I pointed out that the
listed features are only possible on the web and I will use
this use of the web as a basis for my definition of digital
litertature. The main criterion for this literature is the
need for digitalization in order to realize such features as
intermediality, interactivity and nonlinearity. In saying
this I make two distinctions.
1. Traditional
literature on the web does not belong to this group since
it can be printed without losing any of its features.
Being digital is not evidence enough, the digital
existence has to serve more than just the purpose of
distribution on the web.
2. The main reference
point is not the web but digital shape. We talk rather
about digital literature than literature on the web. Thus
we include examples that exist on digital media other
than the web, like diskette or CD-ROM. Actually, this
distinction is appropriate since the literature under
discussion started long before the web. And it is still
distributed on diskettes or CD-ROMs, partly for economic
reasons and partly because of the web's constraints on
the speed of data transfer. The slowness of the web still
decreases the enjoyment of working with sound and movie
files or other byte-intensive applications.
On the other hand, one
could say that collaborative writing only makes sense on
the web. However, in spite of, or rather because of this
objection one should use the term digital literature
instead of literature on the web for the former is the
broader term and includes the web equally, which can not
be said for the latter. Collaboration as a genuine
feature on the web is just one type of digital
literature. Using the web as an umbrella term would focus
only on this particular feature and therefore narrow our
perspective.
I should add one comment
about the terminology. I am using the term digital
literature saying at the same time that this literature does
not only consist of words. Since words are allianced with
images, sound and even movies, it may be asked why I still
refer to it as literature, and why I do not say digital art.
There are two answers. One refers to tradition, and one to
proportionality.
1. The phenomenon we are
dealing with began when computers were not yet grown up
enough to present images and sound. The first well-known
example of digital literature, Michael Joyce's hypertext
novel "Afternoon. A Story", appeared in 1987. It was
distributed by Eastgaste Systems on diskette and consisted
only of words. Concerning this example and also the later
but equally well-known hypertext novel "Victory Garden" by
Stuart Moulthrop (1991), it was pretty plausible to apply
the term hyperfiction. This term refers to hypertext, as a
certain technology of text presentation, and to fiction. The
term hypertext or hyperfiction is still in use, though with
a broader sense of the term 'text' that now includes the
language of images, sound and movies as well. I use the term
literature in this broader sense as the term text is used
above. However, I am not using the terms hypertext or
hyperfiction as an umbrella term, since those are misleading
for their reference to multilinearity as the supposed main
feature. We will see that many examples of digital
literature are not multinear at all.
2. Another reason to keep
the term literature is that the examples we are dealing with
mainly employ words. The proportion of words in relation to
graphics and sound devices still distinguish it from the
audio-visual media. This will change with the development of
better hardware and software that is already causing a
multimedialization of the web. We might then look for
another term such as narrative. In German we might go back
to the term Kunst in the way it was understood in the 18th
century before its differentiation into 'art' such as
plastic forms or painting, on the one hand, and
'literature,' on the other hand. Today in German the term
Kunst would, for its exclusion of literature, be as equally
misleading as Literatur is.
For these reasons I suggest
using the term literature but to take it less literally than
normal. I would also suggest thinking the same way about the
term >text< as it appears in this talk.
Having clarified what
belongs to digital literature and what does not, we still
face a chaos of phenomena that needs to be put in order.
This goal itself is questionable, not as much for the web's
traditional commitment to anarchy, as for the mixture of
features we encounter in actual examples. However, it may be
helpful to describe some general types of digital literature
that furnish us with a base from which we can set out to
de-differentiate it again should this prove
necessary.
I discern the following
general types of digital literature - the third column
markes the key feature of each type. The notes in
parentheses show optional features:
|
Collaborative
Writings
|
Text that requires
digital existence on the web for production
reasons.
|
Multiple
Authorship
Interactivity
(mono- or multimedial)
(linear or multilinear)
|
|
Hypertext,
Hyperfiction
|
Multilinear text
that provides the reader different ways to navigate
through the work.
|
Multilinearity
(mono- or multimedial)
|
|
Hypermedia
|
Alliance of words,
images, sound and movies.
|
Intermediality
(linear or multilinear)
|
These
three
general types I will now
exemplify.