DIGITAL LITERATURE UNIT 1

UNIT I

DIGITAL LITERATURE

As a topic, digital literature is very diffuse and very hard to define. As a crude working formula, the following classification could be used.

1. Digitalisations of print literature – this group include such great archival pursuits as The Project Gutenberg, and its Scandinavian counterpart, The Project Runeberg, which aim at digitalising as comprehensively as possible the old, mostly canonical, literature. These projects have several practical ends. They conserve old texts physically deteriorating, make rare works (which may exist in only one known copy) available for the larger public, and create useful corpuses for researchers and students. The possibility of word and phrase search in the texts alone greatly expands the usability of these archives for the researchers. In addition, the digital text archives enable all kinds of statistical style analyses – the term ”humanistic computing” has actually come to mean just this stylistical analysis of digital text corpuses – the study of whether a certain play is to be attributed to Shakespeare or not.

2. The digital publication of original literature – texts in this category do not employ any hypertextual techniques at all, or do so only modestly. Literature confirms to the established conventions, and digital form is primarily used in the distribution of the texts. This kind of publishing has been very small so far, and it has been, mainly, done by amateur writers. There are also established authors who have tried digital publishing – like the Finnish author Leena Krohn who published her story collection Sfinksivairobotti? (1996; The Sphinx or the robot?) only in digital format – in this case the reason was that Krohn wanted to include digitally enhanced illustration for the stories, which would have been very expensive in print book. There has been a small amount of parallel publishing too, that is, publishing the same material both in print and digitally. This has been mainly done by different magazines (amongst which there are rather many literary magazines).

 

LITERATURE USING THE NEW TECHNIQUES MADE POSSIBLE BY THE DIGITAL FORMAT –

This group includes everything from hypernovels to interactive poetry and multimedia encyclopedias, etc. Michael Joyce’s Afternoon. A Story (1987) is commonly seen as the first hypertext novel. It is a hypertextual story consisting of 539 lexias and 951 links connecting them, and it tells about a man who sees a car accident site on his way to work in the morning, and who is afraid that the accident victims (probably dead now) may have been his ex-wife and son. It is possible to read Afternoon in several ways (different set of lexias, in different orders), resulting in potentially quite diverse stories, but it is still possible to construct a frame story above the readers’ stories, telling about a man who procrastinates in finding out the actual facts about the accident victims’ situation and identity – and traces the complex human relations and love affairs with his ex-wife and colleagues, and ponders about his own life. Traversing the text systematically through, one can find the ”real story”, which explains why the man is simultaneously so shocked about the accident, and, frantically, tries not to think about it. There has been, so far, only one commercial publisher of hypernovels (and stories), but there are also diverse hypernovels produced in universities around the world – but usually these are not easily accessible.

 

There are also poetic works using interactivity and kinetic techniques. Jim Rosenberg’s Intergrams (1997) are especially interesting – they have two significant features: simultaneities, that is, several layers of text juxtaposed so that by moving the cursor, single layers can be read, and, syntax ”externalised” to graphic symbols which represent the syntactical interrelations between text fragments. In Robert Kendall’s poem A Life Set for Two (1996) the reader may choose the “atmosphere” of the text and other variables from a “menu”. There are also individual words which may change into other ones in the screen according to a programming.

 

Interactivity and temporal manipulation

To put it briefly, the novelty of digital textuality can be located, mostly, to interactivity and temporal manipulation.

‘Interactivity’is a highly problematic term in regard to literature, since all literature, after all, is interactive – a fact which was systematically formulated by Roman Ingarden already in thirties in his work Das LiterarischeKunstwerk (1960). This idea was further developed, especially, in reception aesthetics and reader-response studies; these research practices take it as their starting point that the reader is an active participant in the literary signification process. There are several kinds of interactivity, and the difference between the interactivity of conventional literature and that of digital literature was, for the first time, clearly expressed by Espen Aarseth, who decribes four categories of reader(/user) functions: interpretation, navigation, configuration, and writing.

Interpretation is an inseparable part of all reading. When reading hypertext, one has to, in addition to interpretation; actively navigate her way through the net of hypertextual paths. Furthermore, the reader/user may be allowed to configure the text, for example, add her own links to the hypertext. Configuration, thus, means reforming the text within certain limits. The last user function is writing, that is, the user is allowed to participate in the writing of the text – and writing may also be programming. It is a commonplace in hypertext theory to claim that because of interactivity, the “reader becomes an author” – this is, however, not accurate but only in those texts which offer their readers the writing function (in other texts the claim can be accepted only in some metaphorical sense), and such texts are very rare so far.

