Dear
Readers
Do you remember how, in
2001, scholars announced the death of hypertext and the
triumph of multimedia? Just at the moment when the masses
became familiar with the new technology, the academic
community dumped it for this very reason. But the masses
would only have needed more support on how to live with
hypertext, argues Beat Suter who takes us back in
time and shows through "Proustian glasses" what hyperlinks
can be about. The link and other non-verbal elements of
hyperfictional narrative is also the subject of
Shuen-shing Lee presenting a close reading of Stuart
Moulthrop's "Hegirascope". His reference is Laurence
Sterne's "Tristram Shandy", his conclusion: "Hegirascope" is
"the most typical hypernovel in digital literature" as
"Tristram Shandy" "the most typical novel in world
literature." Another close reading is presented in Thomas
Dreher's article on Talan Memmott´s "Lexia to
Perplexia", which Dreher calls a "hyperfiction combining
icons, parts of codes resp. punctuation marks and neologisms
via DHTML and Javascript"
Two artists who don't care
about links at all are Young-hae Chang and Marc Voge. They
tell stories in a linear way without even leaving the reader
a chance to click. However, as Hyun-Joo Yoo points
out in her interview with YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES
there are a lot of other links: to concret poetry,
literature as movie, life and speed, and even sex in Korea.
Concerned with alternative ways of digital poetry are also
two authors who speak about John Cayley's work.
Cayley himself discusses three examples of writing on
complex surfaces including his three-dimensional work in
Brown University VR Cave. Marie Engberg talks about
concepts of surface and depth in relation to writing and
explains "literal morphing" with respect to Cayley's
riverIsland.
Nicolas Clauss' "Art if I
want" presents a completely different form of art: a
pedagogical and artistic documentary of the perception of
art. Clauss discussed with eight teenagers the work of
several modern artists and turned the result in his own work
of art. Laura Borràs Castanyer takes a closer
look at this very complex work and reveals tons of important
details.
Games may be the most
popular and enjoyable genre of digital art. However, the
scene sometimes fails to connect games studies with literary
studies. Karin Wenz holds, with Klaus Walter against
Markku Eskelinen, that we must not dismiss narrative
sequences in digital games as a mere additional
gift-wrapping for they too require a commitment from the
player: an interactive and dynamic process of
interpretation. The last hot thing in games is art games:
The modding of a game for artistic purpose. You can't play
it the way it was intended. It's not about winning anymore
but about thinking. There are political and aesthetic art
games, as Kristine Ploug shows in her survey. You can
even create drawings out of games as Thomas Petersen
knows from his interview with Alison Mealey.
If game art is a new art
genre of the 21st century another one is mapping art. One
artist in this field is George Legrady whose project "Making
Visible the Invisible" visualizes the circulation of books
and media at the Seattle Public Library. This piece may be
called a sociological study about reading habits. Can it be
called art as well? Is it just a revelation and
"beautification" of data or does it trigger a reflection one
may expect from art? Roberto Simanowski discussed
this with George Legrady. The general debate of mapping as
art includes questions about database and the unity of
content and form. Matthew LeMay presents his view on
these matters and takes issue with Lev Manovich's
theorization of the database, which, in his mind, reduces
multiple and complex database forms into simple collections
of items and does not account for the complex interrelations
between data and the database it inhabits.
Due to the overload with
work in an academic environment there are, as you may have
noticed, only two issues of dichtung-digital in 2005. This
possibly will be the amount of issues I am able to produce a
year in the future. However, there are always special events
and guest editors and thus there will be special issues too.
I hope you enjoy the articles this issue presents and stay
tuned.
Roberto Simanowski,
Providence, December 23, 2005
dichtung-digital