations work can be determined through different sensory modalities and different ways of knowing entwined together with machine cognition and agency.
Intuitive knowledge of letter forms define space and inflect time. What the user’s imagination constructs verses what is actually visible.
The Phenomenology of Reading is changing.
-agency is distributed between the user and the interface
-spacial perception is transformed
-the cognition of the computer
-The text is both a window into the computer's performance and a writing surface to be decoded.
-Programmers intention PLUS the computer's underlying architecture as a symbolic processor.
[we are living and acting within intelligent environment]
Hayles Chapter 1
ReplyDeleteThis chapter is called “Electronic Literature: What is it?” In the chapter Hayles defines Electronic Literature like this: “generally considered to exclude print literature that has been digitized…’digital born,’ a first generation digital object created on a computer and (usually) meant to be read on a computer” (3). Hayles then discusses the different categories of electronic literature, mentioning generative art, “whereby an algorithm is used either to generate texts according to a randomized scheme or to scramble and rearrange preexisting texts” as one of the leading forms of electronic literature. She also mentions hypertext fiction, interactive fiction (which is similar to hypertext fiction, but encompasses more game-like elements), interactive drama, and digital art.
Halyes says that it is important to recognize “the specificity of new media without abandoning the rich resources of traditional modes of understanding language, signification, and embodied interactions with texts” (24). But she stresses that electronic literature isn’t print, code must be run in order to read it.
Hayles Chapter 5
ReplyDeleteThe last 7 pages continue the discussion of House of Leaves. The beast
that stalks the halls of the house is discussed, and it’s decided that
the beast represents nothingness. A discussion of the House itself
begins. The House, according to Hayles’ reading, can represent the
relationship between human and computer. In destroying Holloway the
House takes his madness into itself and begins to destroy the rest of
its occupants. Hayles compares this to the way that computers are,
with greater frequency, being allowed to both make decisions and to
aggregate the information humans use to make decisions, creating
(potentially) a mutually destructive cycle.
Hayles makes a distinction between the human mind and computers: human cognition is mediated by emotions and bodily processes. The Beast talked about earlier represents the House’s (and thus computers’)
inability to recognize form and meaning in the information that they
can so quickly process.
Hayles Ch 4 (Pages 139-146)--Recursive Interactions Between Practice and Articulation
ReplyDeleteOverall, this section is about the notion of combining human intuition with computational capabilities, and the how these aspects are very beneficial to electronic literature. Hayles explains that many "authors" use electronic literature to their advantage, focusing on the phonetic capabilities of language and its co-mingling with binary programming. Read on if you feel like you want a more in-depth explanation:
Hayles begins by explaining the Tachistoscope, a technology that explored the effects of subliminal messaging. She continues by addressing William Poundstone's Project for Tachistoscope which utilizes a flash version of subliminal messaging to further the narrative of his text. Hayles states that this text is an example of how Poundstone's Flash project is evidence of the success in human and computer interaction in the creation of a text, as well as the necessity of such cooperation.
Hayles explains how Millie Niss' text Sundays in the Park uses phonetic similarities to its advantage in making a political statement. She notes that Niss' text is multileveled, which allows the reader to explore and discover different aspects of it with further reading.
Finally, Hayles writes on Cayley's text Translation. She states that its worth lies in taking different ways of knowing, and weaving them together, both machine and human.
2nd half of Hayles Chapter 2:
ReplyDeleteHayles focuses on two different texts (“The Jew's Daughter” and “The Error Engine”) to highlight different examples of stream-of-consciousness digital literature. Hayles agrees with Daniel C. Dennett's model of consciousness, that contrary to a central self and the belief that our consciousness stems from this central self, that one's consciousness comes from different perceptions, memories, processes, etc. that are sutured together to form consciousness. Hayles refers to the comparison Dennett makes between the sub-cognitive processes of the brain and the even lower mechanical processes of a computer to show that “The Jew's Daughter” is a piece of electronic literature that mimics this process of consciousness creation. “The Jew's Daughter” changes its text when you click on certain words, and each new page has similar phrases and words but their context is completely changed. With “The Error Engine” this is taken a step further: instead of moving the mouse over words and there being essentially a link (that will always change to the same new words and phrases) that changes the text, an algorithm is used by the computer, and the computer chooses from a possible list of words the next words and phrases the reader will encounter. With this example, the computer is actually functioning as a sub-cognitive agent. The chapter closes with an overview and Hayles saying that “contemporary literature...is computational.”
