Category Archives: Week 10: Digital Literature – Pressman lecture and Rettberg

Electronic Literature and AI

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Scott Rettberg mentions, “poem and stories that are generated by computers, either interactively or based on parameters given at the beginning,” as a form of electronic literature (Rettberg 172). Does this sound familiar? Because to me it sounds like A.I. Rettberg even goes on to say that these generators, “stretch back to Christopher Stratchey’s 1952 M.U.C. Love Letter Generator” (Rettberg 172). So if this stretches all the way back to 1952, why is A.I. only gaining mainstream attention and gathering worry from the majority of people today?

The first reason is AI is more accessible today. You don’t have to know any code to create an AI generated piece of work, because the AI itself is already made by others. It is now in a digestible form for most of the population that has access to the internet. It’s like when Gutenberg’s printing press vastly improve literacy rates, because the material became more accessible to the masses. it also wasn’t being used by big corporations to ‘optimize profits,’ which is just a codeword for ‘we actually think AI can replace human jobs, even if most AI is actually more costly for us.’ Fear-mongering, if one will. AI, at least to my knowledge, was not being actively used against the majority of the population in any noticeable way.

Instead, in regards to the paper and the 1952 example, it was a tool for creativity—an experimental tool at that—that did not replace a human in any meaningful capacity, because the human was involved in making the AI itself and the prompt.

So what do we do now? Well, we take the tool back and thus our power back to use it the way we want to (not a replacement, but a tool), and also try to make laws surrounding AI use. Regulations are needed, and people have a right to know when AI is used and where specifically it is used.

Book or Game

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Being woken up early in the morning, with pajamas trailing past my toes, and hands eager to rip through presents wrapped neatly under the Christmas tree, little did I know I would be unboxing a book. While this “book” took the material form of a Nintendo Wii, the medium adhered to the aspects of books we recognize today. Taking thoughts from Scott Rettberg’s “Electronic Literature,” and personal anecdotes involving my gaming/reading history, the book will be compared to the console, displaying that both mediums carry a similar purpose. 

Since I first got a Wii, if I had known I’d be able to excuse my screentime as reading time, I would be in a much different position than I am now. To back this statement, I draw a quotation from Rettberg’s work stating, “According to Bolter and Joyce, ‘all electronic literature takes the form of a game, a contest between author and reader.’” While they don’t outright state that Lego Indiana Jones is a form of electronic literature, the interaction between author and reader remains similar. A story is presented, then contested by the reader through their action of playing, and eventually leads to new thoughts or ideas emerging, such as the author’s intake of critical reviews or me saying, “Dad, can you please get me Lego Indiana Jones 2?” 

This idea of a collaborative narrative, which relates to most games, is explored as one of the examples of electronic literature that Rettberg presents. In the description of the lengthy examples, Rettberg notes the list could be endless, and specifically cites that as the point of the list–to be endless. So, the question of if a game is a form of electronic literature becomes obvious, ensured by the limitless possibilities. Instead, as Rettberg notes, the question becomes, “How precisely do computer art installations ask viewers to read them?’” 

In the case of the intermedia example, Lego Indiana Jones, it then relies on the author’s intention. Did the developers directly ask people to treat it as such–a story told through a game, or was it just a “mere game,” which is the risk of many intermedia examples? I don’t have a direct answer for that, though I do believe it relies on another factor–the reader’s perception. 

At that age, did I understand I was reading in a visual format, or did I just see it as gaming? Though even if I didn’t understand that, am I still a reader, or simply a gamer? As the lines have blurred, and will continue to blur, I believe it shows how intermedia redefines our idea of “reading” and our conception of what is book material. Sure, I was just playing a game, but at its core I was engaging with a long line of authors producing material to be read. With that said, maybe my brother reads more than I.

Week 10: Electronic Literature

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Electronic literature is a rapidly growing field that combines writing and technology. As Scott Rettburg explains, the term broadly refers to works with “important literary aspects that take advantage of the capabilities and contexts provided by the stand-alone or networked computer” (Rettburg). Electronic literature is more than text stored within a computer, it is literature that could not exist without digital technology. Like all of our words, the definition has evolved and changed. Before the 1990s, “electronic literature” often meant texts in digital form, such as online articles. However, authors and scholars began using the term to describe works of art/literature designed specifically for computers, such as hypertext fiction or interactive digital poetry. Boruk taught us that material influences content, and the same applies to electronic literature. The computer and specific software platforms directly influence how we interact with various texts: “The platform in electronic literature constrains and affords practices in a material-and some might even say determinative-way” (Rettburg). 

