Some HTML 5 Works
by Jim Andrews
A review of four new HTML 5 works including an innovative, interactive music video by Montréal’s The Arcade Fire, 2011 winners of the Grammy for album of the year (The Suburbs).

Recursion and Human Thought: Why the Piraha Don’t Have Numbers
by Jim Andrews
The Piraha are a tribe of Brazilian aboriginals much discussed in linguistics because their language seems to provide evidence that one of the tenets of Noam Chomsky’s theory of language is wrong. Also, the Piraha lack almost all language for number. Yet, in this monlogue by Daniel L. Everett, who has lived among them for years, we see a case of the natives converting the missionary. About time! In an age where ‘Think different’ is a corporate slogan, the Piraha truly do think differently.

Vancouver Riot
by Jim Andrews
I recently moved to Vancouver. Just in time for the hockey riot. Which happened in my neighborhood. Mayhem dbCinemized.

Unashamed Oink Squirts
by Gregory Whitehead
An anagrammatical exploration of the nomological potential of D,o,m,i,n,i,q,u,e,S,t,r,a,u,s,s,K,a,h,n.

DREAMING METHODS–OPEN SOURCE PROJECT
by Andy Campbell
Dreaming Methods has three new projects available to experience – each one created without the use of Flash or any other browser plugin.

MAINLY THE MYSTERIES
by Gregory Whitehead
One of the great audio artists of our time was asked to write about what he still believes in, through all the riptides of the past decades.

THE CLUB
by Jim Andrews
Selected North American politicians, business men, and pyschopaths dbCinemized.

UNDERBELLY & SISTER STONE CARVER
by Christine Wilks
Christine on the relation of her piece Underbelly to where she’s from, and her sister’s stone carving.

UNICODE BY JORG PIRINGER
by Jim Andrews
A review of Jorg’s piece posted on netpoetic.

CITY BIRD BY MILLIE NISS
by Jim Andrews
A short review of the late Millie Niss’s new book of poems.

ANDREW TOPEL
by Jim Andrews
Some outstanding visual poetry by Andrew Topel.

IN THE SOUP WITH THE DIGITAL BOOK
by Paul Green
New contributor Paul Green, audio artist extrordinaire, wonders about the digital book.

RADIAUTEUR–NEW WEBZINE FOR RADIO ART
by Gregory Whitehead
Description of and call for works concerning a new online webzine for radio art.

MARIA ENGBERG REVIEWS FUNKHOUSER AND DRUCKER
by Jim Andrews
Thoughts on Engberg’s article recently published in EBR.

MOM’S MUSIC
by Jim Andrews
A last experience together of music.

SLIDVID 3.0
by Jim Andrews
A software project by Andrews.

THE CURSE OF THE ‘CODE BLUE’ MOTTO
by Jim Andrews
The motto of the Canadian national junior hockey team in 2011 was “Code Blue”. Who knew that their motto would prove ironic? After the final game, did whoever thought up the motto for the Canadian juniors glimpse, in a kind of literary horror, the final meaning the motto would have in history?

Some of us wonder, why isn’t my work appearing in more museums, galleries, and festivals around the world? I’ve worked long and hard, I’ve produced the works, so where are the publications? Where are the accolades? Where are the reviews?

For those of us who seek fame and glory, or residency in its suburbs, there are ten ways to make it as a digital writer (and then fade away):

(1) Ok, I’ll admit, you’ll need some skill to succeed as a digital writer. Note, I did not say “talent.” My belief is that talent is overrated. I don’t believe people are born with an innate talent in anything but learning how to do something well.

But whatever that thing is, whether digital writing, or teaching, or knitting sweaters, you need to practice. Creative work really is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration, as most practicing writers will attest to. So if you want to succeed as a digital writer, you have to write. And write. And write. And write.

(2) The second way to make it as a digital writer is to submit your work to every possible venue you can think of. Where do you find calls for work such as ours? My personal favorites are Rhizome.org, NYFA.org, ChrisJoseph.org, and Artservis.org, but there are many other places online where you can find calls for New Media. And yes, make no mistake, digital literature falls into the category of New Media. Don’t be dismayed if the call does not specify New Media–often, I have emailed curators who are looking for “any media” and asked if they would consider my work, and many say yes. They are often ready to experience something new.

While you’re searching for calls, it’s also helpful to look for themes related to pieces you have produced, but even if the theme seems to exclude your work, there is usually a way to write up a description of your submission so it more or less matches what is being called for.