Hayles Chapter Two first 1/4
ReplyDelete• Almost all books are first digital, and then they are printed
• The computational nature of literature is most evident in e-literature
• Electronic literature is formed by computational programs
• Computation is not peripheral or incidental to electronic literature, but central to its performance.
Dynamic Heterarchies and Fluid Analogies
• Everything computable must be reduced to binary code to be executed
• This does not limit computers from creativity originality or cognition
• Intermediation: a first level emergent pattern is captured in another medium and re-represented with the primitives of the new medium, which leads to an emergent result captured in yet another medium: “dynamic Hierarchy” Example is the mother’s womb. The fetus is changing the mother, but the mother is also changing the fetus. Both are bound in a dynamic heterarchy
• Another example is a simple atom, they have protons and electrons, but when combined with another atom it creates a molecule. This creates a whole new product or element.
• Just like atoms and molecules, Digital processes and anologue processes together perform more complex ways than the digital alone. They each have strengths, and when they work together, they perform synergistically with one another.
• The computer and humans are bound together in complex ways
• Since we are always connected, in a way technology is forming us and we are forming technology
• Computers understand a language that we have created for them, so they are able to teach us, and we obviously teach them. According to anthropologist we have always been influenced by our technologies
• People have created programs with “fluid analogies” instead of computers only recognizing a specific type of language, they understand and can adapt to certain types of analogies to process information.
• Electronic literature, performs an action that binds together the author and program, or player and computer. It links the human understanding with computer sub-cognition.
• The player, or human, is not interacting with a strict set of rules, but a fluid mix of different possibilities or analogies.
• Because eliterature can rearrange the wording of author’s works, it gives the computer a certain type of agency.
• The computer creates intermediating dynamics in a way a book can not.
Chapter 3: Hayles
ReplyDeleteThis chapter focuses on how the human subject and the machine can work together in a digital world. In choosing either side, you take credit away from the great possibility either subject has to create and accomplish great things.
Hayles discussed Kittler, who looks not only at the rhetoric of an online world, but also at the technological needs to produce such technology (such as hard drives, internet, etc.). Kittler is able to see how the hard elements of electronic literature affect the rhetoric and language used within it. Kittler also looks at the history and development of language and sound in relation to a technological world. Hayles identifies Kittler’s theory as “Kittlerian media theory,” and she continues analyzing why Kittler’s theory and the influences on his theory development (war, ideology, economic constraints). Hayles also discusses the impact of media and embodiment in determining our situation. Both must be used, because embodiment and media each fall short when used alone. This essentially means that Hayles believes that there needs to be an intricate and intertwined relationship between machine and human. They must rely on each other to gain insight and experience and that relationship must stay open and reactive.
Hayles Chapter 3
ReplyDelete* Should the body be subjected to the machine, or the machine to the body?
* Friedrich A. Kittler
* Literature acts on the body but only within the horizon of the medium’s technical capabilities.
* After 1900, media differentiated data streams into distinct technologies:
o Acoustic (phonograph)
o Visual or Optical (film)
o Writing or Textual
* Kittler - “Man is split up into physiology and information technology.”
o In other words, machines become an extension of man
o “Communications technologies of the day exercise remote control over all understanding and evoke its illusion”
* David E. Wellbery calls this idea of Kittlers “the presupposition of exteriority.”
* Hayles thinks that “making social formations interior to media conditions is deeply flawed.”
* Kittler’s media theory fails to explain how media changes come about.
* Hayles thinks that media alone cannot be the cause of complex things such as war etc.
* Communities of Time
* Cultural Dynamics interact with the media conditions to codetermine their specifities. Example of trading currency.
* If media alone are not enough to determine our situation, neither is embodiment (or “us” being located within our bodies alone, and computers, in this case, not being an extension of our bodies)
* In Hansen’s view, it is humans, not machines, who provide, transmit, and interpret meanings. “If all humans were to spontaneously to disappear, machines might still operate, but this would be entirely without meaning.”
* Hayles is sympathetic to Hansen’s view, but doesn’t think it’s enough.
* In the end, Hayles thinks it should be a safe mixture of both “humans determining meaning” and “machines determining meaning”.
Hayles Chapter 5 (pages 166-173):
ReplyDeleteThis section gives examples of how elements of digital literature have also crept into print novels. Examples are given from two texts (Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and The People of Paper). In the first novel, there are parts of the text where text has been exchanged for numerical codes, like one dialing numbers on a telephone which can represent any one of three letters. Hayles mentions that there are close to three pages of this nearly indecipherable code which could show some of the failures of modern language to express our modern situation. In another part of the same novel, the author overlaps lines of text which show the desperate, frenzied mind of the speaker in a way that normal text could not. In the second novel, the author shows how he (as the author) does not always have access to the minds of the characters by showing black boxes to represent this blocking off.
