FW: Gendolla/Schaefer (Hg.), The Aesthetics of Net Literature
Jim Andrews
Literature'.
-----Original Message-----
From: pre...@transcript-verlag.de [mailto:pre...@transcript-verlag.de]
Sent: November 14, 2007 1:54 AM
To: j...@vispo.com
Subject: Gendolla/Schaefer (Hg.), The Aesthetics of Net Literature
Dear Madam or Sir,
we would like to inform you about a new publication:
Peter Gendolla, Jörgen Schäfer (eds.)
The Aesthetics of Net Literature
Writing, Reading and Playing in Programmable Media
Februar 2007, 394 P.
kart., î 33,80, $ 39.95, $C 49.95, £ 29.95
ISBN: 978-3-89942-493-5
During recent years, literary texts in electronic and networked media have
been a focal point of literary scholarship, using varying terminology. In
this book, the contributions of internationally renowned scholars and
authors from Germany, USA, France, Finland, Spain and Switzerland review the
ruptures and upheavals of literary communication within this context. The
articles in the book focus on questions such as: In which literary projects
can we discover a new quality of literariness? What are the terminological
and methodological means to examine these literatures? How can we
productively link the logics of the play of literary texts and their
reception in the reading process? What is the relationship of literary
writing and programming?
With contributions by Jean-Pierre Balpe, Susanne Berkenheger, Friedrich W.
Block, Philippe Bootz, Laura Borrs Castanyer, Markku Eskelinen, Frank
Furtwängler, Peter Gendolla, Loss Pequeo Glazier, Fotis Jannidis, Thomas
Kamphusmann, Mela Kocher, Marie-Laure Ryan, Jörgen Schäfer, Roberto
Simanowski and Noah Wardrip-Fruin.
Peter Gendolla (Prof. Dr. phil.) is Professor of Literature, Art, New Media
and Technologies at the University of Siegen.
Jörgen Schäfer (Dr. phil.) is Assistant Professor at the "Forschungskolleg
Medienumbrüche" at the University of Siegen.
WWW: www.litnet.uni-siegen.de
For further information please visit:
http://www.transcript-verlag.de/ts493/ts493.htm
If you would like to order our books, please feel free to contact our
distributor:
transacion publishers
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Call toll-free (US only) 888-999-6778
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Sincerely
Your transcript Verlag
Christy Dena
Just letting you know about a site you may be interested in: Mark Marino, a
fellow blogger at WriterResponseTheory, has started a new website on
www.CriticalCodeStudies.com
"Critical Code Studies is a forum for resources, discussion, and
demonstrations of the interpretation of computer code."
Best,
Christy
Jim Andrews
martin davis, an emminent usamerican logician, has written a must-read book
called 'Engines of Logic: Mathematicians and the Origin of the Computer'
(softcover) or 'The Universal Computer: The Road from Leibniz to Turing'
(hardcover). same book. just one is softcover and one is hardcover.
this looks at the development of the computer as 'leibniz's dream'. the book
looks at the life and work of leibniz, george boole, gottfried frege, georg
cantor, david hilbert, kurt godel, and alan turing.
this book is excellent not only in the 'history of ideas' but its look at
the lives, achievements, and sorrows of these seven mathematician-logicians.
we learn, for instance, that leibniz had a day job. this towering
intellectual giant, inventor of differential calculus, original philosopher
of the monad, and early father of the computer was employed by the hannover
family--to write the hannover family history. hannover eventually became
king of england. leibniz, of course, wanted to be in england. newton was
there. and london was the center of a mathematical frenzy of activity
spurred on by the invention of calculus (simultaneously but independently
invented by newton and leibniz). but hannover said, no, stay there and
finish that history.
leibniz figured that if only he had five years to devote to the matter, he
could devise a machine and a language used by the machine that would be a
tremendous aide to human reason. the computer is possible via a profound
synthesis of logic and language. should we ask about the most intense,
profound engagements with language in the last 70 years, surely the work of
godel and turing must stand near the top. martin davis's book treats the
development of the computer as evolutions in the development of symbolic
logic. symbolic logic is the language and theory of mathematics, then
philosophy, and then 'formal systems' or ontologies of a more general
nature.
davis's book is not only excellent in its presentation of ideas but in the
drama of the lives of the seven mathematicians-logicians it discusses. we
learn that cantor was in and out of sanitoria; godel starved himself to
death out of paranoia that his food was being poisoned; and turing probably
committed suicide by eating a poisoned apple--though this was brought on by
his having been sentenced to prison or drug/hormone 'treatments' for his
homosexuality. the hormone drugs caused him to grow breasts and exacerbated
depressions. turing was a towering figure as a mathematician. he invented
the computer, was key in the solving of the nazi 'enigma machine', and
solved hilbert's entscheidungsproblem, one of the most pressing
mathematical problems of its day. for all his contributions to the world,
his homosexuality was severely punished.
how is this book relevant to poets of the digital? well, beyond the sort of
historical knowledge i've referred to, it's the implications about language.
the last seventy years have seen a deep broadening in approaches to
language. undergraduate students of computer science routinely study some of
chomsky's early work in linguistics because of its relation to how computers
deal with language at a grammatical level. turing's and godel's work studies
language in the same sort of way that physics studies bodies in motion, ie,
the study of language is now fundamental to certain branches of mathematics.
in short, philosophies of language, poetics of language, in the contemporary
world, can hardly avoid being influenced by the synthesis of language and
logic that has resulted in contemporary symbolic logic and the computer.
so treat yourself and check out davis's book.
Christy Dena
I forgot to say thankyou for passing this on. I didn't know about it and so
appreciate you sharing it.
