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Description: A number of multilinear Web Fictions, Poetry and Hypermedia works: Narratives with text, image, and sound. The collection includes Coverley's "Fingerprints on Digital Glass"- eight short web stories of altered perception as well as "The Magic Millennium CyberCarpet", a story that goes backward and forward in time. The Webpage links also to works created in collaboration with other artists and to Coverley's Academic Pages that include interviews, articles, and Web-Non Fiction having to do with electronic literature. Entry drafted by: Patricia Tomaszek
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Subject: poetry , fiction, hypermedia, sound
Creator: Marjorie Coverley Luesebrink/ M.D. Coverley
Collector: ELO
Description: In Errand, animation is used to establish links and disjunctions between images of moving objects in the natural world (e.g. frogs and butterflies) and the lexical and figural dynamics of the poem. These visual-kinetic images heighten the tensions among the meaning-mobilizing acts of "seeing an image," "watching a movement," and "reading a word"; and insofar as these works also employ cursor-activated elements, between "touching" and "reading." Errand reflects on the nature of language and of reading, and these self-reflexive elements are embedded in considerations of how protocols of reading shape our consciousness. In calling attention to gaps between "movement" and "meaning," between "reading" and "acting," Errand grounds its kinetic poetics in concerns of ethics and cultural politics. Entry drafted by: Patricia Tomaszek
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Subject: shockwave, women authors, animation, collaborative, interactive, visual poetry, textual instrument, kinetic text, poetry
Creator: Stephanie Strickland, M.D. Coverley
Collector: ELO
Description: John Cayley’s “windsound” is an algorithmic work presented as a 23-minute recording of a machine-generated reading of scrambled texts. The cinematic work presents a quicktime-video of white letters on a black screen, a text written by Cayley with a translation of the chinese poem “Cadence: Like a Dream” by Qin Guan (1049-1100). As a sensory letter-by-letter performance, the work sequentially replaces letters on the screen, so that what starts as illegible text becomes readable as a narrative, and then again loses meaning in a jumble of letters. Cayley calls this technique “transliteral morphing: textual morphing based on letter replacements through a sequence of nodal texts.” Sequences of text appear within up to 15 lines on the same screen, thus presenting and automatically replacing a longer text on a digitally simulated single page-a concept Judd Morrissey also applied in "The Jew´s Daughter". Unlike Morrissey’s piece, Cayley’s doesn´t allow the user to interact with the work that appears as a text-movie with ambient sound, murmurs of voices, windsound and synthetic female and male voices reading the non-readable to the viewer. With the letters, narrative perspectives also morph and switch fluidly between the lyrical-I, Christopher, Tanaka or Xiao Zhang, who appear in the story. Thus, the sentence: "‘We know,’" Tanaka had said in English/"‘Tomorrow if we meet/I will have to kill you myself/’" is, in the algorithmic process of the work, later spelled out by the I-narrator. As stated at the very end of the work, John Cayley created “windsound” in memory to Christopher Bledowski. What remains after a blackened screen and a start-over of morphing letters before they vanish conclusively, is windsound. At a certain point in the movie the text says "you have to be/to stay/silent/to hear it" and it seems like the reader has to be silent, too, listening to what he cannot understand, patiently waiting for the moment of legibility. Entry drafted by: Patricia Tomaszek
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Subject: poetry , appropriated texts, ambient, non-interactive, synthetic voices, algorithmic, soundscape, transliteral morphing
Creator: John Cayley
Description: Readers of print conventionally ignore the page surface so as to concentrate on interpreting what is printed there; in "open.ended," by contrast, surfaces are integral. Readers interact with lines of poetry that appearon two translucent shapes - one nested within the other. Because words on the inner shape are visible through the outer one, the printed lines can be read together or separately. The number of possible surface/text combinations is limited, but by merging shapes a surprising range of new stanzas can result. The reader can also control her angle of view so that more than one surface is visible, though all the words may not be legible. As the surfaces obscure the words, the materiality of the digital shapes overcomes linguistic signification. This phenomenon of surface overcoming text also occurs when the shapes overlap and obscure portions of the text. "open.ended" amounts to a poem without beginning or end since one does not move through the text in any predetermined order, yet the poetic object has boundaries delimited by the eight rotating surfaces. The reader's interaction with the shifting text is augmented--and usefully constrained--by an audio track of the author reading so that we, reading to ourselves, are reminded of lines from the poem we have already encountered, or we are given a preview of text to come. Despite the literal instability of the moving text, the audio track is the same each time, which lends consistency to repeated readings. Entry drafted by: Ben Underwood
