Electronic Literature

"An examination of the theory and practice surrounding the genre of electronic literature and exploration of its major works and authors."

Dene's Post about the History of Elit

A Quick and Dirty History of Electronic Literature

1. Hayles’ Electronic Literature History, from “Electronic Literature: What Is It?”

1989-1995 First Generation, or Classical

Dominated by the Eastgate School, which was characterized by the use of a particular hypertext authoring tool called “Storyspace.”

Other works of electronic literature were in development during this period. These were driven by HyperCard, the hypertext software introduced by Apple that drove Apple’s unique operating system.

Overarching traits of the works in the Classical Period includes:
Heavy use of words
Little to no images or sound
Driven by hypertext linking system
Reminiscent of print-based literature; its authors hailed from literary backgrounds
Originally Mac-based; later was available for PC

First commercial work of this period: Michael Joyce, “afternoon: a story,” 1989

Other notable works include: Stuart Moulthrop, “Victory Garden,” 1991; Judy Malloy’s “Its Name Was Penelope,” 1993; Deena Larsen, “Marble Falls,” 1993; Shelley Jackson’s “Patchwork Girl,” 1995 is the “culminating work” of the period (Hayles 6).

1995-Present Second Generation, Contemporary/Postmodern

While Hayles does not elaborate on the works of this period (she identifies the period and moves on to the idea of genres), we can surmise from the technological developments and changes to the computer industry that have occurred since 1995 what some of their characteristics may be . . .

Technological Developments
Even though Tim Berners-Lee had introduced the web in 1984 (the same year at the Macintosh desktop computer (called the “Classic” ) was introduced to the market, it was not until the introduction of the GUI (Graphical User Interface) browsers Mosaic and Netscape in 1994-5 that the web allowed for easy access and display of online works to the general public. Bandwidth, however, was small, so the delivery of multimedia works remained a challenge. Another challenge at the time was coding since there were no GUI HTML editors available. Authors who had taught themselves how to produce work using Storyspace or Hypercard had to commit to learning how to prepare works for the web.

Despite this, we do see the beginning of the migration of electronic literary works from stand-alone authoring programs like HyperCard and Storyspace to the web. These works resemble first-generation works in that they were heavily word driven. Driving the move to online environment was the fact that these works were free and easy to disseminate, requiring no “middle-man” to negotiate the sell of the work. It also eliminated the need to distinguish between a Mac-based or PC-based work since web coding for the web is not driven by system platforms. MD Coverley represents those authors who began their careers producing Storyspace fiction but later moved to web authoring. Califia, for example, was published by Eastgate in 2000; but the bulk of her work was published for the web. One final impetus driving authors to the web was that there was no “editor” picking and choosing work that could be published on the web or telling the authors how to “fix” the piece for publication. So, essentially anyone could be published. This condition led to the rise of a whole new crop of authors who took advantage of self-publishing. Self-publishing itself became an acceptable practice for electronic artists––which is opposite of the way it is viewed in the print world (aka “vanity press”). And since it was difficult to make money on one’s work even when it was published professionally by electronic-oriented publishers, it did not seem to matter where one’s work was ultimately found or how it got there. The main impetus was to get one’s work “out there.”

Competing with web-based elit works were those produced in CD format. The Voyager Corporation dominated the elit market in the production of works from this period. What drew audiences to CD elit works was that they allowed for graphics and sound, which of course the web with its limited bandwidth could not. The culminating commercial works of this genre were Myst and Riven, two adventure games, published by Broderbund Software from California.

But the CD movement failed just as it was gaining in popularity. With the increased computing bandwidth (not to mention memory and speed), images and sound have become ubiquitous elements of the web environment, and interactivity has increased. Elit works moving to the web were eventually able to achieve the look and style made popular by those produced for CDs, and so replaced CD technology.

Changes to the Computer Industry
In 1995 a landmark court case involving Apple and MicroSoft came to a close. Years of fighting over the GUI windows system, which was the hallmark of the Mac environment (but developed for Apple by Gates), resulted in a win for MicroSoft and the decline of Apple––until Steve Jobs rejoined the company in the late 1990s. Apple’s rise in market share since the early 21st century is attributed to Jobs’ innovations to personal computing (iTunes, emphasis on multimedia objects, iPhone). But the years from 1995-2000 were bad ones for the company, which had at one time dominated the personal computing industry.

This situation meant that elit works produced with software for Macintosh computers were in danger of being rendered obsolete. The move to produce Windows versions of elit works began. But interestingly elit artists, for the most part, remained loyal to Apple and continued to develop their work for both platforms even though the computer industry predicted the death of Apple during this time (actually, reports of Apple’s death was an ongoing phenomenon that seemed to drive Mac-users to dig their heels in deeper). It would not be hyperbole to state that most elit artists are Mac users.

Overarching traits of the works in the Second Generation Period includes:
Use of color graphics, video, animation
Integration of sound
Increase in interactivity
Increase use of the web to deliver work
Less reminiscent of print-based literature

2. Kac’s Electronic Literature History, from Media Poetry

Kac begins the history of media poetry with the citation of an essay written by Russian Futurist Velimir Khlebnikov entitled “The Radio of the Future,” in which he predicts the “the impact of telecommunications on literature . . . and culture” (273). Thus, he connects this form of elit to the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century and in doing so, follows the lead of fellow art historians, Lev Manovich and Oliver Grau, who connect media art to Russian Avant-Garde artists and the Italian Futurists, respectively.

