DOCSLIB.ORG

Benchmark Fiction: a Framework for Comparative New Media Studies

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Benchmark Fiction: a Framework for Comparative New Media Studies Benchmark Fiction: A Framework for Comparative New Media Studies Christy Dena Jeremy Douglass Mark Marino University of Melbourne UC Santa Barbara UC Riverside School of Creative Arts 2607 South Hall, UCSB 8325 Fordham Rd. Parkville, Australia Santa Barbara, CA 93106-3170 USA LA, CA 90045 USA [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Abstract The underlying tenet of producing benchfic – the separation of How do we compare eliterature forms? What does it mean for a ‘form’ from ‘content’ – is highly problematic. It is difficult or work to be implemented as hypertext, interactive fiction, or impossible to pinpoint where form ends and content begins in a chatbot? "Benchmark fiction" is a methodology for creating given work, particularly artistic work designed to be experienced 'benchmarks' - sets of adaptations of the “same” eliterature content as a unified whole. Yet, with benchfic as with other processes of across different media for the purpose of comparative study. adaptation, translation and remediation, the problem of While total equivalence between the resulting 'benchfic' is determining which elements to hold constant and which to vary is impossible, praxis remains important: by creating 'equivalent' in large part the value of the undertaking. media and then critiquing them, we reveal our own definitions of In the process of producing benchfic, one’s concept of ‘form’ is media through process. Work on the first story to be formalized as one’s vision of the content takes new shape. These benchmarked, “The Lady or the Tiger” (1882) by Frank R. very formalizations may break under the weight of the creative Stockton, inspired a framework for displaying sources through experiments, testing their limitations, another goal of the Project. interchangeable display modules. The project is considered in There is no one correct approach. Rather, the Benchmark Fiction terms of historical precedents (Lorem Ipsum, Hello World, Cloak Project proposes the ongoing aggregation of a multitude of of Darkness, Gabriella Infinita), contemporary theories parallel elit adaptations; each with their own claim to what in (adaptation, remediation, media-specific analysis, transmedial and translation studies is termed ‘equivalence.’ Rather than creating cross-media storytelling), and current experiments (chatbots, simple assumptions about how elit forms operate, benchmark wikis, search art, cellular automata), with some discussion of fiction creates an opportunity to critically examine the design and pedagogy. assumptions and arguments we already make. This investigation is both process and product oriented. First, 1. INTRODUCTION through the process of attempting adaptation into target forms, we A benchmark fiction, or ‘benchfic,’ is an elit adaptation for the hope to identify and share different writing practices that emerge purposes of comparing media. The term ‘benchmark’ here is while trying to render similar effects in different new media. playfully repurposed from the fields of computer science and Second, we hope to generate example products which allow strategic management in order to emphasize the focus on utility critical communities more opportunities to make apples-to-apples and standards. While ‘benchmark’ originated as a surveying term comparisons of new media fiction implementations – similar for a point of reference, in contemporary computer science, matter can be pulled up in two different applications and read ‘benchmarking’ has come to mean the execution of a software test closely side by side. in order to ascertain the relative performance of underlying hardware. Ultimately, these experiments may prove more interpretive than empirical, in that we will not constrain ourselves to attempting As creative theoretical practitioners, we approach the benchmark pedantic remediations of the text into each form, but rather adapt test with painters’ smocks instead of lab coats. Nonetheless, the the text in order to accentuate the strengths and limitations of each comparison to computer science benchmarking is serious. The form. The results will reflect particular readings of the source text production and comparison of benchfic is analogous to this as well as interpretations of the nature of the forms themselves. process of testing hardware via software. With benchfic, the soft ‘content’ of a story might be ‘run’ on the hard ‘form’ of two 2. BENCHFIC IN THEORY different systems of elit implementation in order to examine differences in those two specific forms. Thus, Frank R. Stockton’s 2.1 Adaptation short story “The Lady, or the Tiger” might be adapted as a Adaptation studies are concerned with relations between texts, in Storyspace hypertext fiction as well as an Inform interactive particular, what passes from one text to another. As Kamilla fiction. Alternately, the content of a work of elit (e.g. “Afternoon: Elliott so aptly observes, adaptation is a “heresy” for it “suggests a story’ by Michael Joyce”) might be separated from that form that form is separable from content” [6]. In an attempt to call for a (Storyspace) and then re-implemented on some other form “renewed scrutiny” of the study of the relations between literature (HTML). and film adaptations, Elliott provides a concept explication of adaptation studies. She outlines six approaches to understanding form and content within a book and film adaptation paradigm: these are Psychic; Ventriloquist; Genetic; De(re)composing; by media theorist Henry Jenkins. In 2001, Jenkins observed the Incarnational and Trumping. occurrence of increasing media