The point here is to submit widely and often. The worst a gallery, museum, or festival can say is no, and even though that might hurt your ego, you can find solace knowing you have a dozen other submissions out there where someone else might say yes.

And how hard is it to submit to these calls? If your work is online, it is not hard at all. Usually, a submission involves emailing a brief description of the work, a link to the work (plus, when required, a description of its display needs), a brief bio, and you’re done. If the submission process requires a CD of the work, you simply burn it and pack it off in the mails with the customary customs disclosure.

Do not worry about submitting the same piece to multiple venues. For offline exhibitions in galleries and museums, there is little chance that a curator is going to have a problem with your piece appearing in their gallery and also in some other gallery half a world away. For online festivals and galleries, it gets a bit more restricted, but it is rare that the time frame of one online venue will overlap with another. Online journals are the most restrictive of all: usually, they require the piece to be unpublished, but that does not necessarily mean the piece can not have appeared on your website, blog(s), or even an offline venue. When in doubt, check with the journal.

One last thing: use good etiquette. Follow the rules of engagement, and be pleasant. Most of these venues will be receiving hundreds, if not thousands of entries, and they like being treated with deference and respect. They may not be artists themselves (although some of them certainly are!), but since handing out rejections is part of their job description, sometimes they are berated for their choices and subjected to hatred and ridicule. So treat them nice.

(3) Do #2 again, and again, and again until you see how, if you kept it up, this could be a full-time job….

(4) If you have a website (and shame on you if you don’t!), add a subscription box that allows people to join your email list. If they do, have it set up to automatically send them an email thanking them for joining. Then create a master email list in Entourage or some other email program and blast a message whenever you have published a new work or have something important to share.

(5) Another handy strategy is linking with other sites. (I don’t do this nearly enough, so let me take this opportunity to say right now, if you want to trade links with me, please email me at eabigelow@yahoo.com.) Beware of websites that offer you high rankings on Google or other search engines–the best way to get traffic to your website is through dedicated links.

(6) Use a traffic statistic counter like sitemeter.com to monitor how much traffic you have and where it is coming from. This will give you a good idea as to who is visiting your site, what organization (if any) they are affiliated with, and what pieces of yours they are looking at. On a number of occasions, because of my statistic counter, I have discovered mentions of my work on the web, or have seen where a piece of mine might be appearing next. Sometimes, when I discover myself on a blog or a class syllabus, I have reached out to the instructors or writers, just to say hello and tell them how appreciative I am.

(7) Promote yourself. I know this is a dirty concept. It’s like the smelly, alcoholic aunt you keep locked in the attic, but it’s good to bring her out every once in a while to mingle with your guests. Throw a cocktail party and let your aunt pass the hors d’oeuvres. Let her romp around the room breathing sweet nothings into people’s ears and refilling their drinks. Let her praise YOU and describe in glorious detail what YOU have done that makes her so proud. Of course, you are your aunt, but it may make your self-promotion easier if it’s only a simple matter of cross-dressing.

But if you’re going to promote yourself, when you can, throw in a plug for your friends or for digital literature at large. If people think you’re just in it for yourself, they might figure you don’t play well with others.

(8) Get involved with organizations or causes which promote digital literature. It doesn’t have to be the Electronic Literature Organization or the Electronic Poetry Center. Try curating an exhibition of digital literature (online or off). Try emailing a journal or gallery or museum and asking them if they would like you to collect a few samples of elit to show on their site. Try reaching out to radio stations, magazines, newspapers, and local arts centers and cajoling them into looking at what digital writers have to offer. The worst they can do is say no. And if they say no, have their lack of interest merely strengthen your resolve to bring the avant-garde to the mainstream.

(9) Don’t wait to get your work in front of the public. Interest in digital literature is growing, and now is the time to get in on the action. Over time, with a growing pool of works, the competition will be stiffer, and there will be fewer opportunities to have your work accepted.

In other words, do #4 –¬¬ #8 again, and again, and again….

(10) Or don’t do any of the above. Don’t do anything at all. Wait for your fans to come to you. And wait. And wait. And wait.

If you wait long enough, I can almost guarantee you will fade away and never be heard of again.

Wikileaks, Napster, and the Ayatollah Flanagan
http://netartery.vispo.com/?p=655
by Jim Andrews
An article describing 1) a parallel between Wikileaks and Napster 2) the
value of Wikileaks 3) the revolting Canadian Ayatollah Flanagan and his
fatwa against the founder of Wikileaks.

