Digital arts and culture 1998: Strehovec
papers
Janez Strehovec:
Text as Virtual Reality
(Techno-Aesthetics and Web-Literatures)
Abstract
About the author
Art is, at the end of the second half of the 20th century, articulated in
works of art, would-be-works of art, virtual situations, web projects,
concept events, cybernetic installations and environments. For such works
and would- be-works the placement on the intersection of art,
techno-science, smart technologies, new media, computer mediated
communication, design as well as (trans)politics and religion (especially
in a form of techno-religions) is distinctive. The authentic area of
present art is electronic art, the development of which is essentially
connected with the achievements of new media and new, metaphorically
speaking, techno-sensitivity. New interactive media enriched the
electronic art with new trends, among which the web art plays a special
role. Here we think of art projects, which haven't only been put on the
web as a new reproductive and distributive medium, but have productively
used its creative potentials and media particularities.
One form of such art is indisputably techno- or cybernetic literature on
web sites, which is becoming more and more characteristic and recognisable
form of that artistic search. What we have in mind are projects which
classify themselves as a kind of cyberpoetry, interactive drama, MUDs and
new narrative, placed into the post-novel environments for story and
concept worlds. For this kind of projects dual challange is
characteristic; on one side they enrich the aesthetics of electronic art
with new techniques and concepts (bringing to the user of such art new
experience), but on the other they pervert, revolutionise and extend the
code of literature-as-we-know it, because the occurrence of literature at
the end of the second half of the century represents a problem. Today, it
is by no means self-evident how and what about to write, as J. G. Ballard,
the author of proto-cyberpunk novel Crash, expressed in this claim: "We
live in a world ruled by fictions of every kind....We live inside an
enormous novel. It is now less and less necessary for the writer to invent
fictional content of his novel. The fiction is already there. The writer's
task is to invent the reality."
Cybernetic literature on web sites is undoubtedly expanding avant-garde
and experimental forms of literature (visual and concrete poetry and
experimental prose), but its inquiries are especially relevant for
aesthetics (particularly of electronic art). Basic concepts like
interactivity and total immersion get new encouragement from the web
media. When mentioning web literature, we have to state the fact that it
includes a new generation of literature, made in web medium. So we can
place its projects between second order techno-literatures; as into the
first generation obviously belongs the influential, for literary theory
very challenging form of hyperfiction, written/computed by Michael Joyce
and some more important successors of that tradition (Stuart Moulthrop,
Shelley Jackson, Carolyn Guyer). In order not to mention second order
techno-literatures only on abstract level, let us for information, mention
some more characteristic works of web-literatures: Stuart Moulthrop's
Hegirascope (version 2), Mark Amerika's Grammatron, Diane Reed Slatery's
Alfaweb, Komninos Zervos homepage Cyberpoetry, Jacques Servin's Beast,
Olia Lialina's Ann Karenin goes to
Me Through The Computer, Shelley Jackson's My Body, Anne Joelle's The
Confessional, C.Can's
& R.Allalouf's Keywords, K. Mork's
&
Solve et Coagula.
What is the general characteristic of those otherwise very individual
projects? They are put on the web and they try to use more than only its
reproductive and distributive capacities. Web-literature sometimes still
uses now already classical hypertext medium, which had generated a kind of
hyperfiction (already mentioned in the tradition of Michael Joyce), but
its latest projects try to intensively use the particularities of web
media and novelty of the software written for it.We are dealing with a new
form of narrative, which is not based on the literature forms and
procedures as we know them, but is introducing new techno-language of the
techno-words-images-bodies, using the effects of new media aesthetics and
inventing new forms. Here we have to mention some basic concepts of
web-literature which are useful for the techno-aesthetics of electronic
art.