channels and the introduction of stories that are delivered over multiple channels [13]. Through an The Psychic Concept of adaptation has two levels: the idea that an analysis of “The Matrix” franchise, Jenkins posited the notion of adaptation must preserve the “spirit of the text” (which doesn’t “transmedia storytelling”: mean a high degree of sameness, but a text that persists certain perceived authorial intentions) and the idea that the spirit of a text In the ideal form of transmedia storytelling, each passes from the text to adapter, to the adaptation and then to the medium does what it does best—so that a story might reader or viewer. Unlike the Psychic Concept, a Ventriloquist be introduced in a film, expanded through television, approach sees “what passes from novel to film in adaptation [as] a novels, and comics, and its world might be explored dead corpse rather than a living spirit”. The film breathes life into and experienced through game play. Each franchise the “dead” novel. The Genetic view sees the transitory substance entry needs to be self-contained enough to enable as being an ‘underlying “deep” narrative structure akin to genetic autonomous consumption. That is, you don’t need to structure”. A story, for instance, is the same, but with a different have seen the film to enjoy the game and vice-versa. plot. A De(re)composing approach values a de- and re- composition of the text: elements in the film for example “serve to While talk of “franchise” and “autonomous consumption” reflects fulfill the disappointed hopes and desires of its characters”. An the capitalist model of mass entertainment, Neo’s ability to take Incarnation view of adaptation sees the film as a necessary shape in the outside world and in the Matrix world speak directly materialization that is prefigured, indeed demanded, by the novel. to our notion of translation. More recently, Jill Walker has And finally, the Trumping relation between a novel and film is explored the notion of “distributed narrative”, where a narrative that of competition. In this approach, novel and film are compared is distributed over time, space and producers [29]; while Lizbeth according to which “represents better”. Within the conceptual Klastrup and Susana Tosca have investigated the qualities of a work that can persist over multiple channels and time through the paradigm of such concerns, the Benchmark Fiction Project intends to explore elit-adaptations for the sake of “renewed scrutiny” of notion of “transmedial worlds” [17]. Semiotician Jay Lempke has this important area. also recognized the critical approaches needed to capture the peculiar instances of multi-text environments: 2.2 Transmedial Narrative and Game Not only do we not have adequate models of semiotic For a given text there are both media-specific and transmedial effects and inter-discursivity for each of these media qualities, and benchmarking seeks to explore their difference. In individually, but many of the discursive and this regard, our research hypothesis is akin to narratologist David ideological effects of interest in inter-media franchises Herman’s: depend on inter-relations among presentations in coordinated, multiple semiotic media. [18] Although narratives in different media exploit a common stock of narrative design principles, they All of these approaches require the ‘text’ to be viewed in a multi- exploit them in different, media-specific ways, or, text, and multi-channel environment, what Christy Dena rather, in a certain range of ways determined by the conceives as “polymorphic works: narrative in many forms” [5]. properties of each medium [12]. Polymorphic works are an extension of literary theorist Itamar Even-Zohar’s “polysystem studies”, a theory addressing the However, we extend this hypothesis to include ludic design complex socio-semiotic phenomena surrounding translations [7]. concerns such as system, players, artificial conflict, rules, They place works within
Load more

Recommended publications
  • List of Different Digital Practices 3
    Categories of Digital Poetics Practices (from the Electronic Literature Collection) http://collection.eliterature.org/1/ (Electronic Literature Collection, Vol 1) http://collection.eliterature.org/2/ (Electronic Literature Collection, Vol 2) Ambient: Work that plays by itself, meant to evoke or engage intermittent attention, as a painting or scrolling feed would; in John Cayley’s words, “a dynamic linguistic wall- hanging.” Such work does not require or particularly invite a focused reading session. Kinetic (Animated): Kinetic work is composed with moving images and/or text but is rarely an actual animated cartoon. Transclusion, Mash-Up, or Appropriation: When the supply text for a piece is not composed by the authors, but rather collected or mined from online or print sources, it is appropriated. The result of appropriation may be a “mashup,” a website or other piece of digital media that uses content from more than one source in a new configuration. Audio: Any work with an audio component, including speech, music, or sound effects. CAVE: An immersive, shared virtual reality environment created using goggles and several pairs of projectors, each pair pointing to the wall of a small room. Chatterbot/Conversational Character: A chatterbot is a computer program designed to simulate a conversation with one or more human users, usually in text. Chatterbots sometimes seem to offer intelligent responses by matching keywords in input, using statistical methods, or building models of conversation topic and emotional state. Early systems such as Eliza and Parry demonstrated that simple programs could be effective in many ways. Chatterbots may also be referred to as talk bots, chat bots, simply “bots,” or chatterboxes.
