A fascinatingting article by Jed Birmingham follows the aging of Charles Bukowski and William Burroughs as they move into the computer revolution, focusing on how their work changed with the technology. Though the Birmingham is careful not to call Bukowski a pioneer of the level of Michael Joyce , he does note how innovations such the ability to quickly capture thoughts and edit/delete functions greatly influenced Bukowski’s work.
In late 1992, Bruce Kijewski approached Bukowski with the idea of electronic books. Bukowski was intrigued. He wrote back, “Yes, you have a strange project: electronic books. It might be the future as more and more people find that the computer is such a magic thing: time-saver, charmer, energizer.” […] But there are still reservations and a sense of nostalgia. The same letter to Kijewski continues, “But, still, when [the electronic book] comes I will still miss the old fashioned book.” Despite such statements, it is clear that Bukowski was a writer not afraid of, or pessimistic about, the future.
Occasioned by the opening of the Berg’s William Burroughs digital archive , the second part of article explores Burroughs’ relationship to the computer. It seems he did not use a computer to write. He embraced film, audio recording, and painting, but apparently he never experimented with writing and the computer to the level that Bukowski did.
As far back as the mid-1960s, Burroughs was aware of the possibilities of the computer and computer-generated poetry. In Insect Trust Gazette , Burroughs’ work appears alongside an early computer poem. In his interview with Conrad Knickerbocker in Paris Review, he stated that he had yet to experiment with the computer, but thought that such literature was valid and interesting, if it stood on its own merit. Yet as time passed — again, as far as I know — Burroughs never experimented with the computer. On one level this makes sense given the fact that Burroughs was well advanced in age and set in his ways by the time the personal computer was generally available. You might say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but Bukowski proves that you, in fact, can.
In the style of other hypertext compendia, Rome Reborn provides the kind of in-depth look at the past that would not be possible without the marriage of computers and the humanities.
The project, lead by Bernard Frischer, aims to build the most detailed and accurate reconstruction of ancient Rome to date, basing the models on archaeological finds. Stunning images of both the interiors and exteriors of many of history’s most famous buildings are available on the project’s site. In the most recent iteration of the project, many of the hand-drawn buildings are given such details as modeled windows and doors in place of the previous method of using textures to project these features.
By now we’ve all heard the hype on the iPad: it’s fast, it’s beautiful, and some believe it’s going to change publishing and literature. Others believe its primary goal is to turn us all into optimally efficient consumers . But much of the literary hypertext community is wondering where we fit.
The interface is sexy. Many people got excited at Steve Jobs’ demonstration of iBooks, particularly at the possibility of books with color images and video. This is good news for paper simulators.
Because of its size, people are expecting the iPad to be an eBook reader that also does myriad other things. It’s not the device that has me excited but the marketing and the positive response that marketing seems to be getting. People seem ready to let video, images, sound, and—most-importantly—links into their books. The iPad hardware may not change much in the advancement of literature, but the fact that it represents a device that can store a portable library of interactive literature is a step in the right direction.
Information on other finalists is available on the IGF Web site. Several of the games are fascinating and just downright fun. Take a look at Continuity , a Student Showcase platformer with levels of shuffling card puzzles.
Critical Mass, run by the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) Board of Directors, is currently publishing a series on The Next Decade in Book Culture.
In a response to Katharine Weber’s bleak outlook, in which she sees converging texts blurring the boundaries “where the conversation about books ends and the book itself begins”, Peter Friedman writes ,
Prophets of doom tend to prescribe remedies intended to recall comforts forever past. That’s why a cultural freakout is not a healthy thing. It leads to bad decisions. Had Jack Valenti and the entire film industry had their way, there would be no VHS machines, no CD and DVD burners, etc., etc. But it turned out that the VHS was the biggest financial boon the film industry had ever experienced…
Like the businesses that once dominated the film and music industries, the monopoly held by the industry over production and distribution is now in the hands of any kid with a laptop. The film and music industries are still making money. But that money is now made in a far wider variety of ways, and is split among more parties. It’s no wonder these industries are therefore decrying their deaths.
