Designing Literature

Before we begin with interaction today, we might step back a touch and review what’s what from last week, namely our chats about Dada and the digital humanities.

Electronic Literature Collection, Vol. 1

For one, why those two in the same week?  Not only are the publication dates for the material we read about ninety years distinct, but the agendas for each “movement” (or manifesto) appear unrelated. To boot, the DH manifesto was an electronic text and the Dada material was not. That said, let’s consider a rationale or two.

During our chat about A Digital Humanities Manifesto 2.0, we focused on this question (from the manifesto itself):

What does it mean to study “literature” or “history” when print is no longer the normative medium in which literary or historical artifacts are produced, let alone analyzed?

Pressuring the manifesto’s reference to a “neo- or post-print model for literature,” we asked what might be some important issues for the digital humanities to consider when studying (electronic) literature today, as well as what a neo- or post-print model might imply.  We stressed some properties of new media and things digital.  Our list of relevant issues included:

+ the materiality of texts (including what they look and feel like and their texture).

+ aesthetics (or how we sense and interface with texts, including the ways they are read on a screen or page).

+ preservation (that is, how texts are stored for future use, reference, and study).

+ the legacy of print and print culture (how the traditions of print affect our perceptions of electronic texts and vice versa).

+ history (the role of texts, as artifacts, in communicating culture and the past).

+ expertise (what does it now mean to be a scholar of literature and how that differs from scholarship just ten years ago).

+ democratization of communication and knowledge (whether a neo- or post-print model correlates with the public’s increased access to knowledge and enhances collaboration between communities).

+ embodiment (how print and electronic texts afford different perceptions and understandings of bodies).

Through the list above, I certainly didn’t cover everything we discussed.  And one obvious route to follow after a conversation about a neo- or post-print model would be the study of an electronic text or two.  However, one of the primary reasons for starting with something like Dada (and the first quarter of the 20th century) is that the study of electronic texts does not exist in a vacuum.  In other words:

+ Electronic texts did not just “appear.”  They emerged from a long history of print, and (as we mentioned last week) that history greatly affects how we interpret electronic texts.

+ The “digital revolution” and similar terms are arguably misleading.  True, technologies are becoming increasingly mobile and brilliantly networked.  Nonetheless, textual and cultural practices related to electronic literature and new media have plenty of precursors in the 19th and 20th centuries (and even earlier).

+ The “newness” of electronic literature, too, is perhaps misleading (as are some of Sterling’s challenges to contemporary lit).    Related to the previous two points, authors and artists have long been struggling with how to “de-naturalize” the page, the book, and the space of reading, even if electronic texts offer novel ways of doing so.

+ The ethos and claims of Dada (e.g., critiques of industry, rationalism, and the “total work of art”) resonate with those in A Digital Humanities Manifesto 2.0.  (There are obviously some differences, too.)

+ If this class attends specifically to design and literature, then it might be productive to look at historical moments and movements that imagined the two as inseparable.  Dada is certainly one of those moments or movements.  For instance, as we discussed last week, Dada shaped text and image to make an argument, which wasn’t necessarily written or always explicitly articulated.

Mallarmé should help us continue this line of inquiry, which—to synopsize the above—will offer us the opportunity to explore the history of electronic texts through print culture, the politics and aesthetics of design, what (or how) is “new,” and the implications of a neo- or post-print model for literature.  Along those lines, let’s begin class proper with a workshop.

Workshop

For better or worse, the word “interaction” is fetishized in the study of electronic literature.  For now, we’ll be less interested in what that word means and more interested in how it would function in your “isms,” which you began during the last class.

In this workshop, please reconvene in your groups and touch base.  Recall from the last class what the working name of your ism is, what medium it would likely assume, and what it’s responding to (or even reacting against).  Now, continue to develop your ism, but this time take concrete notes. Plus, start thinking about how you would incorporate into your ism design some sort of “interaction” with your target audience.  When you think about interaction, you might consider the following:

Given what your ism is responding to (or reacting against), who is your target audience?  (That is, who are you addressing?)

What kind of interactions with that audience would your chosen medium (e.g., print flier, digital video, social networking, or performance)  afford, and to what effects?

How might the design of your ism “show” rather than “tell” what your ism is all about?

For this workshop, you’ll have approximately 30 minutes.  At the end of that session, I’ll need the following from you (on a piece of paper that includes your names):

Working name of your ism,

Possible medium or media through which you would communicate, and

Issue or concept that your ism is responding to (or reacting against).

I’ll meander around the classroom in order to address your questions and concerns.  When you are finished, on the blog, you’ll do a quick freewrite on this notion of interaction.