P.o.E.M.M. = Poems for Excitable Mobile Media
http://netartery.vispo.com/?p=648
by Jason Lewis
P.o.E.M.M. is a research/creation project looking at how to write and
implement poetry designed for touch interaction on mobile devices. It’s an
attempt to sketch out the space of possibilities for a poetic structure that
incorporates dynamic, interactive and tactile strategies as a core component
of the writing process and presentation.

Radio Poetics, Interference and Muck
http://netartery.vispo.com/?p=611
by Gregory Whitehead
Gregory Whitehead, acclaimed audio writer known to some simply as The
Pleasure, triangulates poetics of Radio amid the digital. “Radio poesis
flows from the edges, some of them very fragile and sensitive, and
occasionally they may even swell or bleed. Edges between signal and noise.
Edges of frequency and range, both of which implicate edges of power and
politics. Edges between attraction and repulsion; between Eros and
Thanatos…”

New online issue of CIAC’s magazine
http://netartery.vispo.com/?p=607
by Jim Andrews
The CIAC is the Centre for International Contemporary Art in Montréal. They
publish on the net a long-running magazine, now edited by Paule Makrous,
that features web art, interviews, reviews, and other work. The most recent
issue (38) features poetry by some of the victims of Ravensbrück, a Nazi
concentration camp for women. And an interview with Gregory Chatonsky. And
an interview with me by Paule. And other work.

Sound Resolution
http://netartery.vispo.com/?p=597
by Jim  Andrews
Now what I’m going to tell you you already know back in some primitive part of your brain. Digital sound doesn’t sound as good as many analog recordings. Here’s why.

Digital Fiction iPad Project: The Good and Bad Stuff
http://netartery.vispo.com/?p=579
by Andy Campbell
I thought it might be interesting to reflect on how we’re finding the iPad as a development platform regarding our latest digital fiction project ‘Changed‘, bearing in mind that we’re not using the Apple SDK or exporting an App from Flash CS5 to produce this piece.

NHL Brain Trinket
http://netartery.vispo.com/?p=565
by Jim Andrews
What I’m going to tell you—I warn you—is of no consequence whatever. And it won’t even be of interest to you unless you’re an NHL hockey fan. And, worse, it’s going to test your algebra skills. The only thing I can say in favour of saying it at all is that you just won’t ever read anything else about hockey like what I’m going to tell you right now. It just doesn’t happen. This is the unicorn of hockey writing. Right here, right now.

Shoes Red as Wounds
http://netartery.vispo.com/?p=556
by Christine Wilks
Christine discusses aspects of her work Underbelly, which recently won the Poole prize for new media writing.

New on Netartery:

DIGITAL POETRY ISSUE OF THE JOURNAL OF ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING
by Jim Andrews
http://netartery.vispo.com/?p=543
Aaron McCollough is guest-editing an issue of the Journal of Electronic Publishing, and will create an issue on digital poetry. Deadline is April 15, 2011. See the post for details and contact info.

NEWS FROM THE SAHRAWI REFUGEE CAMPS IN SOUTHERN ALGERIA
by Eugenio Tisselli
http://netartery.vispo.com/?p=523
Since 2003, Catalan artist Antoni Abad and I have been working on a series
of projects dealing with overlooked communities around the world expressing
and sharing their views and opinions on the Web…

CANADIAN PSYCHO
by Jim Andrews
http://netartery.vispo.com/?p=471
During the third week of October, 2010, the Canadian media covered the case
of Russell Williams like no other news story. Williams, prior to his
February 7, 2010 confession of murders, rapes, and scores of panty
burglaries, was a colonel and decorated pilot in command of the Canadian
military air base in Trenton, Ontario, the country’s largest and busiest
military airbase…

GREGORY CHATONSKY’S GENERATIVE NARRATIVES
by Jim Andrews
http://netartery.vispo.com/?p=441
Gregory Chatonsky is a French/Canadian artist who has created a significant
body of net art. Here are a couple of pieces of his I found that still work
and are compelling…

NEW MEDIA WRITING PRIZE SHORTLIST
by Jim Andrews
http://netartery.vispo.com/?p=437
The shortlist for the Poole New Media Writing Prize includes Christine Wilks
(who is on netartery), Katharine Norman (whom I invited to be on netartery),
Alan Bigelow (whom I should invite to be on netartery), and myself…