Chapter 5, pg 173-179
ReplyDeleteHayles continues discussing the format of The People of Paper and talks about the blocking out of passages of text in order to show the ability of some to block their thoughts from others. This is a sort of comparison to computer layering (of information).
Hayles continues to explain how various texts imitate the digital world (one house in a story is so complex and changing that it cannot be inhabited, much like how the digital does not need to be based on a physical representation of an object).
In short, more contemporary texts attempt to imitate or mirror the digital world by using unique printing techniques and similar text constructions.
Chapter 4:
ReplyDeleteRevaluing Computational Practice:
Humans are advanced, and the advanced technology of computers allows humans to artistically create to our full extent. Computers should not be used just by software techies, but by all people -- and we can interact with computers to a greater extent than any other medium, and in a way, they interact with us too, which helps us to experience, explore, and create to a previously unknown level.
Chapter 1. Electronic Literature is Not Print (30-39):
ReplyDeleteAfter decades of debate, stemming from the two electronic literature works, Michael Joyce’s afternoon: a story and Stuart Moulthrop’s Victory Garden, we can now see a more clearly identify the distinction between print and electronic literature. Some have argued about the novelty of hypertexts as a strictly electronic. Some have debated the application of such in deconstruction. Others helped to outline defining principles for new media and mark up languages, both directly related to electronic literature. And many, many more have sought to define the different aspects of print. The arguments in an of themselves clearly suggest that electronic literature has enough novelty of its own to amply distinguish it from print literature.
Chapter One: Genre of Electronic Literature
ReplyDelete- Electronic text remains distinct from print in that it cannot be accessed until it is performed and commended by properly executed programming code; this immediacy of code to the text’s performance helps us understand electronic literature as a literary and technical production.
- Genres of Electronic Literature emerge 1) from the different ways users experience them and 2) from the structure and specificity of the underlying code.
- There is a variety of genres in electronic literature, including the types associated with print literature and adding some genres unique to networked and programmable media.
- Hypertext Fiction: started of being written in Storyspace, but as new authoring programs became more advanced and developed, the more tools authors have to produce hypertext fiction, including design and other multimodal media like videos and images and songs.
- The nature of electronic literature has changed with the movement to the Web.
- Classical hypertext works, then contemporary or postmodern. The later works had a wider variety of navigation schemes, interface metaphors, and multimodal features. Began to include hybrid forms of hypertext fiction, like narrative that emerge from a collection of data. The hyperlink is distinguishing feature, especially in classical.
- Interactive Fiction: has stronger game elements. The distinction between games and electronic literature isn’t always clear, b/c games have narratives, and many electronic literature has game elements. Interactive fiction cannot proceed without input from the user.
- essential elements of interactive fiction: interactor (is the user); parser (the computer program that understands and replies to the interactor’s input); and a simulated world where the action takes place. Expands the idea of literary through using visual displays, graphics, animations, and modifications of traditional literary devices. It also explores the creation of three-dimensional space, especially with text display, movement, color, etc.
- e.g.) metaphors: the similarities are not through verbal comparison of two objects, but rather functional similarities combined with the player character’s actions--an embodied metaphor.
From Chapter 1:
ReplyDeleteIntroduction:
Literature has evolved in the past, and is evolving now with the digital age, though we think it's in "crisis." There are concerns about the quality of digital literature. E-literature is "digital born," created for a digital format. It takes advantage of the capabilities of a computer. It must build on and also modify literary traditions. E-literature is a hybrid form, a "hopeful monster" created from other media.
Preservation, Archiving, Dissemination:
E-literature is fluid, hard to perserve. Technology changes over time. Can't build on traditions, like in print. Some archive groups available. They advice creators to use open systems, community-directed systems, and plain text when making digital literature. Another expert suggests all E-literature use XML, which has a wide range of options, and could make archiving easier.
Hayles Chapter Four Part 1
ReplyDelete* Revealing and Transforming
* Human/Machine communication is now standard. Often to talk to other humans we use machines to facilitate our communication.
* Lit shows us what we don't know. It also transforms what we do know into what we don't know yet.