In a convincing way Aarseth also shows how the distinction between print and digital texts is, actually, quite ineffective. In many cases a certain print text may be much closer to some digital texts, than to other print texts, and vice versa. Aarseth, then, rather speaks of cybertextuality, which he defines as a perspective on all texts, independently of their medium: if a text makes use of configurative and writing functions, then it clearly is a cybertext– on the other hand, if a digital text does not use any other user functions than interpretation, then it does not, in any significant way, differ from traditional texts. This is a healthy notion, and mostly acceptable, but in practice the difference between print and digital texts may be more significant than Aarseth claims.

The manipulation of the temporal dimension is a topic which in Aarseth’s, otherwise exemplary, study is almost neglected, and it seems to be exactly that direction where the biggest differences between print and digital texts can be detected – in print texts it simply is not possible to control the temporal aspects of reading activity as is the case with digital texts. As examples of possibilities for temporal manipulation we can list the following:

1.limiting the reading time – the text will stay on the screen only for a limited amount of time. For example, in the Web text Hegirascope (1997) by Stuart Moulthrop the text on the screen changes every thirty seconds. Additionally, there are hyperlinks on the pages, clicking which the reader may ”direct the course of the text stream”. There are also texts which can only be read once – these can be seen as special cases of limited reading time. Surely the best known read only once type of text is Agrippa by the cyberpunk science fiction author William Gibson. In Agrippa the text scrolls by itself on the screen, and when a line has scrolled out of the screen, it vanishes – thus the reader can never return to the text already read. Uruguayan multimedia artist Gonzalo Frasca has also written highly interesting ”one session narratives”, texts which change each time the reader starts reading them. Once the reading session has ended, the reader may never return to the exactly identical text.

2. delaying reading time – the reading cannot proceed but after a certain waiting period. Let us say there is a scene in a text, where the protagonist takes a fifteen minutes nap – now the traversing through the text may be halted for that fifteen minutes, or whatever. (This has been, so far, mainly a potential option which hasn’t been used too much intentionally – in Internet one is, of course, confronted with this effect way too often, unintentionally).

3. restricting the reading period – this is also mainly speculation, but Markku Eskelinen, in his collection of essays Digitaalinenavaruus (1997; The Digital Space), has suggested several ways to employ this effect: a novel which can only be read during office hours etc. On the other hand, the text may vary according to whether it is read on day time, or night time etc.

4. text ”living” in time – a digital text may be updated at various intervals. As a minimalistic case we can take Leporauha mentioned above with its links to the front page of a newspaper. The contents of the front page, naturally, change daily, and with this simple device the author has achieved a work which changes daily without having to do anything to it himself. Interactive texts (which employ at least configurative user function) do change continuously through the work of the active audience. Thus we can have ”living” (or evolving) texts, whose existence is processual in nature.

 

WHAT IS DIGITAL LITERATURE?

Maybe some of you have read a short story on Twitter, seen a video poem on YouTube, or just followed the path of a hypertext story. It may surprise you, but all those things are considered literature. Digital literature, to be precise. Digital literature, or electronic literature, has been an emerging genre for decades now. But what exactly is it?

OVERVIEW

Electronic Literature is something that is created digitally and is meant to be viewed digitally. As explained by Katherine Hayles, "Electronic Literature is generally considered to exclude print literature that has been digitalized." Therefore, a book that is originally in print form but is transformed into an e-book is NOT an example of Electronic Literature.

What makes Electronic Literature different from other types of literature is that it is able to incorporate digital elements (such as photos, music etc.) along with the text, which creates an interactive experience for the reader.

What is Electronic Literature?

Electronic literature is not just a “thing” or a “medium” or even a body of “works” in various “genres.” It is not poetry, fiction, hypertext, gaming, codework, or some new admixture of all these practices. Electronic literature is, arguably, an emerging cultural form, as much a collective creation of terms, keywords, genres, structures, and institutions as it is the production of new literary objects.

The ideas of cybervisionaries Paul Otlet, Vannevar Bush, and Ted Nelson, foundational to the electronic storage, recovery, and processing of texts, go beyond practical insights and can be seen to participate in a longstanding ambition to construct a world literature in the sense put forward by David Damrosh: “not an infinite ungraspable canon of works but rather a mode of circulation and of reading … that is applicable to individual works as to bodies of material” (Damrosh 2003: 5).

Digital Literature is a form of literature born in the digital world. Meaning, the text was created on a laptop for example, and uploaded to a blog or webpage for online reading. This type of literature is not meant to be printed out because it may include several types of media. Such as images, sounds, videos and hyperlinks. This work is meant to be read on a computer.

A DEFINITION OF DIGITAL LITERATURE

Like speculative fiction or slipstream, digital literature is a vague concept. The definition changes depending on who you ask. Some say it is made up of texts that were created digitally, and that are (usually) meant to be read on a computer. The Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) has another definition for it: “Work with an important literary aspect that takes advantage of the capabilities and contexts provided by the stand-alone or networked computer”.