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Subject: poetry , flash, audio, interactive, 3D, spatialization
Creator: Aya Karpinska, Daniel C. Howe
Collector: ELO
Description: Prose poem published in The Iowa Review Web (TIR-W), Volume 9, Number 2: "Instruments and Playable Texts" (2008). “The Purpling” is comprised of approximately ten basic web pages of eight to ten lines each. By clicking on hyperlinks connected to segments of varying lengths, the reader enters what guest editor Stuart Moulthrop calls a "maze of recirculating expression.” While the words on the screen remain static, the reader's experience of "meaning" varies depending on the order of visited links. These visited links, in most browsers, also appear in purple, which becomes a visual representation of not only the work's title, but also the mingling of the reader with the text. Consequently, in both form and content, the work calls attention to nature of reading and questions the authority of a text. Entry drafted by: Crystal Alberts
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Subject: hypertext, poetry , procedural, constraint-based
Creator: Nick Monfort
Collector: Electronic Literature Organization
Description: slippingglimpse is a 10-part generative Flash poem combining videos of ocean patterns with text. The work introduces three modes of reading: fullscreen, high resolution, and scroll-text mode. In the first two modes, fragments of words and phrases appear in the ocean, mapped and remapped to movement in the video image, turning from an unreadable text to a decipherable composition. In fullscreen mode, ocean videos "read" the poem text somatically or gesturally. In high-rez mode, the ocean-patterning itself is best visible, those patterns the videographer set out to capture and enhance. Only the scroll-text mode permits human reading of linear print text. The language of the poem comes in part from sampling and recombining the words of visual artists as they reflect on their own work (among them, Helaman Ferguson, Manfred Mohr, David Berg, Ellen Carey, Frances Dose, Marius Johnston, Jon Lybrook, Susan Rankaitis, Hildegard of Bingen). Entry drafted by: Patricia Tomaszek
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Subject: flash, collaborative, kinetic text, poetry , women authors, visual poetry, video
Description: Judd Morrissey, Goat Island, and 145+ additional contributors are contributing to the work-in-progress The Last Performance (dot org). The project’s developers describe it as “a constraint-based collaborative writing, archiving and text-visualization project responding to the theme of lastness in relation to architectural forms, acts of building, a final performance, and the interruption (that becomes the promise) of community.” The project is a kind of hopeful monster, a mutated form of literature that combines elements of dance and performance, information and physical architecture, and Oulipian constraint-driven approaches to writing. The visual presentation of the project is based on the structure and details of the Dzamija, a mosque built on top of an old church in Zagreb, Croatia. Elements of the structure were derived from a dance performance by Goat Island, a Chicago-based performance collective. The organizational principles of the text are largely algorithmic. The individual texts themselves are written in response to a series of odd, seemingly arbitrary constraints such as “Construct a last performance in the form of a heavy foot that weighs 2 tons and remains in good condition.” The texts that form the material basis of the project are contributed both by the authors who have been working most closely on the project for two years and by readers who stumble across it on the Web and decide to contribute a text by responding to a constraint or to one of the other texts.(...) Read the entire elit work article drafted by Scott Rettberg at: http://directory.eliterature.org/node/606
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Subject: hypertext, poetry , collaborative, narrative, database, visualization
Creator: Judd Morrissey
Description: Arteroids is a literary shoot-em-up poem-game for the Web. The battle of poetry against itself and the forces of dullness. Pilot your red id-entity text against poetry and the forces of dullness. Winner takes wall. Write your own texts in Word for Weirdos. Save poetry from yourself. Game mode or play mode. Play for life and death in game mode. Shoot for art in play mode. Go on. I dare you. Entry drafted by: Scott Rettberg
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Subject: cybertext, poetry , shockwave, animation, interactive, software, digital poetics, digital art, audio, hypermedia, kinetic, game
Creator: Jim Andrews
Collector: ELO
Description: A Shockwave work by Stephanie Strickland and Cynthia Lawson. This work was made as the third component of an intermedia poem whose two other parts were bound together, upside down to each other, in a volume written by Strickland and published by Penguin, V: WaveSon.nets/Losing L'una, 1992. At the center of the book are pointers to the url. The digital poem was published in the Iowa Review Web, 2002, with critical material by Jaishree Odin, and with an essay by the authors in New River, 2003.