Hew goes on to point out that Modernists in the 1920s and 30s in Europe and the US experimented with analog technology and poetry making. American poet E.E. Cummings, for example, used his typewriter to play with “visual syntax.” As I mentioned in my first lecture, the first computer generated work was German poet Theo Lutz’s Stochastische Texte” (1959). See: http://www.netzliteratur.net/lutz_schule.htm

The important literary group, OULIPO (Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle, or “Workshop for the Potential of Literature), founded in 1960 by French writers Raymond Queneau and Francois Le Lionnais, is seen as one of the biggest influences upon the development of experimental poetry.

Following WWII when artistic production was disrupted, the late 1950s and 1960s regained the spirit of experimentation. Important to note are Brion Gysin’s “Pistol Poem” (1960)[ http://www.inter-zone.org/bgbio.html]; Gerd Stern’s programmed kinetic poem “Over” (1962) [http://writing.upenn.edu/wh/stern-gerd.html]; Clair Philippy’s generative work (Poems no. 027, 929, 078, 105, 140) (1963); and John Giorno’s “Dial-A-Poem System” (1969).

Experiments with generative poetry, especially, continued through the 1970s and 80s, but we also see the use of other technologies with Richard Kostelanetz’s “Three Prose Pieces” (1975), which used video and his work “On Holography” (1978), which used holography; Syvestre Pestana’s poems (1981), which used animation; Eduardo Kac’s works (1982), which used ascii and holography; and Rod Willmot’s “Everglade” (1989), which used a hypertext authoring system for DOS platform.

It is important to note that Kac ends his history in 1996 with the publication of his book, New Media Poetry: Poetic Innovation and New Technologies. In his second edition (the Introduction you are reading comes from it), he makes no move to update his history. So, it ends with the beginning of the web.

While he never defines media poetry, we can determine from his Introduction that he is talking about poetry that has been created through a direct mechanical process in a way that renders it different from work produced for the print medium. In the Introduction of the First Edition he writes:

The work of the poets explained and discussed in this issue takes language beyond the confines of the printed page and explores a new syntax made of linear and non-linear animation, hyperlinks, interactivity, real-time text generation, spatio-temporal discontinuities, self-similarity, synthetic spaces, immateriality, diagrammatic relations, visual tempo, multiple simultaneities, and many other innovative procedures. (11)

Characteristics he associates with it include:
“Greater portability”
“Integration of word, sound, movement, transmission, and many other sign processing features into a single device”
“broadband network ubiquity” (7)
Awareness of a larger, non specialist audience (7-8)

In essence, what Kac suggests is that the history of elit begins with experimental poetry produced in Europe, North America, and South America. It is a trajectory that begins in the early 20th century and has continued on to the current time and encompasses a variety of forms. The driving force behind it however is technological experimentation and innovation, not necessary limited to the computer but certainly at its center today.

In looking at the two histories presented by Hayles and Kac, we see a conflict of sorts. Kac’s history begins close to 100 years ago in Europe and encompasses any kind of mechanical influence upon the production of poetry. Hayles’ begins in 1989 in the US and takes in all forms of literary output and all definitions of texts. Key for her is that these texts are generated for and by computing devices.

posted by: grigar at 01/15/08 18:42 | link | comments (4) |

Comments:

#1  16 January 2008 - 22:35

 

To an extent, I see a lot of this being arguing semantics. Trying to qualify something as being literature or not being literature does not change what the thing fundamentally is. But that's probably just more Zen-esque thinking asserting itself, and I might be missing the point.

In any case, eLit has sure come a long way, and I can see it changing in much more interesting ways as new and exciting technology makes itself available. (That sounds a tad canned, but hey, is it false?)

dhawthorne

#2  17 January 2008 - 00:44

 

I think I would agree with you about not mattering what we call something except that in Western culture we have this fundamental notion that to know something we must be able to name it. To be it simply, "to name is to know." The way I get around this problem with naming is that I remind myself that no matter what I call it, it will not matter in the end. Someone 600 years from now will come along and nail the name for us.

And yes, the growth of the art form has been exciting to watch and experience. To think I have lived during the birth and growth of an art form is pretty darn exciting.

Best,
D

grigar

#3  19 January 2008 - 15:12

 

I would look at it like most art forms, reasonable people can disagree about what "art" is or not. I mean, is the toilet seat painted to look like an American flag a deep dissertation on the present political climate, or is it just a painted toilet seat? I think the same thing happens with elit, some people are more strict than others in their definition.

I do find it interesting that we include early text games as elit, but most experts place the birth of elit 7-9 years later with Joyce's work. I would love to discuss this with some of the other experts in the field to get their perspective on that.

bhook

#4  19 January 2008 - 20:03

 

Ben,

I may be able to arrange an ichat with Nick Montfort the foremost authority on adventure games, if you think you guys would be interested.

You may also want to check out his book "Twisy Little Passages," with is a book completely devoted to the subject of adventures games and their connection to elit. I believe the copy I ordered for the library is in and available.

--D

grigar

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