]]> http://netpoetic.com/2010/07/feralc-_s1e1-session-2-secondary-char-summary_/feed/ 0 http://netpoetic.com/2010/05/previously-on-feralc/ http://netpoetic.com/2010/05/previously-on-feralc/#comments Thu, 20 May 2010 22:30:22 +0000 netwurker http://netpoetic.com/?p=1313

That House

[...over in #feralC Twitterland theres lots-a-foamin': @Miss_Stressa is incommunicado. @HUD_B is trying to help @QReada + has worked out how to decipher his/her QR code(s). @shadowmcclone is taciturn as usual. @gossama game chats 2 Shane Hinton and is concerned about the absence of @Miss_Stressa. @jr_carpenter also chats to @gossama about her suspicions that @Miss_Stressa may have been swallowed by that house she's fascinated by [House of Leaves-style].  @QReada is having a hard time of it + reveals communicating isn’t pleasant: “THIS HURTS”. @pupa_mistress has delayed Session 5 due to “technical difficulties”…[to be continued]

A heads-up: the 7th issue of Hyperrhiz, “New Media Subversions,” is now online, guest-edited by Davin Heckman and Hai Ren.

Featuring

• essays from Davin Heckman and Hai Ren, Neil Hennessy, Brian M. Reed, Benjamin J Robertson, Andrew Klobucar, and Brett Phares
• With gallery works by: Neil Hennessy, Nicholas Knouf, Angela Ferraiolo and Mary Flanagan, Jason Nelson, and Brett Phares
• And a very fine review of Matt Kirschenbaum’s Mechanisms, by Dene Grigar.

Hyperrhiz considers submissions on a rolling schedule; our next deadline is August 1st.  We’re now accepting scholarly essays as well as standalone net art/e-lit.  Hyperrhiz is peer-reviewed, ISSN’ed (is that a word?), and is shortly to be indexed in the EBSCO Art & Architecture database.

Free cybernetic implants.

Cheers,
Helen J Burgess
Editor

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.

Title: _:terror(aw)ed patches:_

Original URL: http://non-playercharacter.com/?p=43

Description: Shane Hinton + Netwurker Mez create a new method of collaborative “fiction” through _live concurrent editing_ in Google Wave. This process results in expressive output[s] termed “Transformations”:

“Google Wave uses an algorithmic variation of “operational transformations” [live concurrent editing] which occur through a process called transformation:

• The server transforms the client’s request, resulting in the client manifesting the same transformed output.
• The notion of concurrency is invariably important as it mimics geophysical conversational states.
• Utilizing the server as a point of relay [when more than one client's output is involved] assists in providing scalability and reliability.
• The playback feature allows the server to present the document as a stream of operations that have occurred thus far in a particular wave/state.

Transformation relies on continual modification…This accent on process acts to rewire the notion of documents as statically defined “objects” and [by proxy] any information contained within. This has enormous implications in regards to such institutionally-governed categories such as literacy, media, the professional/amateur divide, narrative, and information construction.”

Feedback appreciated.

Alan Bigelow competes with his shadow

Ten is a round number, it has a nice ring to it, so I’m using it for a series of blog posts. Ten, of course. The first was Ten Misconceptions About Digital Literature, and this one is Ten Predictions. The last will probably be Ten Reasons Why I Should Not Have Done This, but until then…

There has been a lot of press about digital literature over the past few years, some of it negative. This is to be expected–when does any art form, emerging or not, get only positive reviews? The problem is more acute, though, when there is an impression, however ill-founded, that an art form is endangered, and every nick in the armor portends a mortal wound.

Digital literature is not endangered. In fact, my confidence is so high, I venture the following predictions:

Within five years:

(1) Many online journals and magazines now only publishing traditional text-based fiction and poetry will, as part of their online offerings, publish digital literature on a regular basis;

(2) Most major universities and many colleges (if they don’t already) will offer courses in New Media, and those courses will cover/include digital literature;

(3) Accomplished scholars who assess the whole of digital literature by examining exemplary models from early hypertexts will be saying “oops!” and seeking a vocabulary that accepts the continual flux and explosive change of current practices in digital literature;

(4) Most everyone will accept that finding a Joyce, Beckett, or Faulkner in the world of digital literature might take as long as it did in the world of print, and considering the radical differences in these forms, that any such search is probably bogus to begin with;

(5) The average digital writer on the web will be more read, and have a higher visibility, than his or her counterpart “midlist” writer in traditional print format;

(6) Publishing houses will be reaching out to digital writers in an attempt to monetize their creative work–they will be generally unsuccessful, because digital writers will have already figured a way to do it for themselves;

(7) The field of digital literature will be crowded with writers. Where now they number in the hundred(s), in the future, they will be in the thousands;

(8) The entertainment industry, fueled by New York and Hollywood dollars, will have a big stake in developing digital literature for the web. Individual artists will be able to compete by collaborating with their peers and (as some do now) using audio, still image, and video files available, either free or through subscription, online;

(9) Digital literature (as it is already) will be displayed in galleries and museums not just in group art shows, but in solo shows. Works will be bought and sold, not as computer installations, but as interactive artworks to be hung on gallery walls, and;

(10) Yes, there will be rock stars among digital writers. Fans will ask for their autographs (virtual or otherwise), companies will run ads on their websites, radio and TV talk shows will invite them for interviews, and documentaries will be made. When they die, mourners will fill the corridors of the web….

Do the math. We take two steps ahead for every one someone sends us back. Anyone care to make a wager?