Best,
Christy
Jim Andrews
concerning epoetry (prior to the conference). or my idea of epoetry. among
the links was http://iterature.com by christophe bruno. she said she didnt
think that was epoetry at all.
christophe's work is quite different from the norm. if there is a norm. he
is a poet/writer programmer. interesting work from artist-programmers can
sometimes be so out there you can't even recognize it as literature. though
of course the title of his domain is an excellent hint.
the most fundamental, cogent phenomenological observation that can be made
about computers is that they are programmable. this is what separates
computers from other machines. this is what gives computers their radical
flexibility as machines. flexibility to the point that there is no proof,
and probably never will be, that there are thought processes of which humans
are capable and computers are not. which is to say that computers are, very
likely, poetentially as flexible as thought itself.
so computers are not simply radical media machines. they are the stuff of
thought itself. in process.
this observation is important to digital art. because if one thinks
computers are glorified typewriters and glorified stereos and, more
generally, glorified media machines and communication devices, one's notion
of what digital art can be or aspire to will be pedestrian, inconsequential.
once we realize that computers are very likely as flexible as thought
itself, we see that the horizons of digital art are not even limited by the
limitations of our imaginations, because emergent behaviors can sometimes do
totally unanticipated things.
so one is not being too unreasonable should one demand digital art as
innovative and unusual as christophe bruno's. it's so good it's barely
recognizable as literature or poetry.
martin davis's book is an excellent introduction to some of the key ideas
that situate digital poetry's connections with language and the theory of
computation. when i was a comp sci student (though my degree is in english
and math), i took a course in which we studied a book called 'languages and
the theory of computation'. it was inspiring to me, being interested in
poetry and language.
davis's book 'Engines of Logic: Mathematicians and the Origin of the
Computer' provides a historical and intellectual context for digital poetry
that is extremely juicy. it isn't a book about programming or computers, per
se, so much as some of the historical and high intellectual contexts in
which digital poetry is situated.
Andrew Klobucar
Dr. Andrew Klobucar
English Department
Capilano College
Ext: 2426
E-mail: aklo...@capcollege.bc.ca
>>> Jim Andrews <j...@vispo.com> 11/26/2007 5:57 PM >>>
Jim Andrews
> THe critical code studies is very interesting. Thanks, too.
yes.
i didn't see
http://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/electropoetics/codology on
www.CriticalCodeStudies.com , but it's a 2006 article by mark marino, the
main person at criticalcodestudies.com; the article is called "Critical Code
Studies" and presumably we have there a spec of the criticalcodestudies.com
'program', as it were.
ja
Christy Dena
Aha! Well, it is actually there...on the right sidebar under 'Essential
Readings'. :)
-----Original Message-----
From: digita...@googlegroups.com [mailto:digita...@googlegroups.com]
On Behalf Of Jim Andrews
Sent: Wednesday, 28 November 2007 10:34
To: digita...@googlegroups.com
Subject: {Digital Poetry} Re: Critical Code Studies website
Jim Andrews
> Aha! Well, it is actually there...on the right sidebar under 'Essential
> Readings'. :)
so it is. just read it.
i've been thinking a bit about 'code poetry' recently; a piece of mine is
going to be in an issue of wordforword.info including some 'code poetry'.
i think it's good that the term is still wide open. it can apply to the sort
of work mark marino talks about in
http://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/electropoetics/codology or to
other types. no one group can really colonize and hold the territory to
themselves, because "code" operates at too many levels and has too many
different relevant meanings in today's world. those who don't know
programming have lots of scope since "code" isn't necessarily executable
programming language or even plain old programming language. "code" doesn't
have to have anything to do with computers at all, for that matter.
perhaps there are some things, though, that most if not all code poetries
are dealing with. the article by søren pold on christophe bruno's work at
http://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/electropoetics/textualized is
quite articulate about the big picture:
"...while books are not becoming insignificant or superfluous anytime soon,
we still have a new dominant medium for the organization of knowledge,
culture, and society. Digital literature consequently has a role to play as
a form of media-art that makes us aware of what is happening to text as a
material and concept, to reading and writing, and to the material basis of
text in the ongoing process of digitization, networking, and mediation, and
how these material and formal changes correspond to social and cultural
changes. The concept of text is currently undergoing dramatic changes, and
most text is now produced and read at the networked interface. Text in
contemporary society has become increasingly kinetic, electrified, spatial,
and more or less cybernetically controlled by, for instance,
commercialization in our postmodern urban environment and on the web."
the term "code poetry" is a good one partly because it is open. it isn't a
'school of poetry' made up of a central group. it's poetry that has some
sort of intense engagement with code.
and it opens poetry to types of language and, well, codes, that haven't been
so prominently associated with poetry before.
also, it avoids limiting its focus to computation. it refers as prominently
to matters of language and culture as to computation.
and that's a healthy inclusive broadness.
much as i would like to see a more intense engagement within the art and
poetry worlds with issues concerning the role of programming in art (not
simply programming as a technician's job), it's important to keep the juice
flowing from many areas through poetry, and the term 'code poetry' does that
quite nicely.
the first time i heard the term discussed was by ted warnell on the
webartery list back around 1999 or 2000.
Jim Andrews
come to understand more about the way the brain codes and processes
information, i suspect. however it is done, probably it isn't done in what
we think of as 'language'. there is no conscious creator of those codings,
no designer, no consciousness below consciousness in a 'language' of memory,
most likely, but something that is probably better described as 'code'. and
the same probably goes for information and information processing such as
dna: it isn't so well described as 'language' as 'code'.
we are in an intense engagement with 'code', these days, and it deeply
affects language. and we wonder what and if there is a definitive difference
between code and language or whether they bleed into one another as we
ourselves are also part cyber.
so the notion of 'code poetry' is aware of the current and future growing
interface between code and language and this is also the interface between
humanity and machine.