The following synthesis
condenses into eight points my conjectural methodology of
the transmodal text or work of art as applied to the
electronic art of Text Rain. These may provide entry
points into the theoretical work of other thinkers at the
RDL conference.
§1. I opened this talk
alluding to the problematic relation between word and image
in literary text, an unresolved cadence in the music of
literature. Literature and imagery share a complex
relationship, worth exploring theoretically in the space of
digital/electronic literature. The production of imagery as
extension to or evolution after pure
literature can not be distanced from literature's essence -
because such "essence" cannot be defined as either
image-free or imagery-free.
§2. Works in this
domain exhibit an unusually pronounced ability to be read
not merely through a series of interpretations but as
objects signifying on various levels, even wholly unrelated
to the literary aspects of the work. This logic is informed
by the fact that what is evident in examples of work where
text is made to seem like more than text is that its
readerly function is openly challenged.
§3. In Text
Rain, literature's complicated rapport with the image is
not outside the interpretive conventions of much concrete
poetry. This multiplicity of signification, extending old
practices -- for example, the Dadaists' play with text in a
way that it is read visually, rather than lexically -
mirrors observations about the transmodal use of media in
artistic practices already observed for decades. Consider
Dick Higgins's 1965 observation that "much of the best work
being produced today seems to fall between media",
underscoring consciousness of the futility of unique or pure
forms where performing, literary, and visual arts are
entirely separate.
§4. As for the history
and hermeneutics associated with this expressive domain, we
may take the graphic novel, the comic strip, and the
illustrated story as proof that the banishment of the visual
from textual literature is unrelated to evolutionary
histories of technology and, conversely, to technical
constraints on the medium of print. The verdict of
literature as "pure", as primarily textual is rendered under
attitudes that are doctrinal, not technological. Defining
notions of purity in literature on one hand and specific
media for print and image production on the other evolved
along entirely unrelated historical tracks. This partition
will become central to works of digital literature whose
medium affords the processing and presentation of the
textual and the visual with equal dynamic range and
geometrical possibility. And it is precisely - and perhaps
exclusively - because of those extratextual
affordances that digital literature presents complex
extensions over and against this conventional and
problematic bias entailed in "pure literature". What is
clear from these ambiguities of causality is that
literature's central preoccupation with text does not extend
to questions over how that text was created.
§5. In the transmodal
text, one methodological argument for modes of signification
that transcend the lexical or literary alone was put forth
in my paper on the three ontologies of literature, as
distinctions involving essence, form and
instance. The Essence of literature is the spirit or
force of this expressive art that bestows on it all that is
literary in its character. I add that such "essence"
cannot be defined as either image-free or
imagery-free; rather, it entails both (for, who
governs the essence of literature? Indistinguishable from
the essence of literature, this last word,
imagination, implicates image-making directly). By
Form in literature I refer to the shape or structure
that a literary work takes, for example, its genre
(poem, novel, essay) or stylistic conventions (e.g.,
rhyme-based; panegyric, etc.). By Instance, I refer to the
moment of instantiation of the Essence expressed through a
given Form. These three ontological levels define the most
abstract modes of a work, or the first class objects of a
work's transmodality. Another level of transmodality emerges
in the rapport between textual and extratextually sensory
elements (visual, auditory, tactile, and otherwise symbolic)
of a work, as defined in the aforementioned (§4)
hermeneutic history of media versus content.
§6. A proverbial
instance of this transmodal text is exemplified by Utterback
and Achituv's Text Rain, not only because it contains
a lexical text itself, but also because the work as a whole
is amenable to the kind of close reading that a literary
text can sustain. A transmodal text need not be read in an
exclusively interpretive mode (V means W; X means Y;
…) but may also be seen in a significative mode
that is less the formulation of an equality or translation
than the ontology of its being at one or various moments (X
is produced and given; then Y is produced and given;
…).
§7. As a
correspondingly transmodal text, Text Rain exists, or
perceptually passes, through a series of five more or less
distinct phenomenological stages, lives, or
moments.
1. As Cascade -
autonomous, separate. This is the very first observational
encounter with Text Rain, a moment where it exists
solely as a letter-based cascade. There is no consensus on
the letterfall at the outset.
2. As Mirror -
engaging, reflective. But this first moment of its being
comes to a close when the work is redefined on the
subsequent discovery that it is interactive in a personally
engaging way, and this yields another phenomenon.
3. As Partner -
responsive, synchronized. In the next moment of its being,
the work will reveal the poem that alludes directly to this
very interplay.
4. As Literature - a
work is discerned. From this kinetic adjunctness of worlds
emerges a new life or phase in the possibility of reading a
poem out of Text Rain. For to locate a poem in the
visual kineticism of this work requires that the participant
now behave, move, travel, in a wholly different way,
directed by the goal of piecing together the lines and
yearnings in Evan Zimroth's poem.
5. As Realization -
poem as prediction of play. In a fifth stage of
representative being, Text Rain then unfolds fully at
the moment that the participant reflects on how his or her
motions have in fact been a relational dance more or less
predicted by its poetic stanzas. This level of transmodality
is highly existential; it is in the second-person's direct
form of address that the poem establishes an I-Thou
connection aligned exactly with the work of Martin Buber,
particularly his Ich und Du, the "I and Thou" call for a
post-dialectical intimacy, a relation of directness that
transcends the prevailing objectification of one's alienated
state with things - a relation that he termed as I-It. The
poem's explicit desire for engagement, the "I like talking
with you" that is its opening line, underscores how Text
Rain operates in this subject-to-subject manner:
beginning with dialogue or "simply that:
conversing".
§8. In the transmodal
text, what is evident in examples of work where text is made
to seem like more than text is that its readerly function is
openly challenged. Here then lies the essence not merely of
literature, but of the transmodal work of art.
dichtung-digital