As stated by Loss Pequeno Glazier "electronic literature is best understood as a continuation of experimental print literature."

A more updated definition comes from the writer Simon Groth. He says that the intention of digital literature is to “showcase innovation and creativity in storytelling for digital media and new directions in contemporary literary practice informed by technology.” It’s still a very vague definition, and just like the others it provides absolutely no guidelines as to what can be considered digital literature or not. But it also leaves breathing room for newer technologies such as smart watches, smartphones, virtual reality, platforms like Twine, among other things. Technology that didn’t exist when the ELO wrote their definition in 2007.

So basically, it’s a new medium for literature. It takes advantage of technology to both write and present a piece of writing. Because it comes in many shapes and sizes, there is a lot of gray area in what can actually be considered digital literature, but think of it as the middle ground between ebooks and video games (none of which are digital literature, but they do share a lot of common ground).  Or you can see it as an intersection of digital media and textuality.

Electronic literature or digital literature is a genre of literature encompassing works created exclusively on and for digital devices, such as computers, tablets, and mobile phones.

EXAMPLES AND GENRES OF DIGITAL LITERATURE

There is so much digital literature out there, and from a wide selection of genres. Plus, it’s an ever-growing field that moves with new technological advances. Tomorrow, ten new forms of digital literature may be created. So this list is by no means comprehensive. But here are a few examples of Digital Literature to pique your interest, and hopefully inspire you to create some of your own writing.

Genres of Electronic Literature

1.          Hypertext Fiction

2.        Code Work[[Interactive Fiction|]]

3.        Flash Poetry

4.         Generative Poetry

5.        Interactive Fiction (IF)

6.        Locative Narratives

7.         Blog Fiction

 

Examples

Flash Poetry - "Faith" by Robert Kendall

Hypertext Fiction: "My Body" by Shelly Jackson

Code Work: "Waiting" by Damon Harmon {C}{C} {C} {C}

Generative Poetry: "Regime Change" by Noah Wardrip

For more examples, please visit: http://collection.eliterature.org/1/

 

TWITTERATURE

From poetry to fiction, collaborative or individual, there are many ways to use Twitter to create literature. An example of Twitterature is the account Dead End Fiction, which publishes horror-themed microfiction.

She left the house looking for fresh excitement. But what she found was: ghosts, monsters, demons, devils and all manifestations of shadow and wonder. Which was everything she had at home already.

HYPERTEXT

Hypertext fiction uses hyperlinks to create a non-linear narrative. This gives it a choose-your-own-adventure vibe to any story, and as readers you can choose what link to follow and therefore what path the story takes. An example of this is the story “I Have Said Nothing” by J. Yellowlees Douglas.

GENERATORS

This type of literature requires some specialized knowledge as you need to know how to code an algorithm. These algorithms are programmed to cycle from some random words, phrases, media, etc. to create an entirely new story for every reader. I’ve seen them used in poetry and long fiction alike. A famous poetry generator is Nick Monfort’s “Taroko Gorge”. And you can also take a look at Novelling, an online novel about writing that combines text, audio, and video.

VIDEO POETRY

Video poetry is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a poem accompanied by a video, be it a recording or graphics. Usually, the poem is narrated in the background while you enjoy the visuals that complement each verse. A simple example would be “We Keep Searching,” a video poem published on YouTube.

Engagement Technology

Virtual Reality

Virtual reality is an immersive, computer-generated artificial environment that attracts attention and creates a great talking point.

 

There are many cutting-edge virtual reality headsets on the market today that allow users to completely immerse themselves in the 3D world and this event technology offers a great way to explain complicated systems or bring large-scale products to life.

Your headsets can be preloaded with already existing 3D content or you can create your own immersive environments. Whichever option you go for, VR will create unforgettable experiences for your prospects and create a memorable buzz.

Augmented Reality

The new advertising trend of using Augmented Reality has proven itself a powerful marketing tool, allowing brands to connect on a deeper, more immersive level with their target audience.

AR lets you hide content behind marker images that can be included in your event display posters or exhibition stand graphics. It’s a totally fresh and unique way for visitors to interact with your brand.

Using this technology, individuals have access to digital information about particular products or services, but the interactive media sets itself apart by allowing the user to merge engagement across the physical and digital spaces.

Still new and unfamiliar to most people, it attracts the attention of visitors. This in turn creates the perfect opportunity for your sales team to engage with customers and promote the product or company.

Interactive screens

Customers have grown accustomed to interactive features in their daily lives, as they increasingly depend on their portable devices. So, when it comes to searching for or buying new products, they expect some level of independence and freedom

You can display vital information in a simple and versatile manner, making use of eye-catching graphics, images or videos.

It will also improve your exhibition stand’s efficiency because unlike a direct and personal approach interactive displays can work nonstop, move at the user’s speed and are available at their convenience.