ed. by Roberto
Simanowski Modem-Fever:
Love Discourse in Mail-, SMS, Chat- and
MUD-Communication Gossipy
Writing: Chatting in the Age of Modem Fever
[German] Newsletter
2001: Newsletter
2000: Newsletter
1999:
4.Jg. / Nr.
25 - ISSN 1617-6901
earlier
newsletter
After symposium 
Internet
and Literature
(January 21.-24., 1999) and 
InterSzene
(July 14.-16., 2000) scholars and practitioners of
net culture from Switzerland and Germany met again
in L&arc Romainmôtier. The symposium
Modem-Fever
investigated the relation between love discourse
and digital media. Participants introduced net
projects and discussed authenticity, body, and the
functionality of love discourse in books, on the
Internet, and cell phones. This issue presents the
contributions and discussion.
Uwe Wirth
investigates the consequences which follow from
the aspect that electronic media bring people
"together" over social and local distances. The
"written to the moment", characteristic of the
letter novel poetics in 18th century, turns into
the "transmitting to the moment". The
expectation of getting new mail leads to "modem
fever".
http://www.dichtung-digital.com/2002/modemfieber/wirth.htm
Ulrike
Landfester looks back on the historical love
letter and underlines the "hallucination of
consensus" and the tension between authentic and
strategic speaking. Cyberspace changes the
parameter of love communication through new
techniques to perform like gender swapping.
http://www.dichtung-digital.com/2002/modemfieber/landfester.htm
May 15 to
July 15 in 2002, on schlampe.de
(transalte: slut.de) people were asked to send
in descriptions of body parts via SMS. From the
material literary "Body-Tracks" have been
developed, stories for the collective body. At
the end of this transmedial three part project
the collected texts on the website were brought
back into the local public space as performance.
Gisela Müller provides a dialog between the
user and the "slut".
http://www.dichtung-digital.com/2002/modemfieber/mueller.htm
At least
with Cervante's Don Quijote literature
constitutes an implied self negation: The
warning to step out of the text and to face real
live. The Werther-Fever proves how literature
was misunderstood and such warnings ignored.
Peter Gendolla discusses whether this paradox
remains in digital literature as well.
http://www.dichtung-digital.com/2002/modemfieber/gendolla.htm
Beat
Suter's little survey on "Love in Netliterature"
concludes: Digital literature dealing with
love is as rare as good digital literature as
such. None of the six award winners of the
competition literatur.digital (2001) picks up
this topic, among the 20 nominees only five.
Does connected literature lose interest to write
about people connected to each other?
http://www.dichtung-digital.com/2002/modemfieber/suter.htm
How do you
communicate a feeling as SMS? Alexander Roesler
pins down five characteristics: its short,
written, immediate, private, and without object.
This leads to limitations as well as expansion
concerning the ways to express love.
http://www.dichtung-digital.com/2002/modemfieber/roesler.htm
Readers of
the interactive Caroline online
are involved in a classical story of
emancipation. In the massive multiuser online
roleplaying game Everquest the wedding of
two avatars shows the fragile and ironic design
of love stories and identities even where one
never would expect it. Fotis Jannidis explores
the the discourse of love in an aesthetical
online setting.
http://www.dichtung-digital.com/2002/modemfieber/jannidis1.htm
Nika
Bertram introduces kahunaMUD based on her
novel "Der Kahuna Modus". Here the user can hang
out, flirt and get drunk with the characters,
the author, and other readers. Here Turing's
"Imitationgame", the "Making Up" of the one at
the other side can be experienced directly. And
above all the insight: "if you really love
it doesn't matter whether the other is a man, a
woman or a triangle" (Karen Duve).
http://www.dichtung-digital.com/2002/modemfieber/bertram.htm
The WWW is
a medium for both information transfer and
making moves: "They chat me up for my attention,
my money, my political participation, my
sympathy, and my shaking leg. However, once it
became concrete I am only one of thousand other
undisclosed recipients! ..." Raphael Rogenmoser
on digital search for partnership.
http://www.dichtung-digital.com/2002/modemfieber/rogenmoser.htm
Chats are
productive places to meet somebody not only for
the "virtual" realm. Michael
Beißwenger sketches
the potential to perform online (pseudonym,
using fictional dramatis personae) as
well as the linguistic ways to create fictional
game worlds which remind on of "off-the-cuff"
theater.
http://www.dichtung-digital.com/2002/modemfieber/beisswenger.htm
Do you
know Alice? Annette? Cara? Do you want to meet
Brian, Barry or Jabberwacky? There is one thing
all the called have in common: They are
Bots - software, which moves through data realms
like the Web. They are able to write, flirt and
communicate. Are they able to love? Adi
Blum dwells on these questions in his little
Turing test of love.
http://www.dichtung-digital.com/2002/modemfieber/blum.htm
The idea
for her hyperfiction Die Schwimmmeisterin,
Susanne Berkenheger explains, was born in
the Dante bath: "I saw this man, the swimming
instructor, in his cave of glass. In front of
him blue control screens, in which you saw
people passing deep in the water. Now I knew the
setting of my piece: Java Windows passing
like lose tiles on the screen. Actually a public
bath and a chat room have a lot of things in
common: Many people come together,
sometimes to close, and finally its all about
making moves."
http://www.dichtung-digital.com/2002/modemfieber/berkenheger.htm
Roberto
Simanowski recalls the aspects discussed during
the symposium and adds: in Chats the text
becomes as naked as its sender and recipient in
the supposed situation; the cell phone
undermines the Melusine contract on which many
modern relationships are based; the change from
the aesthetical experience of the contemplative
reception of books or movies to the social
experience within an interactive setting with
self created characters and conflicts may allow
Adorno's "Kulturindustrie" to survive.
http://www.dichtung-digital.com/2002/modemfieber/simanowski.htm