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Subject: visual poetry, interactive, collaborative, textual instrument, women authors, shockwave, poetry , kinetic text
Description: Urs Schreiber’s Java-based German Internet opus Das Epos der Maschine ("Machine Epic") epitomizes the control of the "machine" over its user both practically and (meta-) theoretically. As the title suggests, the text regards itself as a poem of epic dimensions, i.e. poetic narrative that acts as a symbol of an entire national or, as in the case of the Internet, virtual paradigm. In other words, Schreiber positions his work in the tradition of the great ethnic and religious epics (e.g. Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, the Nibelungenlied and Milton’s Paradise Lost). By the same token, it follows in the tradition of concrete poetry, which critically and playfully reflects on language itself as well as its inextricable determination by the medium in which it appears. The Epos is a joint venture. Text and programming were done by Urs Schreiber, the graphics by Kai Jelinek and Cesare Wosko, the photographs by Claudia König, and the sound by Die with Dignity. (...) Read the entire elit work article by Astrid Ensslin at: http://directory.eliterature.org/node/314
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Subject: poetry , fiction, cybertext, sound, epic, machine control, multimodal, narrative
Creator: Urs Schreiber
Collector: Patricia Tomaszek
Description: Upon launching Erik Loyer's The Lair of the Marrow Monkey (1998), a web-based work of digital fiction powered by Shockwave software animation, readers not only see the opening navigation screen, but must feel their way around it. Nine circles orbit, carrousel-like, around a tower constructed with two triangles, one inverted and resting on top of the other. The sound of an eerie synthesized pulsing accompanies each rotation, which speeds up the farther away the reader moves the mouse. A tiny number appears at the foot of each, counting - up or down depending on which way the shapes orbit - from one to nine. (...) Read the entire elit work article Dave Ciccoricco at http://directory.eliterature.org/node/618
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Subject: poetry , audio, music, narrative, cognition, consciousness, digital fiction, interactive motion graphics, interior monologue, jazz, letters, memory, mind, poem, posthuman, spoken word
Creator: Erik Loyer
Description: JB Wock is a self-described “english-speaking blogmachine” created by poet and programmer Eugenio Tisselli. JB Wock, a PHP script, searches the web for a phrase that it “likes” (from a site that publishes notable quotations), “twists” these phrases by substituting synonyms, and publishes the results daily on its blog (which also includes a comment feature, inviting readers to respond). Tisselli includes links to the coding of the PHP script as well as a “Computer Aided Poetry” tool which allows users to alter their own phrases using the JB Wock script. The underlying script itself is an elegant feat in constraint, while the verses that it publishes daily often have an ephemeral and absurd quality, consistent with spirit of the Oulipo movement, but also gesturing towards contemporary debates over the physiological processes of human cognition and the indeterminate character of human expression. Entry drafted by: Davin Heckman
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Subject: poetry , procedural, constraint-based, e-poetry, oulipo, php script
Creator: Eugenio Tisselli
Collector: ELO
Description: "We wanted love" recites a voice that narrates a teenager's favorite pastime in Wisconsin, racing up and down the Main Street drag looking to make connections, wanting love. "Cruising" is a flash based poem with cinematic elements marked by a flow of images accompained by the poem text. The filmic flow suggests sights glimpsed from a train's window. A hidden code integrated into the piece lets the user control the speed, the direction, and the scale with the cursor, turning the reader into just another cruiser. The viewer moves between reading text and experiencing the flow of images but cannot exactly have both at the same time. Entry drafted by: Patricia Tomaszek
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Subject: flash, women authors, collaboration, audio, visual poetry or narrative, poetry , place, cinematic
Creator: Ingrid Ankerson (words and design); Megan Sapnar (design)
Collector: Patricia Tomaszek
Description: A visual index, with a paragraph of description, of each of Jason Nelson's work. Scrolling from the bottom of the page to the top lets one view the artist's work chronologically from 2001 to the present, offering one potential trajectory for the field development as a whole, spanning hypertexts, short fictions, poems, haikus, games, all of which are computer generated and include image in combination with multimedia elements, code, text, and sound. Browsing the collection means witnessing the ways electronic literature involves readers and shows the potential for involving programming and multimedial devices and embedded text as in, for example the flash-based work titled, "this will be the end of you: play4: within within." Here, holding the mouse allows the user to move "into words" and to play with text as it emerges. Readers control the movement on the interface by holding or releasing the mouse and can thereby determine the mouse driven fly through of texts and images that float towards or away from the user. Or the work, "game, game, game and again game" which uses the a side scrolling gaming interface to navigate through a mix of poetics content and corresponding hand-drawn elements. This play, either literal or through interface serves as a metaphor of what Nelson wishes to transfer with the artwork: some scattered [imaginations, some] oddly organized fire of thoughts and incomplete ideas" or simply a comment on the internet and its nonlinearity and the new possibilities of digital poetics. Entry drafted by: Patricia Tomaszek
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Subject: hypertext, flash, generative, audio, animation, textual instrument, net art, digital poetics, poetry , network forms, combinatorial, interactive, visual poetry, fiction, appropriated texts
Creator: Jason Nelson