The sky is falling, the printed word is dead, and according to the title of an article by Ted Genoways editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review, fiction itself could be dying . Genoways argues that, as universities are butting the budgets of their literary magazines, the short story is vanishing with its outlet. This problem is compounded by the overabundance of MFA-toting creative writers.
It seems unfair to look only at printed quarterlies and assume that all lit mags are doomed. The article only focuses on the internet insofar as he seems to regard a journal’s moving online as a defeat. He dismisses the online community as the blogosphere from which literature needs to be rescued, thereby also dismissing the countless journals and fiction sites that actually showcase good writing.
On the sets of many summer blockbusters, crafts people are hard at work, many of whom will never get the credit they deserve. These people include sound, lighting, camera, and costume experts, and one other group that is often under-appreciated: people who design fictional computer interfaces.
From War Games to Hackers to I, Robot, futuristic computer interfaces present interesting design challenges that become more and more universal as art shifts toward the screen. A recent feature in Gizmodo spotlighted one FUI designer, Mark Coleran, and discussed FUI creation.
Designing a fake dashboard for an imagined supercomputer or a hovering control panel for a worldwide surveillance system is a different process than creating a genuinely usable UI. Your goal is to imply things: that a machine is powerful; that a villain is formidable; that the software is intuitive, but that the breadth of its powers borders on unknowable. At no point does real-world usability factor in, and nor should it—this is pure fantasy, for an audience raised on Start Buttons, desktop icons and tree menus.
If real UIs must be usable, and FUIs must imply things without needing to be usable, the UIs in electronic literature must lie somewhere in the middle. The design features of the interface say a lot about the piece itself and are bound by the same artistic rules that the FUI is. However, they must also be usable so that the reader may interact with the piece. This combination presents an interesting design problem when designing hypertext art.
Luckily we may have help in the future. Coleran is calling for listings of FUI productions to create a compendium for fans and future developers to draw upon.
Those who do know their history are amused at how often it repeats itself anyway. Our current technological revolution is not the first time art and technology have come together in new and exciting way. In 1944, Popular Photography magazine gathered various people—from experts to soldiers— and their thoughts on the future of photography. Much of it sounds strikingly familiar.
At present photographers do not know their medium enough to use their medium. A writer knows how to write and a composer knows theory of music so that they can extend their arts beyond purely technical elements. But in the future the technique of photography will be so simplified and so widely taught and understood that the illiterate per son will be the one who is not a photographer. Then, with mastery of the purely physical features of photography at his command, the photographer can go as far as his will of expression and his imagination will lead him. Even so, there will be good, better, and best.
With interviews from Paul Strand, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, and Berenice Abbott among others. Abbott’s name is misspelled but her technical criticism is terrific.
Berenicew Abbott, ‘El’ Second and Third Avenue Lines; Bowery and Division Street, Manhattan, 1936.Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of George McNeil
Jill Walker Rettberg brings news of a large European project aimed at exploring how creative communities for electronic literature develop and interact. The project will be led by Scott Rettberg, and includes researchers from seven universities across Europe.
While I’ve sort of been accused of using an old fashioned form of hypertext narrative–and this may be true since I’m a bit behind the times learning on my own–I’m still very much aware of the fact that folks need to be eased into the concept of hypertext story.
Text-only hypertexts may not take advantage of graphics, video, and audio, but when did having all of these things together become a requirement for literature? To ask this is to require a painter to use every color of the spectrum at once.
One of the joys of reading is being able to imagine things exactly how we want them. Images can take this away from a reader.
As for folks needing to be “eased into” hypertext, I think this is becoming less true as time goes on. Weblogs already combine text, links, and other media in ways that make sense to us. I recently showed Morpheus Biblionaut to someone who had never seen a hypertext before, and she had no problem understanding what was going on.
Hypertext pioneer Cathy Marshall has just written Reading and Writing the Electronic Book. Marshall offers a brief history of electronic books, and focuses on what facets of reading eBooks inherit from print, how they are written and read, and how they are presented, and what they do to advance the future of literature. In contrast to much of what’s appeared to date, Marshall doesn’t base her opinions of books on received wisdom, nostalgia, or press releases, and this book’s explanation of how we can study actual readers is at once rigorous and accessible. Based on extensive research and thoughtful consideration, this volume is clearly the authoritative source on new ways of reading and new reading tools.