    [Show full text]
  • <I>Victory Garden</I>
    Western Kentucky University TopSCHOLAR® Masters Theses & Specialist Projects Graduate School 8-2012 Reading Ineffability and Realizing Tragedy in Stuart Moulthrop's Victory Garden Michael E. Gray Western Kentucky University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.wku.edu/theses Part of the English Language and Literature Commons, and the Modern Literature Commons Recommended Citation Gray, Michael E., "Reading Ineffability and Realizing Tragedy in Stuart Moulthrop's Victory Garden" (2012). Masters Theses & Specialist Projects. Paper 1188. http://digitalcommons.wku.edu/theses/1188 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by TopSCHOLAR®. It has been accepted for inclusion in Masters Theses & Specialist Projects by an authorized administrator of TopSCHOLAR®. For more information, please contact [email protected]. READING INEFFABILITY AND REALIZING TRAGEDY IN STUART MOULTHROP’S VICTORY GARDEN A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of the Department of English Western Kentucky University Bowling Green, Kentucky In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts By Michael E. Gray August 2012 I would like to thank my wife, Lisa Oliver-Gray, for her steadfast support during this project. Without her love and the encouragement of my family and friends, I could not have finished. I would also like to thank my committee for their timely assistance this summer. Last, I would like to dedicate this labor to my father, Dr. Elmer Gray, who quietly models academic excellence and was excited to read a sprawling first draft. CONTENTS Introduction…………………………………………………………………………..1-30 Chapter One…………………………………………………………………………31-57 Chapter Two…………………………………………………………………………58-86 Chapter Three………………………………………………………………………87-112 Appendix: List of Screenshots...………………………………………………….113-121 Notes………………………………………………………………………………122-145 Works Cited……………………………………………………………………….146-149 iv TABLE OF FIGURES Figure 1.
    [Show full text]
  • Interactive Digital Narrative History, Theory and Practice
    Interactive Digital Narrative History, Theory and Practice Edited by Hartmut Koenitz, Gabriele Ferri, Mads Haahr, Diğdem Sezen and Tonguç İbrahim Sezen First published 2015 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2015 Taylor & Francis The right of the editor to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data [CIP data] ISBN: 978-1-138-78239-6 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-76918-9 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by codeMantra Contents Foreword ix NICK MONTFOrt Acknowledgments xv 1 Introduction: Perspectives on Interactive Digital Narrative 1 Hartmut KOENITZ, GABRIELE FERRI, MADS HAAHR, DIğDEM SEZEN AND TONGUÇ İBRAHIM SEZEN SECTION I: IDN HISTORY Introduction: A Concise History of Interactive Digital Narrative 9
    [Show full text]
  • The Moment in Hypertext: a Brief Lexicon of Time
    The Moment in Hypertext: A Brief Lexicon of Time Marjorie C. Luesebrink School of Humanities and Languages Irvine Valley College Irvine, CA 92620 Tel: l-7 14-644-6587 E-mail: luesebrl @ix.netcom.com ABSTRACT In both technical and critical settings, the theories which Hypertext literature has been characterized as spatial explore the spatial basis for hypertext have helped writers construct by many of the critics involved with its aesthetics understand and manipulate the medium. Frank Shipman and poetics. Michael Joyce, Cathy Marshall, Mark and Cathy Marshall, drawing on a considerable body of Bernstein, Carolyn Guyer, George Landow, Stuart research in traversal technology, and in their own Moulthrop and many others have explored the way in which demonstrations with space-placeholders, such as “VIKI: metaphors of visual space can inform hypertexts--impacting Spatial Hypertext”[l], have formalized these issues.121 both meaning and process. Although these writers refer to George Landow, in Hypertext 2.0 revisits the primacy of the time/space continuum, their writing has been less spatial visualization as both controlling metaphor and concerned with temporal constructs--how time might conceptual precondition of hypertext writing. He identifies influence the programming, writing, and reading of the first issue of linked writing as one of: “orientation hypertext literature. Time factors, however, could be information....necessary for finding one’s place. The viewed as important elements in the way hypertexts are second concerns navigation information....the third conceived and received. This paper seeks to raise questions concerns exit or departure information and the fourth about issues of time--and to suggest some possible arrival or entrance information {italics are the categories that might be investigated.