Collector: ELO
Description: Jim Andrews’ “Seattle Drift” is a play on motion and stasis, surface and depth. Its initially simple presentation consists of a self-described “bad text,” a subversive poem that moves and stutters around the screen when given the instruction to do so. A series of simple controls written in Dynamic HTML allows a user to guide its movement: one is given the option to “do” the text (which makes it drift around the screen), “stop” it (which freezes the letters mid-drift), or “discipline” it (which returns the letters to their original position). Stopping and starting the text allows the user to create new linguistic and visual configurations for the poem, and this flexibility is the cause of the text’s status as “bad”—it “used to be a poem, but drifted from the scene.” The poem dares its user with a come-on—“I just want you to do me”—that complicates the supposed transparency and stasis of the traditional written word, and makes the user an accomplice in this transformation. The poem itself has the experimental, minimalist quality that characterizes much of mid-90s net art, exploring the role of particular code functions in the construction of Web aesthetics while also playing with the code’s distance from (and closeness to) the surface of the Web browser. An Easter egg awaits those curious enough to explore the source code. Entry drafted by: Rob Schoenbeck
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Subject: poetry , animation, html/dhtml
Creator: Jim Andrews
Collector: ELO
Description: Beginning with the provocative epigram by Phyllis Web, “The world is round. It moves in circles,” which gives way to a minimal interface with the word “meaning” placed in the center of a black screen, Jim Andrews’ “Enigma n” is a densely packaged experiment in the potency of language. With a click of the mouse, the reader can “Prod,” “Stir,” and “Tame” the word, causing the letters to swirl chaotically around no particular center. After all the options have been selected, the reader is permitted to restore order to the word by clicking “Spell.” Conceptually, the temporal sequence (epigram, the assertion of “meaning,” the reader’s acts of disruption, culminating in a restoration of order) might be interpreted as a parable of communication, from sender to receiver. As an experience of reading, the attentive mind will seize upon the various anagrams that arrange themselves chaotically, making sense wherever it is suggested by juxtaposition. However, Andrews’ piece does not simply end with the anti-climactic, almost jarring, return to order. The intrepid reader will quickly move to prod, stir, and tame the text again, and will be rewarded with a fifth option, “0/1,” which freezes the swirling letters in space. Another click on “0/1” opens up another option “Colour,” which invites further exploration leading to a reward at the end. In its entirety, “Enigma n” is an extraordinary and deceptively simple work that offers rich rewards for those who take the time to play with it. Entry drafted by: Davin Heckman
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Subject: poetry , animation, html/dhtml, visual poetry
Creator: Jim Andrews
Collector: ELO
Description: In this work of kinetic concrete poetry the interface serves as a stage for words directed by poet Robert Kendall. Each of the expressions used perform Kendall's interpretation of the words meaning "Faith" and resemble a specific character that differs in color, typescript, movement, and sound. The "expanding multi-verse" is a poem in five 'movements' that consists of four differently colored layers of text that are revealed one after the other by mouse clicks. Each of the sucessive layers of text is overlaid on the previous one(s), incorporating the 'old' text into the new. The new words glide into the text from various directions replacing the 'old'. Semantically, each new state engages in an argument with the previous one(s). On the level of content, the poem thematizes the relationship of "logic", "theory", and "doubt". To each of these expressions, a certain color (red, orange, brown, black) and behavior is assigned. Additionally, the five 'movements' are accompanied by music: xylophone-like sounds, melodies of a harp, spheric synthesizer vibrations which merge with the harp in the fourth movement, and in the final instance, the xylophone tones prevail. The orchestrated words performed on the screen reinforce the poem's meaning visually, auditorily, and semantically. Special to this work of concrete poetry is the dynamic use of space that make the words move: some of the words glide out of the text space, other words bend down to the right or, like the word "leap", jump into the foreground. In the end, all words fall to the ground except one: "faith". Parts of this description are cited from "The Virtual Muse. Forms and Theory of Digital Poetry" by Norbert Bachleitner published in: Theory into Poetry: New Approaches to the Lyric by Eva Mueller-Zettelmann and Margarete Rubik. Entry drafted by: Patricia Tomaszek
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Subject: Flash, Animation/Kinetic, poetry , audio, music, concrete poetry
Creator: Robert Kendall
Description: The “Ballad of Sand and Harry Soot” is a poem written by Stephanie Strickland as a score for a hypertext implementation, coded by Janet Holmes. Its images are suggestive of digital or mathematical culture, including Webcam photos, a core dump, an animated fractal, and algorithmic patterns inscribed in sand by a computer-driven steel ball. The latter images are from Jean-Pierre Hébert’s and Bruce Shapiro’s work, "Sisyphus" (1999). These images accompany the text of a love poem, a ballad of love gone wrong, or at least not entirely right, between Sand and Soot. At one level, the disjunction of image and text mirrors the difficulties of this pair. However, this discordance will spring into resonant oscillation for readers who either see or read an avatar of carbon-based chemistry in Harry Soot and silicon life in Sand. Entry drafted by: Patricia Tomaszek
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Subject: hypertext, visual poetry, interactive, html, women authors, poetry
Creator: Stephanie Strickland, Janet Holmes
Publisher: Stephanie Strickland, Janet Holmes
Collector: ELO
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