TYPING THE DANCING SIGNIFIER: JIM ANDREWS’ (VIS)POETICS
by Leonardo Flores
http://netartery.vispo.com/?p=429
Leonardo provides a link to his recently completed 350+ page doctoral
dissertation on the work of Jim Andrews…

AMY WINEHOUSE LINKS
by Jim Andrews
http://netartery.vispo.com/?p=371
I’ve been listening to Amy Winehouse’s blue-eyed soul music (though hers are
brown) recently, watching interviews and reading articles about her. I
thought I’d post the best of those links…

NIGHTINGALE’S PLAYGROUND
by Andy Campbell
http://netartery.vispo.com/?p=373
Created by Dreaming Methods authors Andy Campbell and Judi Alston,
Nightingale’s Playground is an ambitious work of digital fiction divided
into four interlinked parts: an atmospheric browser based experience; an
interactive virtual book with pages you can turn with the mouse; a short
eBook download; and an immersive 3D game-like application that takes the
written word into strange new dimensions…

INSTANT POETRY PATENTS
by David Jhave Johnston
http://netartery.vispo.com/?p=342
About a year ago, John Cayley made a post on NetPoetic entitled “An Edge of
Chaos”. In it he delimits a constraint-based networked-writing process:
“Write into the Google search field with text delimited by quote marks until
the sequence of words is not found. Record this sequence..” A couple of
weeks ago, I woke up with the idea of making a poem composed entirely of
lines that returned no search results. “Wow”, I thought to myself, “what a
great idea”. I had forgotten it was John’s idea…

SIGN AFTER THE X
by Jim Andrews
http://netartery.vispo.com/?p=329
David Clarke has created a new work of net art called Sign After the X in
collaboration with Marina Roy and Graham Meisner. Sign After the X is
structurally similar to some of Clark’s earlier works such as A is for Apple
and 88 Constellations for Wittgenstein. The form of these works is one that
Clark has been developing for some time now…

The nodes or chapters or sections of these hypermedia works are done in Flash. They’re multimedia approaches to a subject. We hear a voice reading a text about Freud or Lacan or Wittgenstein or X (etc) while Clark’s animated visuals improvise with the text–in the sense that the visuals explicate or explore or expand or riff on the text’s meaning. Sign After the X is organized into five categories: Mind, Body, Land, Language, and Law. Each of these contains anywhere from four to thirty nodes/Flash works.

The putative subject of Sign After the X is “the letter X and it’s multiple meanings in our culture“. And, yes, I can see that in some of the material presented. But it seems to me there’s considerably more going on than that.

For instance, in the ‘Mind’ section, we encounter about thirty hypermedia works, many of which are explanatory of or exploratory of Freud’s ideas. Perhaps these are indeed related to X, but I don’t know how. However, that is not a criticism; the hypermedia works are often compelling in their voiced text and almost always are interesting in their visual nature and workings. The connection with X is not obvious and might emerge with more exploration of other parts of the work, which is unusually large for a work of net art.

Some of the hypermedia works are not so good. The reading of Coleridge’s “Kubla Kahn”, for instance. Particularly by the guy who normally reads those theorified texts. Yeesh. But many of them are fascinating and considerably more original than a bad reading of “Kubla Khan” accompanied with mild visuals. The interest of Clark’s work, to me, is in his avoiding, for the most part, such cliches of digital literary production. His background is in visual art. The individual nodes are often very polished, and that which links them, and the resulting overall shape and semantic, thematic structure, are of great interest in these fascinating works by David Clark. I don’t see anyone else exploring this sort of form in the same way Clark has been since 2002.

If you find Sign After the X of interest, you should also check out his site chemicalpictures.net for other projects and writings.

http://aphasic-letters.com/noise/

Noise! 2010 is a one-day, marathon event, featuring a staggering array of artists and works including performance, sound, moving image, language, and culinary craft.

This year, curators Caspar Stracke, Danny Snelson, and Tianna Kennedy contribute an exciting and expansive approach to the event’s theme—mapping signal innovation, distortion, and destruction from the historical avant-garde to contemporary media art practitioners.

Noise! 2010 will mark the conclusion of free103point9′s organizational residence at the Ontological; join us on Saturday, June 26 to celebrate what has been an extraordinary partnership since 2006. Noise! 2010 is presented in association with the Ontological-Hysteric Incubator.

Join Hans Reichel's band? Good luck gentle reader.

“Hans Reichel (1949) is a German improvisational guitarist, experimental luthier, inventor, and type designer.” So saith Wikipedia so you know the statement has passed many semi-clueless scrutinies to emerge supported, probably not without revision.