Rettburg uses the example of “guard fields in a Storyspace hypertext or tweens in a Flash poem has a very specific aesthetic effect on the way that a reader interacts with and perceives a work” (Rettburg). Just as the tablet evolved into the scroll which eventually evolved into the book as we know it today, electronic literature will continue to evolve as technology advances. Electronic literature is yet another reminder that reading and writing is never static, but rather the form, style, and experience is constantly evolving alongside the tools we use to do so, physical or digital. 

Digital Media, A Screen and Page

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After seeing the video, A Screen and Page I honestly thought it was really neat and rather interesting. I have always heard of augment reality and how it can help with a lot of things, but I do think this is pretty smart. The computer glasses read a “QR” like code which are hieroglyphs that the computer reads and then a text pops up which tend to be poems, short stories and such which I find very accessible, yet not as accessible.

I say that it is accessible, yet it isn’t because not everyone can afford augment reality glasses with a computer that is able to run the software properly. I also find it very ironic how we still need to use a book in order to have this screen and page thing to work even though society is doing their greatest efforts to go fully digital. It reminds me of previous class discussions about how technology is always looking to better itself and make itself new but always having to rely on physical book aspects to maintain its identity and proper use. Examples such as bookmarkers still being used in digital media, highlighting, annotating, circling and such. I do think the concept is really interesting and intriguing.

A Screen and Page is fascinating because it begins to make you wonder as to how this piece of literature is classified. The formatting, structure, and such are all experimentally done well and it goes to also show that literature in general is experimental, and I do believe we should play around with it more. Like our discussions and how Pressman mentioned in previous classes, there is nothing stopping you from creating a book however you want. Having this kind of mindset has me excited to see other various forms of digital media and how we interact with it as well as to how maybe one of us can create a neat book that changes how we perceive books in general. My only scare and complaint about digital media is how will AI play a part in it all and if people use AI to write their stories, then who do we call the author? The person who put the prompt into the machine, or the machine that pumped out all the words and ended up calling it a “story”? Many interesting questions and conversations to have around digital media and why it is important in today’s time.

Is Digital Media Scary or Cool? (Yes)

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As Dr. Pressman said in the lecture about Electronic Literature, “any time there’s new tools or technologies, artists play with them.” When watching the lecture, I was amazed at how artists took the computer and coding to another level to create meaningful art and challenge how people interact with the digital world. Though I know AI is relatively new, I feel like it’s been around or at least talked about so extensively that I’ve thought of it as something I’ve known for a while. Which is why I was surprised when, just recently, I saw an artist’s digital artwork that uses the common mistakes and uncanniness of AI art to create their own art. Somehow, though the art was a terrifying amalgamation despite using bright colors, it felt like it had a soul. I enjoyed its dilapidated subject that was blurred and had an odd amount of fingers, but wondered where the wonder and want for creating using technology has gone.  Personally, I feel limited in my use of the digital, especially with corporations shoving their products down my throat. No longer do I have the same curiosities and willingness to sit in front of a computer and simply explore internet spaces. Though I’m aware the internet is practically limitless in the things you can find, nowadays it feels more restricted to a few search engines, similar formats that encourage endless scrolling, and constant advertisements. Seeing all of the creative endeavors that occurred in previous years, with the development of the internet, makes me crave electronic literature. Yet, I also fear the sustainability of electronic literature. 

As we’ve heard in class, things like Mark Marino’s “Marginalia in the Library of Babel,” have gone dark because of a shift in technology. Though “Marginalia in the Library of Babel,” was restored and functions the way it’s supposed to, some other pages from Flash don’t get as lucky as being restored properly. Recently, I revisited my favorite childhood game “Poptropica,” which was ran with Flash, then restored, but not to the same quality as it was in the 2000s. This makes me question when the pages, articles, games, and art I consume online will simply disappear one day, and if they’d feel or be the same as they were. Obviously, it seems like a case-by-case situation, but it still makes me question what we leave behind in order to pursue the new. 

Week 10: Do I Even Know What Digital Media is?

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When I finished the Johns Hopkins Guide reading on electronic literature, my brain was kind of going. I went in thinking this would be a pretty straightforward definition (literature that exists digitally) but it turned out to be a whole concept that is way more complicated (and interesting) than I thought.

The thing that really caught my attention was this quote from the Electronic Literature Organization’s definition. The reading mentions how electronic literature includes works that are “works with important literary aspects that take advantage of the capabilities and contexts provided by the stand-alone or networked computer” (568-569). What really brought my attention about this is the emphasis on “taking advantage” of digital capabilities, not just existing in digital form. It’s not enough to just slap a novel onto a Kindle and call it electronic literature, there has to be something about the work that needs the computer to function properly.

This difference got me thinking about all the different forms mentioned in the reading. Hypertext fiction, interactive narratives, bots, SMS works, even collaborative online writing projects. The sheer variety is kind of overwhelming to be honest. For instance, we’ve expanded so far beyond the traditional book format that it’s hard to even nail down what counts as “literature” anymore. The reading talks about how some people in the ELO were debating whether things like video games or interactive fiction should be included, and I see why that’s controversial.

