Description
Literary Art in Digital Performance examines electronic works of literary art, a category integrating the visual+textual including interactive poetry, narrative computer games, filmic sculpture, projective art, and other works specific to digital media. In recent decades, electronic art's aesthetic has been driven by new algorithmic, randomized, and emergent processes. Although this new art differs from material art or print literature, the rise of popular fascination with new media has neglected signifcant discussion of how technical mediation impacts contemporary art and literature. Presented as a collection of case studies by leading scholars, the book provides a contemporary optic on this art's forms, problems, and possibilities. Each case study is followed by a post-chapter dialogue where the editor engages authors on the foundational aesthetics of new media art and literature.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction: Juncture and Form in New Media Criticism, Francisco J. Ricardo
2. What is and Toward What End do We Read Digital Literature?, Roberto Simanowski
- Post-Chapter Dialogue, Simanowski and Ricardo
3. List(en)ing Post, Rita Raley
- Post-Chapter Dialogue, Raley and Ricardo
4. Strickland and Lawson Jaramillo’s Slippingglimpse: Distributed Cognition at/in Work, N. Katharine Hayles
- Post-Chapter Dialogue, Hayles and Ricardo
5. Reading Discursive Spaces of Text Rain, Transmodally, Francisco J. Ricardo
6. Kissing the Steak: The poetry of text generators, Christopher T. Funkhouser
- Post-Chapter Dialogue, Funkhouser and Ricardo
7. Geopoetics: Aesthetic Experience in the Works of Stefan Schemat and Teri Rueb, Katja Kwastek
- Post-Chapter Dialogue, Kwastek and Ricardo
8. Self, Setting, and Situation in Second Life, Maria Bäcke
- Post-Chapter Dialogue, Bäcke and Ricardo
9. Looking Behind the Façade: Playing and Performing an Interactive Drama, Jorgen Schafer
- Post-Chapter Dialogue, Schafer and Ricardo
10. Artificial Poetry: On Aesthetic Perception in Computer-Aided Literature, Peter Gendolla
- Post-Chapter Dialogue, Gendolla and Ricardo
11. Screen Writing: A Practice-based, EuroRelative Introduction to Digital Literature and Poetics, John Cayley
- Post-Chapter Dialogue, Cayley and Ricardo
Index
Author(s)
Francisco J. Ricardo,
Francisco J. Ricardo, Ph.D., writes about contemporary and new media art theory and criticism. Affiliated with the University Professors of Boston University, he is cofounder of the Digital Video Research Archive, and also teaches digital media theory at the Rhode Island School of Design.
Reviews
How does each specific application of new technology reflect outward, to the broader dynamics of an electronically networked society? Are we talking about form or experience? Digital art draws upon both visual art and literature to establish a new medium that is simultaneously posited as a breakdown of those very boundaries. What results is often both work and event, realized by the audience in the process of reception. The essays in this timely book explore these ambiguities from multiple perspectives, asserting digital art as a significant paradigm shift, even rupture, yet structurally rooted in earlier traditions.
Martha Buskirk, Professor of Art History and Criticism, Montserrat College of Art
,
Literary Art in Digital Performance charts an expansive range of human/machine topologies, both local and distributed, while negotiating a highly relevant set of informed perspectives and critical positionings. The ever-expanding contextual potentials of this exciting field are clearly reflected here, pointing to a rich landscape of performative literary domains. This book is a must for those interested in new media/literary critical theory as it relates to a set of unique examples of contemporary media practice.
William Seaman, Professor Visual Studies of Duke Univ. and Founding Chairman of Dept. of Digital Media, RISD
,
New technologies like videogames, interactive installation, digital literature and data visualization are used by artists and writers before critical theory can catch up with them. Now this important collection of essays on how we "read" the new media of the day elucidates the underlying meanings of these media through the lens of contemporary criticism. Each of these insightful essays on a specific work of art is made all the more useful by the discerning post essay conversations Ricardo has with the authors.
George Fifield, Founder of the Boston Cyberarts Festival
,