    [Show full text]
  • Twine and the Challenge to Reading
    Twine and the Challenge to Reading Stuart Moulthrop University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee June, 2020 This paper is adapted from the final chapter of Twining, a book about the Twine text- gaming platform forthcoming from Amherst College Press. The book version adds a final, personal perspective omitted here for reasons of length. Twining also offers a history of the software, critical discussions of several influential Twine works, practical chapters exploring creative possibilities of the platform, and reflections and interviews of Twine developers. 1. If you can read this… In 2017 John Cayley, a field leader in digital literary arts, called for a change of direction. In a landmark article called “Aurature at the End(s) of Electronic Literature,” he proposes a turn from visible text to sound: the aural delivery of words spoken or synthesized, using emerging home entertainment platforms, so-called smart speakers like Amazon’s Echo (Cayley "Aurature"). Paradigm shifts are inevitably rivalrous. When you are trying to open a new path, it’s necessary to show the errors of other ways. Accordingly, Cayley deprecates several electronic writing practices, including some with roots in his own academic program. When he comes to the Twine writing platform, he is more skeptical than dismissive, though he raises important questions: In the case of expressive hypertext — with choose-your-own-adventure gaming capabilities — we can now point to Twine as a platform still gaining significant popularity. But will it ever end up supporting Twine-writers and designers commercially, or as prominent literary practitioners? (Cayley "Aurature" n.p.) Cayley allows that Twine is popular and becoming more so.
    [Show full text]
  • The End of Books—Or Books Without End? Front.Qxd 11/15/1999 9:04 AM Page Ii Front.Qxd 11/15/1999 9:04 AM Page Iii
    front.qxd 11/15/1999 9:04 AM Page i The End of Books—or Books without End? front.qxd 11/15/1999 9:04 AM Page ii front.qxd 11/15/1999 9:04 AM Page iii The End of Books—Or Books without End? Reading Interactive Narratives J. Yellowlees Douglas Ann Arbor The University of Michigan Press front.qxd 11/15/1999 9:04 AM Page iv Copyright © by the University of Michigan 2000 All rights reserved Published in the United States of America by The University of Michigan Press Manufactured in the United States of America c Printed on acid-free paper 2003 2002 2001 2000 4 3 2 1 No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher. A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for ISBN 0-472-11114-0 (cloth: alk. paper) front.qxd 11/15/1999 9:04 AM Page v Acknowledgments In 1986 John McDaid, then a fellow graduate student at New York University, suggested I meet Jay Bolter, who arrived bearing a 1.0 beta copy of Storyspace. When he opened the Storyspace demo document to show McDaid and I a cognitive map of the Iliad represented as a hypertext, my fate was clinched in under sixty seconds. I had seen the future, and it consisted of places, paths, links, cognitive maps, and a copy of afternoon, a story, which Jay also gave us.