What I find most fascinating (and maybe a bit unsettling) is the idea that the medium fundamentally changes the literary experience. The reading discusses how electronic literature doesn’t just change how we read, but potentially what reading even means. When you’re clicking through hyperlinks or interacting with a digital poem that responds to your inputs, are you still “reading” in the traditional sense? Or are you doing something entirely new?

I also appreciated how the reading acknowledges that electronic literature isn’t replacing print literature—it’s just expanding what’s possible. The author mentions how some works couldn’t exist without the computer’s capabilities, which makes sense when you think about things like generative poetry or works that change based on reader input.

One question I’m left with though is this. Where’s the line between electronic literature and just internet content? For instance, are Twitter threads literature? What about really well-crafted Tumblr posts? The reading touches on this when discussing collaborative writing and networked environments, but I wish there was more clarity on where we draw those boundaries, or if we even should.

Overall, this reading definitely challenged my assumptions about what literature can be in the digital age. It’s clear that as technology evolves, so too will our definitions of literary art. Kind of exciting, honestly.

Archive Fever

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I was under the impression (wrongfully) that electronic literature was simply e-books or PDFs stored in a digital device; I never made the connection between literature and the capabilities of the electronic device—for example, digital media have hyperlinks and other modes of interaction, creating a new manner in which literature is reproduced through different modes of media. One example that caught my attention was that electronic literature branched out into several forms such as “chatterbots, interactive fiction, novels that take the form of e-mails, SMS messages, or blogs.” There are many forms and genres in which electronic literature is being reproduced—and, as technology evolves, so do these modes and media. I always thought about the relationship we have with literature as a feedback loop—author, word, and text to reader. E-lit challenges and blurs this paradigm by immersing the reader in a different experience, one that cannot be offered by traditional books. By no means am I making a clear distinction that one is superior to the other, but rather highlighting the idea that they both offer a different user experience. In a similar manner, in a previous post I discussed how language is not static or fixed, as it is always changing and adapting, echoing the framework in which e-lit operates—digital media has branched out through all the user participatory interactions, which demonstrate the instability or nonlinearity of this media. Intrinsically, this also demonstrates the ephemerality of electronic media; just as books can be considered outdated as we have culturally shifted to e-book’s and PDF’s, electronic literature can be archived if the software/ web cease to support that particular format– our current tumultuous political climate also influences. The government has erased several online pages that preserved publicly known information, censoring and making works disappear completely– demonstrating the fragility of this mode of media and echoing that we are in a constant state of change. The relationship between media, text and readers have changed and evolved– from time to technology.

Evolutionary Media: In the Digital Age

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As someone who knew what they loved(books) from a very young age, my relationship with its concept and physicality has gone through many changes. None so drastic as what I feel today. When I was younger, I was read bedtime stories when I would be tired, and I would have story-times in class where we’d all sit on the carpet and listen to the teacher read. If I was feeling brave, I would look at a monster book I vividly remember having and quite boldly purchasing at a school book fair one year. As I grew older, the texts got a bit thicker, smaller even. I would read for fun while simultaneously read for school. I remember having large hardcover school textbooks on core subjects like History, Science, and English. Then the author’s became important around late middle school and definitely high school. Canonical writers like Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Steinbeck flooded my brain with their words and characters. And it was sometime in my late high school years that I listened to my first audiobook.

Just like how Professor Pressman states in her article, “In order to read Between Page and Screen, you must take, quite literally, a material turn. You must shift away from the traditional posture of holding a book and reading the text printed upon its pages.”, I too had to reorient myself to how I interacted with reading. Now I was listening to someone else’s voice reading the book. Sure, it was similar to the orality of being read to when little, but now there is no focal point. The voice is in my speakers or headphones, not in front of me. My hands weren’t preoccupied and anticipating to turn the page or use my pointer finger as a guide. I had a harder time focusing yet it made all the more sense to just simply use an audiobook. Or at least that’s how it felt when I gifted someone a physical book and they replied to me saying, “I only listen to audiobooks now.”

Now, you have easy access and purchase power to let’s say a text that you would find in a bookstore, right on your phone. And the phone would mimic turning the page, highlighting function etc…Furthermore, hypertexts like Marino’s story now force the reader to engage with the text but specifically through marginalia and the journey doesn’t have to be linear if you don’t want it to be. Texts, along with technology, our changing our literary landscape in drastic ways. And lastly as aforementioned Borsuk’s Between Page and Screen is a digital text that can only be read or rather translated through the eyes of technology. You engage with the text, almost working alongside it, by pointing the book towards the lens and watching the text come to life and float in front of your screen. It is a fascinating thing to not only experience but to be aware that we are in the midst of a great shift in the way we interact with media and literature; books are evolving, literature is augmenting itself, and we are guiding this change in the Digital Age.