* There is a diff between knowing how to do something and being able to explain how to do it
- know how to type, can't draw an accurate pic of a keyboard
- know how to ride bike, can't explain the mechanics or how to do it
* Much of our learning is unconscious; we develop a "technological nonconscious"
- Once electronic literature achieved three-dimensional imaging, we move being immersed in three-dimensional spaces through other environments off the desktop.
ReplyDelete- e.g.) email novels, short fiction delivered serially over cell phones, and locative narrative (location-specific narratives keyed to GPS technology), and virtual reality.
- With this kind of immersion, the page becomes more than a surface with words. It is transformed into a playable space, where we can actively participate.
- Playable Media: computer games and other interactive works with game-like elements.
- Interactive Dramas: performed for live audiences in gallery spaces; site specific, with present or remote actors. Many have general scripts, and actors improve much of the story. Can also be performed online.
- Conventions of Electronic Literature: maintaining rising tension, conflict, and denouement in interactive fiction (where user determines sequence) can be difficult for writers. Two sides to argument: 1) Giving the audience control of the creative process in writing may undermine the narrative experience, 2) but being involved in that process may also enhance narrative involvement by inviting the readers to be the creator.
- These constraints within electronic literature have encouraged authors to: explore nonnarrative forms of writing, experiment with randomizing algorithms, and try different ways of letting the audience control some aspects of the creative process.
Hayles- Chapter 2
ReplyDeleteIntermediation: from page to screen
(pp. 43-85)
Meaning making as a spectrum of possibilities with recursive loops, entangling different positions -> “the meaning of information is given by the process that interprets it” (i.e. MP3 player interprets a digital file to produce audible sound, that reaches the human ear, which then hears and appreciates it as a meaningful composition…underlying the conscious attribution of meaning are many interrelated interpretation processes- such as: modulations by sound waves acting on ear drum, to excitation of neuron groups in the brain, to narrations of consciousness etc. etc. )
“Aboutness” -> becomes a cascading series of recognition from subcognative processes to sophisticated knowledge etc.
Kinds of minds:
• Cells having a mind- they provide the ground more complex operations and high level cognition emerge.
Like humans, intelligent machines also have multiple layers of processes, from ones and zeros to sophisticated acts of reasoning and inference.
Mediation:
(In humans and intelligent machines) internal cascading processes of interpreting information and therefore giving it meaning…through intermediating dynamics, a richer picture emerges of multiple points of connection at many different levels between and among these two different kinds of cognizers.
In E-Lit, dynamics evoked when text performs actions that bind author & program and then player & computer, into a complex system which = intermediating dynamics.
Meta-analogy: as human cognition is to the creation and consumption of the work, so computer cognition is to its execution and performance.
Intermediating dynamics link human understanding with computer (sub)cognition through cascading processes of interpretation that give meaning to info.
Humans interact without a rigid rule set but with a fluid mix of different possibilities. Fluidity may arise from unexpected effects that are possible when different functionalities within the software are activated simultaneously.
Intermediation with works of contemporary e-lit reveals how they achieve their effects and how these effects imply the existence of entangled dynamic hierarchies binding together humans and intelligent machines.
E-lit is an evolution- not entirely new. It was influenced by literature in print etc. that preceded it.
Also, in e-lit, techniques (such as conflicting plot lines) are not totally original- there were pre-cursers- but just with its implementation in an electronic medium.
Interactivity: “reader” and “player” – depends on structure and potential outcomes of interactivity.
Chapter 1- Genres of Electronic Literature (pgs. 18-30, beginning with paragraph starting with "Generative art,").
ReplyDeleteGenerative art- an algorithm is used either to generate texts according to a randomized scheme or to scramble and rearrange preexisting texts. This can be art that is done by a machine. Randomization is a way to break the hold of the viral world and liberate resistances latent in language by freeing it from linear syntax and coherent narrative. In other words, machine art can be better in freeing our artistic limitations.
Electronic Literature is beginning just as the book did. People are looking to explore different areas. They are in the process, still, of deciding what works hold artistic value. It also brings together diverse expertise so that the “aesthetic strategies and possibilities of electronic literature may be fully understood.”
These developments have necessitated new kinds of critical practice, some call this, “electracy.” The author’s opinion is that the best critical practice will involve both recognizing the specificity of new media, mixed with the idea to not completely abandon the “traditional modes of understanding language, signification, and embodied interactions with texts.” In other words, a mix of new and old techniques will be the best way to a sound critical analysis of e-literature. He calls this balanced critical approach, “thinking digital.”