    [Show full text]
  • When Not All Papers Are Paper: a Case Study in Digital Archivy Catherine Stollar Peters University of Texas Austin
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by DigitalCommons@Kennesaw State University Provenance, Journal of the Society of Georgia Archivists Volume 24 | Number 1 Article 3 January 2006 When Not All Papers are Paper: A Case Study in Digital Archivy Catherine Stollar Peters University of Texas Austin Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/provenance Part of the Archival Science Commons Recommended Citation Peters, Catherine Stollar, "When Not All Papers are Paper: A Case Study in Digital Archivy," Provenance, Journal of the Society of Georgia Archivists 24 no. 1 (2006) . Available at: https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/provenance/vol24/iss1/3 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@Kennesaw State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Provenance, Journal of the Society of Georgia Archivists by an authorized editor of DigitalCommons@Kennesaw State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 22 PROVENANCE 2006 When Not All Papers Are Paper: A Case Study in Digital Archivy Catherine Stollar Peters INTRODUCTION Hypertext poet Deena Larsen is worried about the po- tential loss of her digital poetry, but she has a plan to save it. In a 2004 article, “The Uncertain Fate of Scholarly Artifacts in a Digital Age,” Larsen revealed her plans for preserving her hypertext work Marble Springs.1 “Ms. Larsen started collecting old Macintosh computers so people will always be able to read Marble Springs in its original format. She has 100 computers in her two-bedroom apartment.” Although Larsen’s two-bedroom mausoleum of circa 1990s technology is one strategy for sav- ing born-digital hypertext works, it is probably not the best.
    [Show full text]
  • Storyspace for Windows User's Manual
    Storyspace™ software copyright © 1990–2001 by Eastgate Systems, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Documentation copyright © 2001 by Eastgate Systems, Inc. All Rights Reserved. The information in this document is subject to change without notice. Eastgate Systems, Inc., makes no warranty of any kind regarding this material and assumes no responsibility for errors that may appear in this document. Storyspace™ is a trademark of Eastgate Systems, Inc. Civilized Software is a service mark of Eastgate Systems, Inc. Microsoft®, Windows®, Windows NT®, and Internet Explorer® are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. IBM® and OS/2® are registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation. Pentium® is a registered trademark of Intel Corporation. Apple is a registered service mark, Macintosh™ is a trademark, and Quicktime® is a registered trademark of Apple Computer, Inc. Unix® is a regis- tered trademark of AT&T. Netscape and Netscape Navigator® are registered trademarks of Netscape Communications Corporation. Zip™ is a trademark of Iomega Corporation. Myst® is a registered trade- mark of Cyan, Inc. Other product names mentioned in this document may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. Product names are used for identification only, with no intent to infringe. Mention of third-party products is for informational purposes only and constitutes neither an endorsement nor a recommendation. Eastgate Systems, Inc., assumes no responsibility with respect to the perfor- mance or use of these products. Storyspace™
    [Show full text]
  • Electronic Literature Seen from a Distance: the Beginnings of a Field Provided by NORA - Norwegian Open1/14/13 Research 13:56 Archives
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE Electronic Literature Seen from a Distance: The Beginnings of a Field provided by NORA - Norwegian Open1/14/13 Research 13:56 Archives www.dichtung-digital.org/2012/41/walker-rettberg.htm Electronic Literature Seen from a Distance The Beginnings of a Field by Jill Walker Rettberg This paper outlines the development of the hypertext fiction community that developed in the United States of America from the late eighties and onwards. This community was separate from the interactive fiction community (and largely thought of its works as different from “games”) and largely revolved around the use of Storyspace, a software tool for creating electronic literature, and later, around Eastgate, a publisher of hypertext fiction and the company that developed Storyspace. While some work was written and published in Hypercard and other systems, the technology of a dominant software authoring tool and of the mechanics of distribution (diskettes sold by mail order) formed the hub of the electronic literature community during this period. There was little or no communication with other communities, such as the IF community or digital art communities. With the advent of the web, new authoring and distribution channels opened up, and this hub gradually lost its dominance. The transition from this relatively centralised and explicit community to the networked communities and scattered individuals of the Web is an interesting one to explore. I will base this research on historical websites and articles published at the time, as well as on interviews. Introduction The Words We Use to Describe the Field Beginnings Citations: What is Referenced? Beginnings: Moving Closer Five Categories of Early Electronic Literature Conclusion Acknowledgements and Further Information Notes Works Cited Introduction When did electronic literature begin? The answer to this question depends upon what, exactly, this field of practice includes.