Why Digital Literature Scares Me

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I’ve been a writer for a very long time. In many ways I think I can tie this back to the murder of my father as a child, sifting through his things, what he collected, what he wore, for years trying to piece the clues together to make sense of who the man was who I hardly ever knew. It led to an obsession with permanence. What are we when we’re gone apart from the things we leave behind? So I write in a kind of vain attempt at immortality. At its very best it is a noble effort to endure, at its worse it is nothing but pure vanity, of thinking one might matter enough to be spoken of far into the future.

What frightens me the most about digital literature is the knowledge that these things are ephemeral. As Doctor Pressman says in her introduction to electronic literature, sometimes we have “only seven years of access to these works,” a far cry from the tens, hundreds, and in some cases thousands, of years of access we have had to the works of literature we all have grown up with. My favorite novel is nearly ninety years old–the book I did a biography on for the midterm was first written in the thirteenth century. When writers write they write to stay. Writing has always, in some form, been a struggle against time. To record one’s thoughts and the mechanics of one’s mind takes those things from fleeting to enduring.

The three Ps of e-lit are poetics, critical practice, and preservation. “Facade” was created on a version of the web that no longer exists. Caitlin Fisher’s “Circle” plays with ephemerality in its core concept. I think it is admirable, and quite Zen, for artists to create without the impression of any permanence in their work, but what does that mean? I believe it goes against the very nature of being human, to me. It is to allow for death, to celebrate it, to accept it.

I have known very many men who have spoken of accepting the end, of being at peace with it, but when the end came I believe rather firmly that all of them realized they had been liars. And it is far different for a man with a rifle in his hands to wave away life with a flick of the wrist when they are willingly gambling with it than for someone who creates, whether to commune with the masses or in cathartic process, to accept that what they have done is of no meaning to anyone but the artist themselves. If it is true then it is admirable. But I cannot understand it. It is a complete and total submission to time and its forward progress, and to think of it makes me feel incredibly small and powerless, like standing in a field of ever-receding black, vanishing and vanishing in every direction all around you.

Seven years of access? I have blinked once and seven years passed. And to look back I often return to things I have written or things I have created. If they were not there how would I have any measure of who I ever was or how I became whoever I would be?

Maybe I am harping on some age-old fear. I know I am. But I know this because when those fears were expressed people wrote about them; people conveyed the fears in mediums that were enduring. We can look back at the historical record, and we can find them. We can trace where we once were, how we came through to the other side. What does it do to us, as a society, as mankind, if there is nothing to trace? We are floating, and maybe we always have been, but I do not know how to accept it.

Digital Literature is Cool!

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The first time I ever heard about digital literature was when I received an email from the College of Arts and Letters, calling for art submissions. In my head, digital literature didn’t make sense because I had only ever thought of literature on a physical page in a book. I thought: How can literature be digital (besides me typing a story or poem on my computer)? It confused me as to how anyone could go beyond that, even though I had already seen versions of digital literature without knowing. 

Unfortunately, I cannot remember the exact museum I went to, but I do remember the art piece. I was in a dark room with a video playing on one screen. In the video, a woman sat in a kitchen and picked items up one at a time, naming them. You couldn’t really predict what she would show you next and, quite frankly, it was hard to discern any true rhyme or reason to which objects she would choose. That was so until she had listed perhaps 16 items and I had realized she was listing them all in alphabetical order. There was something quite eerie about the recording considering there was no ‘typical’ story besides the one you imagined. Not only did this story of sorts force me to listen in a very specific way but it also encouraged me to view these words with a specific emotion attached to them. Where “apron” might just be any other word, it was the beginning of her story.

The electronic literature displayed in Professor Pressman’s lecture reminded me a lot of this experience. I found that by watching and reading these pieces, I was experiencing something far more profound than a book. While both literature in books and digital literature are art, they convey different messages because of the medium they are attached to. I recognize that there are limitations to art based on what message should be presented to the audiences. The digital literature artists could not have performed these stories without the technology they used. It’s quite simple when you think about it, as a painter can’t make a painting with paints and a canvas. Otherwise, it would be an entirely new art medium. These digital writers are using digital technologies to play with audiences’ reception of the art, to change the way readers consume, to redefine what it means to read words in a specific order and speed.

With the alphabet story, I believe I felt uncomfortable listening to it, not only because of her listing objects without explaining a motive, but because of the pace she chose to read them at. It was a slow process, getting through the alphabet in roughly five minutes. It demanded my attention yet also forced me to listen and think. In the silence, she gave me time to consider the story between the lines. Similar to “Pry” that engages readers by having them actively pry out more information from between the lines, this video encouraged me to make my own story from the omission of filler words.