The author then explores the new expressions of art that can be expressed through e-literature. He gives an example of, “The Dream Life of Letters,” in which the dream effect is illustrated by the movements and “behaviors” of the letters themselves. Then the example of “Faith” that we saw in class. He explains that the colors in “Faith” express a message in themselves that oscillates between logic and faith.
Some examples of electronic literature are: hypertext fiction, network fiction, interactive fiction, locative narratives, installation pieces, “codework”, generative art, and Flash poem. These have only been around for about two decades.
Hayles - Chapter 3
ReplyDeleteIntermediation:
A theoretical frame work in which electronic literature is understood as a practice that mediates between humans and machine cognition
Both a literal description of the dynamics of human/computer interaction and a metaphor for such interactions
Embodied Human vs. the Machine:
Hayles argues that neither the body nor the machine should be given absolute theoretical priority. Rather, she focuses on the interconnections between embodied writers and users and the intelligent machines that perform electronic texts.
The Machine is like a body as well and both the human and the machine are affected by one another. You cannot separate the two because of co-evolution.
Co-evolution: humans would not be what they are today without technology, and technology evolves based on how humans choose to use and transform them as well. Both are dependent on one another.
š I propose that some of the purposes of literature are to reveal what we know but don't know that we know, and to transform what we know we know into what we don't know?
š A recursive feedback loop explicit articulation, conscious thought and embodied sensorimotor knowledge
Our minds have neural plasticity; they begin with many synapses that are ready to be changed according to influences of outside sources. Children growing up in an age where media is a large part of their culture, are affected and changed physiologically to suit that environment.
"It is no exaggeration to say modern humans literally would not have come into exi
Embodied practices: "Embodiment will not become obsolete because it is essential to human being, but It can and does transform in relation to environmental selective pressures, particularly though interactions with technology."
"Technologies are embodied because they have their own material specificities as central to understanding how they work as human physiology, psychology, and cognition are to understanding how human bodies work."
Chapter 2 (2nd half)
ReplyDeleteFocuses on the relationship between lexia and how it incorporates itself into the experiences of the reader. In other words, how the lexia and content of online literature interacts with the reader's memories and how it affects us. This is different for everyone depending on past experiences.
The specific words and details in these stories varies greatly in "The Jew's Daughter" and the "Error Engine" Some of the word choice is quite graphic, but it affects the reader at a fundamental level due to other types of media that are successfully integrated into the story. This would be impossible to preform with traditional literature, so it's evidence of the power and possibility of electronic literature in the 21 century. It might not take the place of traditional written literature, but it will become influential in many other aspects.
Chapter 4, Hayles explores the relationship between the knowledge of the body and the knowledge of the mind. Language is a mediation of our thoughts and we learn differently when we write than when we hear or read. We know and recognize more than our minds can really process and using our body in some way to tap that knowledge (like writing) increases our cognitive understanding and our knowledge base. Digital literature is great because it connects our body to our mind as we click and interact with the screen. However, we give over part of our agency as we interact with computers because our bodies begin to react to the stimulus without us actually being conscious of the act (keyboarding skills, mouse clicks, etc). Only disruptions in the process (page takes too long to load, error messages, etc) make us truly aware of our loss of agency, but the computer remains only a medium run by a program inputted by a programmer. "In electronic literature, authorial design, the actions of an intelligent machine, and the users' receptivity are used in a recursive cycle that enacts in microcosm our contemporary situation of living and acting within intelligent environments.
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ReplyDeleteChapter 3
ReplyDeleteWith the advent of E literature a schism has developed between the user and the machine and whether the user or the machine is in charge and is being used. But Hayles argued that neither the body nor the machine be given absolute theoretical priority. She concentrated on the interconnections between embodied writers and users and the intelligent machines that preform the E literature. There are two forms of embodied practices; tacit knowledge and explicit articulation.
“Some of the purposes of literature are to reveal what we know but don’t know that we know, and to transform what we know we know into what we don’t know?”
A recursive feedback loop explicit articulation, conscious thought and embodied sensorimotor knowledge.
The first proposition asserts that verbal narratives are simultaneously conveyed and disrupted by code.
The second argues that distributed cognition implies distributive agency.
Is about the experience of the reader develops a relationship through lexia and content of the online literature which affects the reader’s memory. Depending on the word choice which can range from grotesque to lively it will affect the reader. Although online literature is different from traditional literature it cannot take the place of traditional literature. Hayles highlights two different texts in this chapter which are “The Jew’s Daughter” and “The Error Engine” as examples of stream-of-consciousness digital literature. Each has a different process of creation which leads the reader to view it in different ways.
ReplyDelete