Comments on: Questions about E-Lit from Jena Osman http://grandtextauto.org/2006/11/01/questions-about-e-lit-from-jena-osman/ A group blog about computer narrative, games, poetry, and art. Thu, 30 Sep 2010 22:43:57 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.2 By: josemanuel http://grandtextauto.org/2006/11/01/questions-about-e-lit-from-jena-osman/comment-page-1/#comment-99647 josemanuel Mon, 06 Nov 2006 22:47:28 +0000 http://grandtextauto.org/?p=1344#comment-99647 I think Jena Osman made an important point there. Do we have to re-learn to read in order to be able to fully understand e-lit, or maybe it's the authors the ones who have to learn to write e-lit? For example, some works from the ELO collection puzzled me in a bad way. I didn't know how to "use" them. Comparing the experience to that of reading a book, it was like reading something in an unknown language about an unknown topic, while simultaneously not even knowing which page I was on, nor which one I had been before, nor after. Ignoring even how to turn the pages. But there was also something I noticed on myself. The more I related to the (supposed) theme of the work, the more I could understand how it worked. So, was I consciuosly not taking the effort of learning how to read the works I was not interested in from the beginning, or were those works really "easier" than the others and I still may blame my illiteracy on the authors? My impression is that it's a 50%-50% thing, but I can be wrong. I believe, though, that Ms. Osman is right in suggesting that this is probably due to the novelty of the form. My children will be able to read those works and explain them all to me, I'm sure. I think Jena Osman made an important point there. Do we have to re-learn to read in order to be able to fully understand e-lit, or maybe it’s the authors the ones who have to learn to write e-lit? For example, some works from the ELO collection puzzled me in a bad way. I didn’t know how to “use” them. Comparing the experience to that of reading a book, it was like reading something in an unknown language about an unknown topic, while simultaneously not even knowing which page I was on, nor which one I had been before, nor after. Ignoring even how to turn the pages.

But there was also something I noticed on myself. The more I related to the (supposed) theme of the work, the more I could understand how it worked. So, was I consciuosly not taking the effort of learning how to read the works I was not interested in from the beginning, or were those works really “easier” than the others and I still may blame my illiteracy on the authors? My impression is that it’s a 50%-50% thing, but I can be wrong. I believe, though, that Ms. Osman is right in suggesting that this is probably due to the novelty of the form. My children will be able to read those works and explain them all to me, I’m sure.

]]> By: nick http://grandtextauto.org/2006/11/01/questions-about-e-lit-from-jena-osman/comment-page-1/#comment-99609 nick Sun, 05 Nov 2006 20:43:28 +0000 http://grandtextauto.org/?p=1344#comment-99609 I'll add one more thing to this, which is that some interesting e-lit pieces do not make very many demands on the reader, and can be read during a corporate lunch break - or even when the reader is supposed to be working. While these may not be reconfiguring reading practices in a dramatic fashion, they are nevertheless opening up the possibilities of our workplace computing devices for literary expression and exchange, showing that international business machines can be literary machines, too. In their contexts, I think these sorts of fleeting-attention sessions of reading are quite worthwhile. I’ll add one more thing to this, which is that some interesting e-lit pieces do not make very many demands on the reader, and can be read during a corporate lunch break – or even when the reader is supposed to be working. While these may not be reconfiguring reading practices in a dramatic fashion, they are nevertheless opening up the possibilities of our workplace computing devices for literary expression and exchange, showing that international business machines can be literary machines, too. In their contexts, I think these sorts of fleeting-attention sessions of reading are quite worthwhile.

]]> By: nick http://grandtextauto.org/2006/11/01/questions-about-e-lit-from-jena-osman/comment-page-1/#comment-99590 nick Sun, 05 Nov 2006 03:47:03 +0000 http://grandtextauto.org/?p=1344#comment-99590 I won't try to answer all of these, at least at once, but in reply to Jena's question about attention: <i>I’m curious to hear people articulate the kind of attention that digital media motivates. If the attention is fleeting or always in motion...</i> I find that different pieces of e-lit ask for many different sorts of attention. "Dakota" by Young Hae-Chang Heavy Industries rewards close study and efforts to draw correspondences with the first two of Pound's <i>Cantos,</i> while also riveting the reader as it plays - in the Whitney, it could clearly be seen that it drew a more focused attention than any other piece in The American Effect exhibition. It would be quite common for a reader to pursue each of the five interactive fiction pieces in the <i>Collection</i> as intently as one would a novel, and for a longer period of time, with note-taking and discussion with others to accompany the reading and the typing, the figurative thinking and experimentation that is carried out in interacting. Brian Kim Stefans's "The Dreamlife of Letters," which might seem an "easy read" at first, asks the reader to try to reconstruct the message from which it is constituted, and to read this altered message, as the forms of words dance in a way that also asks to be seen, traced, and appreciated. Alan Sondheim and Reiner Strasser's "Tao" hardly <i>demands</i> attention or interpretive energy, but it opens a calm space of text and image that is very amenable to repeated experience, being both connected to the everyday experience of the computer but also at a different pace from it. There are electronic pieces that don't ask for, or reward, the same interpretive focus or attention as do the most powerful poems and pieces of prose, but I wouldn't characterize the level of attention that I devote to e-lit as fleeting or always (or even typically) in motion. Just as we use workaday computers to glimpse ephemeral news and movie listings and such - and also to study deep puzzles as we sift through scientific data or corpora of text - the literary use of computers engages the reader, and user, in many different ways. I won’t try to answer all of these, at least at once, but in reply to Jena’s question about attention:

I’m curious to hear people articulate the kind of attention that digital media motivates. If the attention is fleeting or always in motion…

I find that different pieces of e-lit ask for many different sorts of attention. “Dakota” by Young Hae-Chang Heavy Industries rewards close study and efforts to draw correspondences with the first two of Pound’s Cantos, while also riveting the reader as it plays – in the Whitney, it could clearly be seen that it drew a more focused attention than any other piece in The American Effect exhibition. It would be quite common for a reader to pursue each of the five interactive fiction pieces in the Collection as intently as one would a novel, and for a longer period of time, with note-taking and discussion with others to accompany the reading and the typing, the figurative thinking and experimentation that is carried out in interacting. Brian Kim Stefans’s “The Dreamlife of Letters,” which might seem an “easy read” at first, asks the reader to try to reconstruct the message from which it is constituted, and to read this altered message, as the forms of words dance in a way that also asks to be seen, traced, and appreciated. Alan Sondheim and Reiner Strasser’s “Tao” hardly demands attention or interpretive energy, but it opens a calm space of text and image that is very amenable to repeated experience, being both connected to the everyday experience of the computer but also at a different pace from it.

There are electronic pieces that don’t ask for, or reward, the same interpretive focus or attention as do the most powerful poems and pieces of prose, but I wouldn’t characterize the level of attention that I devote to e-lit as fleeting or always (or even typically) in motion. Just as we use workaday computers to glimpse ephemeral news and movie listings and such – and also to study deep puzzles as we sift through scientific data or corpora of text – the literary use of computers engages the reader, and user, in many different ways.

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