Word-image-body is arranged with special effects, put into the
"total-data-work of art" (Ger.Gestamtdatenwerk), which includes the
interaction among media and daringly stimulates the perception. The
reading is because of this supplemented with looking and touching (led and
seduced with the techno- suspense and techno-surprise), with the effect of
total immersion, with encountering the "impossible written objects", with
users' steering of screens and in some projects also with listening, which
means that this is a kind of activity distant from encountering the
regular literary forms and closer to the new visual (as well as aural and
tactile) forms of culture. We're diving into the worlds of traditional
narrative no longer. Instead we're entering the multimedia designed series
of techno-words-images-bodies arranged with regards to concept schemes.
Our (non-linear) encounters with them produce a story in the sense of
risky event.
We use the term "techno-word-image" as an extension of the term
"techno-image", introduced by Vilem Flusser. We are referring to Flusser's
claim that the reference of the techno-image is the concept, so in a way
abstract form, which stimulates the so called techno-imagination. The
importance of such understanding of web-literature is undoubtedly
enormous. The stories in the techno-language (as a combination of new
media arranged verbal and visual components) are in no way naive
narratives which signify the states of things, but they intended the
concept itself; the world of abstract components and the relations between
them.
In a certain sense they are meta-stories intended for meta-reading.
Because of that the reference in the concept leads their authors to
abandon the differences between literary and non-literary codes.
Web-literature of new generation is the eminent medium of concept
narrative which abandons the literary forms, methods and procedures of
traditional literature. Techno-word, simulated as the unit of 3-d computer
graphics, is mediated word, inscribed into the field of computer generated
visual and tactile cyberculture. The word is the object, with body, with
substance, living a double life; on one hand preserving the indicating,
referential function; on the other hand it is only the visual, tactile and
verbal marker for "building houses from the words-images-bodies". It
permits a new matrix of entry into the literary text.
The interactivity of the electronic literary projects is enabled with
clicking on words or icons in the function of point and click interfaces.
This is in accordance with already mentioned techno-suspense, which is
connected with the expectations of what is going to open after the act of
clicking and what kind of reality will the reader/ user enter. It is in
the artistic function of such literary project on the web that the
techno-suspense is also followed by techno-surprise. This means that the
reader/user lands on a place far different from his/her expectations. We
might say that the artistic value of such projects increases
proportionally with increased frequencies of digression of new series of
techno-words-images-bodies from the horizon of readers' expectations.
Cybernetic literature presumes the text as virtual reality; but it is not
about encumbering kind of VR, conditioned with the use of data-glove and
head mounted display (so called goggle-and-glove VR) but for unencumbering
VR, based on the reader's/user's identification with the cursor. Being
there, the imperative for the total immersion in the text environment, is
now enabled by the reader's identification with cursor. The act of
clicking anticipates the user's meeting with the clickual reality and
continual linking from one part of a text to the others. The act of
clicking and linking becomes paradigmatic for the sensitivity of those to
whom the clickual reality means one of the first realities within their
world as the pluriversum of given physical world and alternative
artificial realities. On the basis of this Mark Amerika defined his
cyber-cogito: "I link therefore I am" . The reading of such literary
projects is principally non-trivial and cybernetic. We read according to
schemes, which we try to find, returning to the beginning many times. We
print individual page (if it's possible), do scripts and schemes about
already chosen links, meaning that we're utmost active in
composing/supplementing the "textscape". A text which requires non-trivial
reading is ergodic according to Espen J. Aarseth's claims in his book
Cybertext (1997). Such reading is also risky, because "the cybertext puts
its would-be-reader at risk: the risk of rejection".