But, yes, he is all that and more. The ‘more part’ includes creator-of-the-Flash-interactive-audio-visual-daxo.de, which we shall look at. Looking at daxo.de is also to look at Reichel’s work in all of the above categories. Daxo.de is a really cool trip through Reichel’s work. He invented, makes, and plays an unusual instrument he calls the daxophone.

But daxo.de is also a kind of work of art in its own right, as Flash art. One of the reasons I bring it up in this forum on ‘electronic literature’ is because of the nature of the narrative. Narrativity has to do with the way one thing leads to another. At daxo.de, one thing leads to another by some sort of action on our part. What are we asked to do? Sometimes we must find the clickable element amongs many possibilities. Sometimes it’s obvious. But usually there is just one clickable thing on the screen. Sometimes the advance triggers an audio-visual character to vocalize to us, or play to us, rather than an advance in the presentation.

The narrative or presentation of daxo.de is mainly about Reichel’s artistic life. His experiments in creating unusual and beautiful guitars. And then his creation of the daxophone. And its evolution, which involves the creation of 103 “tongues”, each of which creates different creature-like sounds or ‘voices’. And his work as a typographer, a maker of typefaces. One of which is a typeface of the 103 tongues of the daxophone. O yes there is a language thing going on  here.

But there are other excursions as well. For instance, http://daxo.de/pages/page8.html , the eighth piece of twelve, is not so much about Reichel’s work as it is like media art pieces of the exploding interface.  If you follow net art at all, you’ll be familiar with what almost could be described as a genre of the exploding interface. Error messages are the signature of such pieces. Usually that’s about all you get. But in Reichel’s page8, the interface does indeed explode in a totally entertaining and somewhat pointed manner.

from Hans Reichel's page8 of Daxo.de

We’re presented with quite a complicated mixer interface and, by contrast, a cartoon pair of eyes informing us that “now you can record a song of your own”. This claim turns out to be false. But it isn’t so much false advertising as the premise for a kind of satire on musical software and software more generally.

The audio environment of daxo.de is of exceptionally high quality. So we barely care that we are no closer to recording our own song as page8 proceeds.  And it’s interactive. Often the interactivity is of the ‘page-turner’ variety, just to move the presentation along. But, very often, the interactivity is more meaningful. If we are spared the difficulty of feeling like one of the band (which is OK), we nonetheless feel that our choices and actions are well-motivated, engaged, and in game with the piece or with Reichel himself, who seems to hover over the experience like a cross between the impish meercats–who invite the wreader to “PLAY WITH ME”  in one of the daxo.de pieces–and the more abstract cheshire cat of legend.

Text escapes from the troublesome interface

After we find the clickable element in the above screen, we are presented with a vocalizing red recording button. Is it burping in an infinite loop? It has a mouth. Would you trust this recording button? Well, it has character. It doesn’t look like a very reliable ‘record button’ but it’s very amusing.

When we click the ‘record button’ things begin to go wrong. The sound of an explosion. The slider controls all fall off the mixer board. Only one slider control remains, and it is twitching next to maximally peaked out audio meters. So we mouseover the twitching slider control. And, lo and behold, that brings us back to the burping record button and, otherwise, the scene we see above. The slider controls have returned. We’re ready to record. Again we press the record button.

Now you've really done it

This time we’ve really done it. The slider controls all fall off, the entire mixing board interface turns purple,  tilts 20 degrees, and animated golden nonsense letters escape from the bottom of the interface. Soon after that, the color of the interface changes again, it reverts to its initial angle, and an error message appears: “maybe somethn went rong [error #51827] – 1 mo try?”. The question mark is upside down. We can choose between “Yes” and “No”. But when we mouseover “Yes”, it turns to “No”, and when we mouseover “No”, it turns to “Yes”.  We can get the one we want, but it takes a  boolean reversal of logic. This piece has its own logic–the logic of a hypermedia work of art. It goes on for some time in the destruction of the interface and the never-fulfilled recording of your own song. But it always entertains and engages us in this comic explosion of the interface.

The troublesome interface now as art

We also note that this explosion of the interface is much stronger as art than many an interface in which you can record “somethn” or other. Too often, art-tool interfaces are heavy on the tool side and not lively enough on the art side. Reichel’s page8 is a triumph of liveliness, of art experience over the routinized digital recording experience.

There are other satires at daxo.de. In one of the twelve works, we’re asked “Join the band?”. This proposition, common in interactive audio pieces, is toyed with in a very interesting way in page4 of daxo.de.

