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 Paradise, Juliet Martin's Can You See

      Me Through The Computer, Shelley Jackson's My Body, Anne Joelle's The

      Confessional, C.Can's & R.Allalouf's Keywords, K. Mork's & S. Stenslie'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

      Academy of Visual Arts - Department of Design (at the University of

      Ljubljana, Slovenia). His most recent book written in Slovene is

      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.