Dissociated Authorship: Electronic Literature between Tradition and Experiment
On November 8th 2010 I’ll be giving a seminar at Lingnan University, Hongkong, for which I have been kindly invited by Prof. Paisley Livingston, Chair Professor and Head, Department of Philosophy. I will be showing some examples of digital literature, especially from German origin, and thought I post them here along with some more resources so that the Hongkong students can do some more research after my talk.
Abstract of my talk
Since the birth of the “World Wide Web” as the most successful application of the Internet, the web has been the hope of literary theorists (e.g. George P. Landow and David Jay Bolter) that the new digital media will finally allow for the “death of the author” and the birth of the “writing reader”. In this talk I will ultimately argue that the author cannot disappear or “die” in this context because its central characteristics will not allow this to happen. Therefore the Internet does not stand for the “death” of the author; instead it seems to be a fountain of youth for literary authorship. These findings are discussed using recent experiments with authorship in digital literature.
Examples of works of digital literature
Solitary authorship
- Susanne Berkenheger: “The Bubble Bath” (2005). [http://www.thebubblebath.de/].
- TG: Zwirbler (2010). The so-called first “Facebook”-Novel. [http://www.zwirbler.com/].)
- Frank Klötgen: “Spätwinterhitze” (2004). [http://www.internetkrimi.de/].
Collaborative authorship
- Johannes Auer et al: “The Famous Sound of Absolute Wreaders” (2003). [http://kunstradio.cyberfiction.ch/]
- Thomas Hettche/Jana Hensel: “NULL” (2000). [http://www.hettche.de/buecher/null/index.htm]
- Claudia Klinger: “Beim Bäcker” (1996-2000). [http://claudia-klinger.de/archiv/baecker/index.htm]
- The interesting collaborative work “A million penguins” (2007) unfortunately already disappeared from the web, read the Wikipedia-Article on it.
Marginalised authorship
- Florian Cramer: “plaintext.cc” (2005). [http://pleintekst.nl/]
- mez [Mary-Anne Breeze]: “term.i.nation net.wurk[er]” (2003). [http://www.netzliteratur.net/cramer/unstable_html/nettime-unstable-digest_28/05.html]
- Don Yang: “dhyang.c 2000″ (2000). [http://www.uguu.org/src_saitou_c.html] (generates “aku.c”, “soku.c” und “san.c”)
Dissociated authorship
- Johannes Auer: “Search Lutz!” (2006). [http://halle.netzliteratur.net/]
- Johannes Auer/Rene Bauer/Beat Suter: “Search Songs” (2007). [http://searchsongs.cyberfiction.ch/], [Video]
Where can you find more (good) works of digital literature
- Electronic Literature Collection (the best recent selection of digital literature, edited and curated by the “Electronic Literature Organization”)
- Projekte:: Netzliteratur // Internetliteratur // Hyperfiction (huge list of German digital literature)
- netpoetic.com (quite active blog on digital literature with examples of works)
Research
Research on digital literature: Some important organizations and conferences
- Electronic Literature Organization (international organisations, that runs a lot of projects regarding elit and also a great conference series)
- Dichtung digital (german based international journal on digital literature)
- E-Poetry (probably the most important international digital poetry festival)
- ELMCIP | Developing a Network-Based Creative Community (huge collaborative research project funded by the Humanities in the European Research Area (HERA) JRP for Creativity and Innovation)
Discussion (my research in print and online)
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- Hartling, Florian, 2009: The Digital Author? Authorship in the Digital Era. In: Vanesa Matajc, Gašper Troha, 2009: Avtor: kdo ali kaj piše literaturo? / The Author: Who or What is Writing Literature? Ljubjana: Slovensko društvo za primerjalno književnost. (= Special issue Primerjalna književnost / Comparative Literature. Vol. 32. (2009)). S. 199-208. (you can grap a copy of this special issue as a pdf from the web)
- Hartling, Florian, 2009: Dissoziierte Autoren. Netzliterarische Autorschaft zwischen Tradition und Experiment. In: dichtung-digital. No. 39. Vol. 11 (2009). <http://www.dichtung-digital.org/2009/Hartling.htm>. (sorry, German only…)
Is there digital literature on the iPad?
- A glimpse into the future: Alice on the iPad (Video Demo on Youtube)
Thanks
- Some of these resources I’ve found on the website of Jill Walker Rettberg – thanks for always sharing your slides and material!
