I think Brian Kim Stefan's essay is a valuable source for encouraging us to consider “why” we are including text in our work. Does text still have value if its meaning is “reduced” by how it has been approached/used? How do we consider the intentional/unintentional role, function and meaning of the text that we want in our pieces? For artists it raises the question of the role/impact of text as a signifier in hybrid media and for writers it introduces intention in the writing process via considering the materiality of the media that engages it.


italics in the below quotes are my own.

1.For our use of text as digital practitioners we should at least be cognizant that this argument exists:

New media art and literature can often become a celebration of a successful feat of engineering, but beyond the basic look what we can do with words, there has to be some notion of address: language must be setting out to do something, not sit in a vacuum (a sense, ironically, reified by the very novelty of the unconventional machine), a marker for that part where language could be used were one to want to say or do something.

However, I’d like to argue that one cannot simply say that the word is another element to be treated like a sound or a color if one is to do justice to the notion of language as a very specific ability that humans possess, one that has been shaped by the sediments of conventions and conversations layered over several centuries.

2. About the reduction of Language:
given this outlook, what (if anything) should be problematic about Bill Seaman's quote below?
Is there truly an even playing ground in digital mediums? Or, does tension between text image exist?
Joanne Comments: (As we talked about in Cave Writing last semester with Cayley, there is one more level of interpretation necessary with text as compared to images, for example)

Each field carries an evocative meaning force. Our embodied history of experience of past contexts represents another expansive field that is brought into this delicate equation. As we encounter virtual or computational spaces we experience an ongoing, time-based summing of meaning forces. Thus text presents one field of meaning force that can only be understood contextually in relation to other neighboring meaning forces--other media elements and living processes. The word is not valued in a hierarchy over other media elements.

a. One possible consideration when thinking about the juxtaposition of language in space:

“Democracy, for instance, is a context in which one’s understanding of justice exists (or upon which it is contingent) - justice itself being a term that has existed throughout history, even in times not characterized at all by a democratic ethos. But the word justice contrasted with the words fish fry only serves to make the two words more material - more present as words in a physical environment - but also to render both relatively mute, and entirely banal, in terms of meaning.”

It doesn’t appear to be of great import to new media writers, especially those involved in interactivity, 3D spaces and multimedia, that they might actually utilize the technology to magnify the impact and specificity of language as we have come to know it through the centuries. Rather, the tendency has been to reduce or evaporate this impact for the sake of something else - experience of language in space or time, for example, or of language as some sort of ambient experience, or, in this case, of language as a participant in a recombinant universe jointly occupied by sounds, images, videos and the user’s interactions. Because new media writers tend to program their pieces from the ground up, creating their own interfaces entirely dissimilar to conventional interfaces - the Web browser, for example, where millions of people get their electronic writing - the tendency seems to be to use text that itself has no trace of conventional communication, and then to call it poetry because it is clearly not anything else. There is nothing wrong with this, of course - poetry likes the company - but is it possible to achieve any of the above without having to reduce language to a useful marker for the passing of time, or as a way to keep one’s balance in a 3D space?

3. Mindful intention of text

This brings me to my second point, which involves a consideration of whether, in works of electronic writing, text is being used to solve a problem tossed up by the formal issues of the art piece, or whether the art piece has been created to extend or expand our understanding of words and language.

a. have a look at Camille Utterback's site
http://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/firstperson/multitiered

4. Approaches to Constraints:
Francis comments: I believe digital media has created a realm that extends the consequences of text far enough to create its own fresh collection of limitations...Perhaps that avid opera fan would pay close attention to capital letters or to the sung word, limiting other aspects of the work by inferring that those parts were most important to the author or his intended meaning. However, the author probably expects these limits.

"Then the next step should be to find the text, perhaps the only text, that is suitable - the elegant solution - to make the object more than a curio..."-Stefans

The most writerly aspect to much electronic writing, and by extension electronic art, can be the interface itself, which raises the possibility that a realm of electronic writing can exist that does not involve letterforms at all.

http://claire.pcriot.com/homeagain/ (scroll bar as aspect of writing/reading)

5. Must digital literature be constrained by certain qualities of text to generate the optimum meaning?

Matt Gorbet, in his response to Utterback’s essay, observes that her examples share another similarity in the nature of the text they present: they employ short forms of text such as poetry, quotations, and symbols. Such texts are effective because they can be quickly grasped and have immediate impact, allowing visitors to start reading anywhere and spend as much or as little time as they like with the piece.

Given these observations about the simplicity of interaction and the brevity of content, a question presents itself: using a simple, familiar physical interaction which maintains the users’ sense of control, how far can the complexity of the content be pushed? Is there a necessary correlation between simple interaction and simple content? Or is it possible to create a body-centric interactive piece with the storytelling capacity of an epic novel or a play?