Text with certain rules and at the same time with alternatives for a
reader, possibilities on which s/he'll bet or abandon on the way through a
"textscape", directs to the reception similar to that in a game. Literary
projects on the web are because of that feature close to the trends of
today's ludic culture (i.e. the culture of games spread between the
principles of agon and ilinx (according to the division introduced in the
work of R. Caillois), and also close to the techno- sensitivity described
as a feeling of today's trendy individual as homo aestheticus. S/he is
often a high-level adrenaline junky, in need of an increasing amount of
stimuli of different sources in shortest possible period of time - an
overexcited (wo)man in the sense of Paul Virilio's concept of l'homme
surexcite. Her/his basic tools are more and more the simulator, bungy
jumping and devices, required for entering the cyber space. To find
oneself on the uncertain axis between non-evident bellow and above, left
and right seems to be a real sensation, which goes hand in hand with the
people entering the world of smart technologies and trendy activities in
theme parks today. An esthetic being is not stimulated only by such
activities and attractions, but also by encountering different forms of
electronic art. The higly uncertain and unusual experience and sensations
are also offered by works of web-literatures, which require a reader who
will curiously and even hazardously choose how to navigate through
"textscape".The main thread is lost in the linear course of the text; that
is on the referential level, as well as on the visual/tactile one. The
authority of the sentences, pages, images, of the evident "now" and
"later", of the beginning and the end is destroyed.
Web-literature isn't articulated on printed pages, but on the computer's
windows, which have a very complex structure. Often the impossoble is
demanded from the reader/user - to look at the same time at different
texts and visual components which are distributed on the computer window
as in a space with distinctively profound extension. With this kind of
projects the change of temporal perspective is also important: the shift
from perfective to imperfective, from "once upon a time" (distinctive of
traditional narrative) to real time, in which the interactive environments
are set. Real time is a technical one, and therefore a time-space, because
it's imposible to imagine time without space in technical approach.
Techno-words-images-bodies refer to spatial dimension of technical time
due to their ability of powerful representation of spatial relations. Real
time also corresponds with "real closeness" as spatial saturation of
temporal point reached through the matrix of techno.
Navigation through words-images and words-bodies in "textscape" takes
place in complex time. It seems that in the moment of linking (or turning
the screens) "nows" start to load. These "nows" are torn out of temporal
continuum and form a certain between, which is constituent for reading and
techno-suspense in textscape. This is the between, which is characteristic
of the apocalyptic moment. One waits for arrival of the unknown, one wants
it. It seems that we are dealing with uncertain time following something
no longer and preceding something not yet. This is time of expectation,
the time nourishing the deepest dreams and mythic visions. Everything is
left open, the link simulates a narrow door through which messianic word
may enter. Such a between has therefore the function of Jabes' emptiness,
of whiteness in traditional writing and of Maurice Blanchot's pause
(Interruptions).
Let's also mention the creative approach of web-literatures to the main
features of the media (webness) in the forms of self-reference, autopoesis
and self-organisation, and in the possibilities of collaborative
authorship. Such a project is then not only the scheme demanding reader's
concretisation and supplementing, but the environment, which enables a
more active approach.. The literary projects on web form the part of
today's electronic art as the utmost hybrid area of distinctly concept
projects in which the pair ground/world in Heidegger's essay "Der Ursprung
des Kunstwerkes" is replaced with the duo world/web, because we are
dealing with the articulation in on-line world. Maybe only a longer
temporal distance from the present will allow more critical regard of
these works, which have abandoned the elite art institutions, democratised
themselves (they could be treated as the issues of cyberpop), but on the
level of production they demand enough creative approach and software
expertise. After decades a new name may be found for the wide area of
creativity, the starting-point of which are mostly art and smart
technologies. This area extends from the artistic domain into the scope of
post-artistic creative sensitivity and spirituality, and above all of the
communication in the world, determined with techno as a principle. But at
the moment its certain that there is among all regular institutions,
exactly art the only one which can accept such forms of creative
communication enabled within the matrix of technoculture.
Janez Strehovec is a private researcher at the project Theories of
Cyberculture supported by Slovenian Ministry of Science and Technology. He
holds an M.A. and Ph. D. in aesthetics and is also a lecturer at the
Technoculture - Culture of Techno (1998). One of his articles written in
English is available on: http://www.ctheory.com/a49.html
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Last update: 2nd of November 1998.