Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.64.0802070024030.20773@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.aol.com>, Wryting-L <WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu>
Subject: Electronic writing, approach
Date: Thu, 7 Feb 2008 00:24:27 -0500 (EST)
Electronic writing, approach Electronic writing is always protocol-based and always dynamic. Keyboard strokes signal interrupts, the screen-image is constantly refreshed, fonts are interchangeable, links and animations may be present, the text may be updated by the original author or modified by others, the text might be deleted once and for all, or temporarily deleted, or duplicated and transformed from one to another site, or printed out hardcopy, or faxed, or entirely transformed into another medium - audio, steganography, online or offline calligraphy, and so forth. The text is fluid, inherently non-canonic, every instance is equivalent to every other, every instance is original and plagiarism. The text is burdened by apparatus from ebook reader to desktop, cellphone to electronic billboard. The text requires maintenance, electrical current, to continue its electronic presence. The text requires the transparency of protocols to be present, presented. The text requires an interface from electronic hardware-software circuitry to visual or other presentation. The text requires busses or connectors from one component to another, and from internal electronics to display. The text also requires data storage, and encoding/decoding as well as the potential well of checksums and other means ensuring minimal errors. If the text is transferred from one hardware medium to another or one file format to another, it requires interoperability - an interoperability which leaves the surface of the text relatively inviolate. The text requires data storage which itself exists within a physical potential well, producing the semblance of at least momentary stability. The text requires light or sound or haptic or other sensors. And the text requires a relatively stable input environment, within which the interrupts are apparently operating smoothly, transmission is relatively clear from infractions or appears clear from such, lag is sufficiently small and the buffer sufficiently large to give the writer/programmer/artist at least a degree of illusory autonomy. Let us not forget that machines, habitus, economy, are required. That the stability of signs and sign systems are required. That mutually understood sememes are required. That languaging among a community of more or less speakers/writers is required. The text itself, per se, requires nothing. Nothing is required unless com- munication, beyond the communication of error, anomaly, distortion, annih- ilation, creation, exchange, displacement, condensation, theft, hack, repetition, meta-transformations or meta-signifiers based on the bracket- ing of the text - unless communication based on at least the semblance of interiority, is desired; in this sense the author is ghost, wraith, close to invisible beyond, beneath, the text, perhaps present at the birth of the text or system or links of text, and perhaps not. And this list, drawn from apparatus, habitus, text, language, economy, catastrophic and stable regimes, may be extended or diminished - the terms are variable, problematic; the 'worldview' stemming from the true world is equally problematic. Nonetheless: The text, and one might of course argue that each and every text is always already dynamic, that such is the nature of communication, written or spoken or otherwise. Still: One might or might not make a distinction between traditional texts and those that are up for grabs in relation to electrical and other dynamic forms of reproduction, whose outputs are also dynamic, at least to the extent of redrawing/rewriting/ rewryting the image or text or social/creative internal and external content and positioning of the text. Now further, what is it that we teach, that is normally taught, if not for the stability of the canon, or stability for that matter of jodi.org or other entities and projects and productions or producings which are not stable whatsoever but are part and parcel of literature today, however such may be defined? Unless literature is confined to the printed page, in which case it is also confined to a relatively small corner of electronic- social life today, that is, confined to a relatively small and perhaps irrelevant corner of life itself. So perhaps it is time, and of course in this space/place I am preaching mainly to the converted, to teach litera- ture as a residue or heartland of the social-technologic, as a production of desire, at least to the extent of the desire to be produced, in rela- tion to literature as theory or language or other artifacture? In spite of the fact that theory is essential to hermeneutics and the reception of literature. In which case, literature might be approached top down, or sides-in, lateral, so that, for example, the existence of the external flash drive, conveniently plugged into a machine for extra memory, operat- ing system, creative software, text repository, would be inherently part of the questions: What, how, why, when, where do we write? Where are our writings deposited? What hope do we have for their survival? What about _this particular text_ within this particular environment - a momentary housing at best? What about momentary housing? Obsolescence? And so forth? From a related discussion with Sandy Baldwin, Frances van Scoy Azure Carter: Given the above, what are the software issues themselves? What are the textual or graphic or other interfaces employed? What are the esthetics of those interfaces? Since every interface both transmits and filters, what are the conditions of transmission, and what is filtered out, what artifacts are added in? Is the interface considered an object or a process (continual updating of beta, name+number (Quicktime 7.4 for example), is it purchased or free, open or closed source? What is the user control over the interface and what is the interface's control over the user? (For example, user-specified fonts may override monospaced fonts in a text apparently involving graphic-ascii or other presentation.) Further, there are phenomenological issues related to traditional media, to media in general: What is the genre-lens we're using in reading/looking at/processing/hearing/etc. a text? What is the history of the genre? Of genre? How does genre relate to canon and is the text considered canonic? Is it considered a finished text, an object, a process, an unfinished text, a variorium, an ur-text, a meta-text, a critique of another exemplary text, a system of procedures or modules or sub-modules? Further, is the text considered part of a cycle? Of a community of texts? Written by one or more authors? Is the user part of a community of users, for example a book club? Was the text written for a community or specific community? What theory, if any, is used to approach the text? What is the text's relation to that theory? To theory? Who wrote, programmed, created, tended, the text? Is the text interactive, reactive, stationary, mobile within the interface, apparently within the user's control, out of the user's control; does it alter the interface framework, collapse or appear to hack into the framework? And is the text designed to be read/viewed/ heard/etc. with a particular viewer in mind? With a particular person or group or groups of people? Finally, is electronic writing textual? Can one speak of an 'electronic text'? Is electronic writing _read_? Are there other ways to approach it? (Is electronic writing an 'it'?) I want to argue against canon, genre, static or state approaches, I want to argue in favor of a general field phenomenology of organism, inscription, inscribing, emanent, machinic and other phyla, wryting and other processes, I want to think through no final solutions, no stages of consciousness, no conclusions, no edifices, no thing, other and no other, I want to argue against this messaying, this lack (what did I forget, what did I leave out, what have I gotten wrong, what don't I know, what did I express poorly if at all?), I want to argue against argument, I want to argue the favor of your -