Page4 is and isn’t of the ‘join the band’ variety of interactive audio pieces.  The promise, in such pieces, is usually disappointingly hollow. We are offered a simple mixing board, typically, in which we can mix up to a dozen or so sound. Not very creative. We can’t do that in Reichel’s page4. But we can play a mock game that Reichel has set up. Again, it’s very well done. The satire is very good but also the actual experience itself is quite rewarding–more than what usually transpires in a ‘join the band’ type of interactive audio piece.

Reichel has done a lot with minimal knowledge of Flash coding. This is another reason why I wanted to write about Daxo.de on netpoetic. Daxo.de is a kind of exemplar of  Flash hypermedia of a certain kind: dumb as a meercat about ActionScript programming (well, no, not quite), but wicked on the animation side, sublimely energized in its audio, fundamentally hypertextual in its narrativistic progressions, and triumphantly amusing and uplifting as a work of art in itself. See how it is done, o ye of the simple Flash thingy.

The homepage of daxo.de and its 12 pieces

Daxo.de currently consists of a dozen Flash pieces. There is some value in doing them in order, 1 to 12. Because there are references later on to things and to easier idioms of interactivity brought up or learned earlier in the sequence, though the chronology of the sequence, in terms of Reichel’s life work, is not strict, but by subject, field of endevor as “a German improvisational guitarist, experimental luthier, inventor, and type designer”.

Reichel is the inventor of the daxophone. which you can read about at Wikipedia and elsewhere–and experience in Reichel’s narrative through daxo.de in many of its stages, incarnations, and “tongues”. There is even a downloadable true-type font he made of the “tongues” of the daxophone.

And what strong music he makes with it! Unreasonably good stuff! The Flash works of Daxo.de contain quite a bit of daxophone playing. Sometimes it seems like a whole orchestra of creatures is at work.

Reichel bows or strikes the “tongue” of the daxophone to produce the creature-like sounds we hear at daxo.de. He also uses a “dax”, a wooden device he holds in his other hand. As he bows the “tongue”, he moves the “dax” along the surface of the “tongue” to change pitch, as we can see on youtube.

But that is for a different piece of writing. This one is long enough already. Go see http://daxo.de to experience the full Reichel treatment yourself. Shoo now. Go see it and hear it. This is one of the best hypermedia works of its kind that I’ve experienced.

To be a digital writer, it’s probably best if you like to write, or at least not hate it.  Then, if you can pull as many muses into your corner as you can, that might help: history, music, dance, astronomy, and art….

Patience is a virtue with digital writers, as you will have to explain what you do to a great many people who have never heard of it….

Having a thick skin and (again) more patience will help protect you from the slings and arrows of outrageous critics.  Critics love to criticize, and when it is something new and without precedent, they will laugh and grind it under their heels….

(2) Do I need to take a class in digital writing to be a digital writer?

Most of the digital writers working today teach courses they never took when they first started out.  A truism of the avant-garde: there are no teachers in your field, so you have to teach yourself, so you can become a teacher.

(3) Is it true that digital stories were on the web back in prehistoric times, when humans lived in caves?

This is totally true. Plato writes about it in his “Allegory of the Cave.”  Caves were a perfect place for projecting digital works, and cave dwellers were among the first to recognize this (before them, it was nomadic tribes, who used deer hide tents).

The web back then was less sophisticated than it is now–being constructed of stone, goat’s intestines, elk horns, and camel hair–but its reach was global, with fewer system outages and faster download times.

In the Middle Ages, this technology was lost, and only recently reconfigured through electronics.

(4) Are digital writers flesh and blood people, or are they virtual, like their stories?

It depends where you meet them.  If you meet them online, they are virtual, and their primary substance electrons and code…

If you meet them in the flesh, their virtuality plays second fiddle to the fact that, at any moment, they could bleed all over your favorite carpet.

(5) Is it easy to be a digital writer?

If answers were songs, try this (sung to the tune of “Yesterday,” by the Beatles):

Digital

All it takes is
lots of time

and what you make

may be fine
if going digital

is on your mind.

(And so on, with feeling…)

(6) Does it cost a lot of money to be a digital writer?