Taking Video Games Seriously is a discussion panel which will be held Monday January 25th from 6:30 pm in Westminster Hall in London. The panel will address how we should be looking at gaming and virtual worlds as a medium.
Leading the discussion will be:
Tom Chatfield, senior editor at Prospect magazine, and author of Fun Inc, a major new book on the social importance of video games, published by Virgin Books on 14th January.
Philip Oliver, CEO of Blitz Games, one of Britain’s largest independent games developers, and one of its most radical in pursuing the serious and innovative uses of games. With his brother, Philip is one of the founding fathers of the British games industry.
Sam Leith is a cultural critic and author, and columnist for The Guardian, The Evening Standard and Prospect. A previous books editor at the Daily Telegraph, he has a particular interest in popular culture and emerging technologies, and writes regularly on video games.
If you are interested in attending, please contact Clair Pilsbury at pilsburyc@parliament.uk
BBC Audio has released Neil Gaiman’s Twitterfiction, “Hearts, Keys, and Puppetry.” The story is splendidly narrated by Katherine Kellgren, bringing the characters and action to life. (Here’s a Mark Bernstein review of another Kellgren audiobook.)
I have to admit, I was surprised at how good this was. The re-mediation is a suprise, moving from Twitter to voice is not an obvious choice. I expected to hear many different voices pulling the narrative in different directions; I expected the sentences to feel short and staccato. I expected to be driven to distracted. And I didn’t realize I expected any of this until I found that it wasn’t there. The story is immersive, with much credit given to Kellgren’s narratiom. There were a few moments which would occasionally remind me that the work was written over Twitter, with sentences like “Then Sam couldn’t believe what happened next.” But the story is fun, and it made my long and chilly commute much more enjoyable.
Sweet Agatha is a mystery narrative-building game by Kevin Allen Jr. that allows players to put together the mystery of a girl who vanished. It plays like a cross between a tabletop role playing game and a campfire story session. The game calls for two players. One player reads through an included booklet—her investigative journal—which includes cut-out clue tiles. Another player, The Truth, controls the clues, revealing them during dramatically important points in the story. The Reader and The Truth go back and forth to build the story of Agatha’s disappearance.
The very well-written booklet creates a sense of eerie mystery while leaving the scenarios open-ended enough to allow for creative input from both the Reader and The Truth. The images are haunting, and serve as great points of departure for the imagination.
This game would be a great exercise for writers looking to test their narrative development skills, or anyone looking to spend an afternoon building an interesting story.
Michael Joyce’s “Twelve Blue”, a hypertext fiction by the author of afternoon: a story, explores the duality and the flow of life not only through the well-crafted segments of text but through its very structure.
Joyce begins one section by announcing there are “many ways to go over Niagara Falls”, illustrating a central concept of the story: that there are often many different ways to get to the same place. This idea applies to life in general, as Joyce elaborates through descriptions of maze-like roadways (all leading to Route 9), the motif of flowing water and a dose of religious skepticism – likening the mind of god, at one point, to the swirling mind of a drowning boy. Story segments comment on the scant control we have over our lives, not due to some divine plan but to life’s randomness and natural gravitations between certain people or things.
This interpretation is paralleled in the way the hypertext is set up: there are many ways to click through the links, thus giving the reader the illusion of choice, but there are very few options once a number is chosen at the beginning. We may take many different paths to reach conclusions, but we’re all reading the same story.
The narrative often splits or flows back, much like the rivers Joyce discusses. Points of interest for him are the brief moment a current flows in two distinct directions and the feeling of being overpowered by the river while either drowning or going over the falls, as people are overpowered by their lives’ flow.
“Twelve Blue” demands patient reading; time must be taken to appreciate the language and figure out how the different story lines relate. I found the story recalls the subtle lyrical style of Faulkner or Ondaatje. True, the meaning doesn’t jump out at you, but that’s what makes it appealing. The challenge of exploring the text and putting the meaning together through snippets of clues enhances the reading experience, and in this case parallels the central theme of human submission to life’s natural flow.
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