    [Show full text]
  • Electronic Literature As Digital Humanities: Contexts, Forms, & Practices
    O’Sullivan, James. "Publishing Electronic Literature." Electronic Literature as Digital Humanities: Contexts, Forms, & Practices. By James O’Sullivan. New York,: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021. 253–266. Bloomsbury Collections. Web. 25 Sep. 2021. <http:// dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781501363474.ch-022>. Downloaded from Bloomsbury Collections, www.bloomsburycollections.com, 25 September 2021, 22:18 UTC. Copyright © Volume Editor’s Part of the Work © Dene Grigar and James O’Sullivan and Each chapter © of Contributors 2021. You may share this work for non-commercial purposes only, provided you give attribution to the copyright holder and the publisher, and provide a link to the Creative Commons licence. 22 Publishing Electronic Literature James O’Sullivan If publishing is the set of activities which achieves the dissemination of literature, then what can publishers offer work which can quite readily attend to its own dissemination? The creators of electronic literature often act as artist, producer, and distributor, removing the relationship between writer and publisher which has persisted since the earliest days of the literary market. Those who wish to find readers for their writing have long relied on publishers as “useful middlemen” (Bhaskar 2013: 1). Informed by my own experiences running a publishing house which publishes born- digital electronic literature,1 this short chapter explores the extent to which electronic literature needs such middlemen, whether electronic literature has any need for publishers in the traditional sense. As just noted, why seek a publisher for something which publishes itself? The practice of publishing is often unkind to itself, driven by a need to make literature happen but in a manner that can be economically sustained; a good publisher knows that good literature does not necessarily find good readers.2 As Bhaskar so eloquently contends: “Publishing isn’t like most industries.
    [Show full text]
  • Electronic Literature Se...E Beginnings of a Field
    7/6/13 Electronic Literature Seen from a Distance: The Beginnings of a Field www.dichtung-digital.org/2012/41/walker-rettberg.htm Electronic Literature Seen from a Distance The Beginnings of a Field by Jill Walker Rettberg This paper outlines the development of the hypertext fiction community that developed in the United States of America from the late eighties and onwards. This community was separate from the interactive fiction community (and largely thought of its works as different from “games”) and largely revolved around the use of Storyspace, a software tool for creating electronic literature, and later, around Eastgate, a publisher of hypertext fiction and the company that developed Storyspace. While some work was written and published in Hypercard and other systems, the technology of a dominant software authoring tool and of the mechanics of distribution (diskettes sold by mail order) formed the hub of the electronic literature community during this period. There was little or no communication with other communities, such as the IF community or digital art communities. With the advent of the web, new authoring and distribution channels opened up, and this hub gradually lost its dominance. The transition from this relatively centralised and explicit community to the networked communities and scattered individuals of the Web is an interesting one to explore. I will base this research on historical websites and articles published at the time, as well as on interviews. Introduction The Words We Use to Describe the Field Beginnings Citations: What is Referenced? Beginnings: Moving Closer Five Categories of Early Electronic Literature Conclusion Acknowledgements and Further Information Notes Works Cited Introduction When did electronic literature begin? The answer to this question depends upon what, exactly, this field of practice includes.
    [Show full text]
  • "Hypertext Fiction Ever After." Electronic Literature As Digital Humanities: Contexts, Forms, & Practices
    Moulthrop, Stuart. "Hypertext Fiction Ever After." Electronic Literature as Digital Humanities: Contexts, Forms, & Practices. By James O’Sullivan. New York,: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021. 150–162. Bloomsbury Collections. Web. 1 Oct. 2021. <http:// dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781501363474.ch-013>. Downloaded from Bloomsbury Collections, www.bloomsburycollections.com, 1 October 2021, 22:58 UTC. Copyright © Volume Editor’s Part of the Work © Dene Grigar and James O’Sullivan and Each chapter © of Contributors 2021. You may share this work for non-commercial purposes only, provided you give attribution to the copyright holder and the publisher, and provide a link to the Creative Commons licence. 13 Hypertext Fiction Ever After Stuart Moulthrop There are at least two ways to sketch the genealogy of hypertext fiction. From the perspective of literary theory, most influentially in Aarseth’s Cybertext (1997), hypertext fiction counts as one among many instances of ergodic expression. This broad-minded approach allows us to associate the form with a number of distinct but similar ventures, such as Malloy’s query- based “narrabase” stories, John McDaid’s “modally appropriate” artefictual fiction, various attempts at text generation, from the ELIZA script of the late 1960s to Daniel Stern and Michael Mateas’ Façade—and perhaps most significantly, the long tradition of text-based computer gaming, beginning with Colossal Cave Adventure in the mid-1970s and continuing today. Electronic literature and digital art contain many forms and practices besides hypertext fiction. If we want to consider both tree and forest, we need to see this genre as a machinic inflection of the general project of experimental writing.
    [Show full text]