After you have made the initial investment in a good computer, some software, a sound recording device, and whatever other tools you need to make multimedia works of literature, the overhead is remarkable low.  It would be best (to build branding and reader loyalty) to have your own website, so add about $10 a year for the registration of a domain name.  Then add another $10 a month for server costs (provided you don’t go viral, in which case you’ll need a bit more than that).  Finally, if you use them, there’s the periodic cost for royalty-free images or audio files purchased online–most of the code you’ll need will be free–so tack on another $200 a year.  At these rates, your total for a year of publishing digital literature is approximately $330, which is cheap compared to most other businesses.

Since you won’t make much (or any) income, it’s money down the drain, but don’t worry: you can list it as a business expense on your income tax (I’d love to hear your conversation with the IRS agent).

(7) Can I make any money being a digital writer?

Let’s do the math:

Expenses a year (see #6 above):           $330
Income publications:                                 $0
Income readings:                                       $0
Income exhibitions:                                   $0
Work sold:                                                 $0
––––––
TOTAL:                                                 -$330

Your talent? Priceless.

(8) Is there a website where I can read some electronic literature, and learn about the authors who create it?

Do a Google search on “Electronic Literature” or “E-Lit” or “Hypermedia” or “Digital Literature,”  and here is some of what you get:

Born Magazine–http://www.bornmagazine.com

Chico.art.net–http://www.csuchico.edu/art/net/

CONT3XT.NET–http://www.cont3xt.net/

Digital Technology and Culture–http://digitaltechnologyculture.motime.com/

Drunken Boat–http://www.DrunkenBoat.com

Eastgate–http://www.eastgate.com

electronic book review–http://www.electronicbookreview.com/

Electronic Literature Directory–http://eld.eliterature.org

Electronic Literature Organization–http://www.eliterature.org

Electronic Literature Organization Conference 2008–http://vancouver.wsu.edu/programs/dtc/elo08/media.html

Electronic Literature Organization Library of Congress/Archive-It Project–http://www.eliterature.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

Electronic Poetry Center–http://epc.buffalo.edu/e-poetry/

FILE (Electronic Language International Festival)–http://www.file.org

furtherfield.org–http://www.furtherfield.org/

Grand Text Auto–http://www.grandtextauto.org/

Hermeneia: Literary Studies and Digital Technologies Group–http://uoc.edu/in3/hermeneia/cat/

Hypercompendia–http://www.susangibb.net/blog2/

Hyperrhiz–http://www.hyperrhiz.net

The Iowa Review Web–http://research-intermedia.art.uiowa.edu/tirw/vol9n2/

Java Museum–http://www.JavaMuseum.org

netpoetic.com–http://www.netpoetic.com/

newmediaFIX–http://www.newmediafix.net/

New River Journal–http://www.TheNewRiver.us

nt2–http://www.labo-nt2.uqam.ca/

Rhizome.org–http://www.rhizome.org

trAce archive–http://tracearchive.ntu.ac.uk/

Turbulence.org–http://www.turbulence.org

Vispo–http://www.vispo.com

Word Circuits–http://www.wordcircuits.com/index.html

WRT: Writer Response Theory–http://www.writerresponsetheory.org/wordpress/

And the list goes on…

(9) Are digital writers happy people?

You can’t get much happier than a digital writer.  Because they practice in an emerging form, they have nothing to lose.  This makes them reckless, and beyond sadness.

(10) If I wanted to be a digital writer, how would I begin?

Read the FAQs above. If you have any questions, make up your answers.

Matt K's Lovely Book

It’s been a while since Matthew Kirschenbaum’s book (Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination, MIT Press, 2008) appeared and different responses have been generated meantime. I’ve finished reading it recently with the kind of feeling one has when (s)he finds a confirmation of something that up to that point presented itself only, more or less, as an intuition. In other words, something ‘often thought but never so well expressed’. Therefore, I felt compelled to write a line or two about it, if only to underline a few points it makes which seem to me extremely well demonstrated.
I do not wish to dwell too much on the presentation of the concepts proposed here, but I prefer to situate this research, in its own terms, in reference to what has been accomplished so far in matters of theoretical perspectives on digital literature.
With this study the theory of digital art in general and of e-literature in particular takes one step further. I would use the author’s reference to Kenneth Thibodeau’s tripartite model for digital objects as a means of classifying the theoretical debates which have accompanied the development of this branch of literature. The first – in a historical order and also most largely spread – is a theoretical perspective which favors the conceptual aspect of the digital object, its phenomenological manifestation on the screen. It is this particular orientation – which is subject to ‘screen essentialism’ (Nick Montfort) or, largely speaking, to ‘medial ideology’ (a term coined by Kirschenbaum in analogy with Jerome McGann’s ‘Romantic ideology’) – that forms the object of a thoroughly convincing criticism. Matthew Kirschenbaum is very good at unveiling the rhetorical nature of the theoretical language of this orientation, exposing the ideology lying behind mere prepositional tropes.
The second and one-level deeper into the structure of the digital product is the critical theory which tries to formalize what lies beyond the screen and to connect it with the surface phenomena. The examples invoked here are E. Aarseth and L. Manovich. However, this second generation theoreticians still work at a symbolic level, or deal with what Kirschenbaum calls ‘formal materiality’, namely data interpreted by software. What constitutes his own original contribution and may be considered a real conceptual ground-break is what he describes as ‘forensic materiality’ corresponding to the physical nature of the object. In his own words – a grammatology of inscription on a magnetic medium. It is true that references to what lies beyond the screen and to the material aspects of the digital object have been numerous, but none so systematic and moving in such an organized manner from the icons on the screen deep into the materiality of the hard drive. Most of the perspectives aware of the pitfalls of ‘screen essentialism’ have tended to focus on the code, which, as Kirschenbaum shows, is not the ultimate frontier. To prove his point, and in this he succeeds very well, the author returns to the era roughly covered by the interval 1980-1992, which serves to measure the conceptual distance generated by the mere difference in technologies. As he puts it ‘greater storage capacity will dematerialize the media as their finite physical boundaries represent no longer a concern’ (p. 34).
The dematerialization is not only a digital media problem. It is also a widely unacknowledged aspect of print literature. However, it is the area of various book studies that informs Kirschenbaum’s attempt to define the notion of ‘electronic textuality’. This is the second point when the author proves that his perspective is unbiased by any essentialist claims. He does not feel the need to oppose the digital realm to the printed one. On the one hand because ‘the conditions governing electronic textuality are formal conditions – artificial arrays of possibility put into play by particular software systems’ (p. 57). In other words, notions such as ‘ephemerality’, ‘fungibility’ or ‘fluidity’ are not absolute characteristics of the digital text, but the results of the way in which the text was designed to function by different programs, which can make it stable or unstable according to specific needs. On the other hand, because the differences stand out by themselves as the description of ‘electronic textuality’ unfolds. The three extensive analyses proposed as model examples serve to configure a particular type of textuality, which he justly calls ‘thick textuality’ – combining screen appearance with machine inscription.
One question that might be addressed here concerns the contribution of the analysis of the ‘forensic materiality’ to the overall meaning. After all, no matter how much one may criticize the focus on the screen output, it is for this level that the digital product is built as a rule. Reading the other levels is a work for the specialist. The answers vary according to each text. In the case of Mystery House the supplementary information offers details about the ‘reading’ habits of the owner of that particular disk. This is similar to the marginal notes that readers usually leave on the printed books, which represent an important source of information for the literary studies focused on reading practices. Concerning Michael Joyce’s Afternoon, on the other hand, the question of materiality (including, apart from magnetic inscription, every possible document connected with its ‘writing’ – be it a coffee stained scrap paper) becomes more stringent as it serves to differentiate versions and editions of the same text and this results in significantly different reading paths in the text. This is not far from what in print literary studies is called genetic reading. As for the last extensively analyzed example – W. Gibson’s Agrippa – its present-day material permanence is in complete contrast with its conceptual design and with the way in which it was supposed to be interacted with.
After reading Mechanisms, I can make a guess as to what partly prompted Johanna Drucker to make the assertion that generated a lot of debate concerning the existence of valuable examples of electronic literature. After all, the three works which the author focuses upon correspond to the ‘beginnings’ of e-literature. The first is admittedly a very simple game that even its contemporaries would not have given a second try. Afternoon may be placed at the other end of the scale, but I would say that its ‘literary value’ is mostly due to its closeness to traditional literary texts, to the fact that it is, as it calls itself ‘a story’, which is all the more obvious when contrasted with present-day e-literature. As for the last one, Agrippa, it might be disputable if it is an e-text proper, considering the fact that its simple presence on the internet does not make it e-literature (especially since was not created for this medium). A poem placed on the internet is not an e-poem, it is obviously a poem on the internet. On the other hand, I don’t think the aesthetic value of these works was the primary criterion which guided the author’s selection. His research addresses questions of reading practices, preservation and editing processes. This is the third significant contribution of this study, because one cannot think of editing and preserving electronic works (or preserving works electronically) without taking into full consideration their ‘materiality’ in the most literal sense.