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my name is voik Dron and um I work at the Institute of English studies at the University of VAV and it is my great pleasure to be able to um um introduce you um to
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electronic literature give me a second to um uh share my presentation which you should be able to see
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now um the title of the of my talk is that elic literature from the hypertext novel to app fiction and um I would like us to start without any further um
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Ado um just a word um to introduce the um the notion before I um guide you through the history very briefly of um electronic literature and then uh I'm
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going to um um show you some examples some of the most interesting examples um of um electronic literature um it is difficult to come up with a definition
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of electronic or digital literature because with um um the um very rapidly expanding technological opportunities um what we understand as
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electronic uh literature keeps changing um but over the course of its uh three or so decades um electronic
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literature has um encompassed works that um its users um have been able to experience uh through a standalone computer through a computer um connected
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to the internet uh through mobile phones smartphones in in particular um uh tablets um as well as some other other devices I can't even think of right now
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um one of the um most characteristic features of electronic literature is that it's often interactive in other words it gives um the user um the
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opportunity to um experience it in an order of their own choosing it's not like reading a traditional book uh in which case our only decision is um when
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to flip the page uh when we're um experiencing a um a work of digital fiction uh we can um make a lot of decisions that will um influence the the
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shape of the narrative in some cases or the order in which we we are going to discover its contents um but um having said that there are also instances of
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non-interactive um literature um and um I'm going to show you a few of them you may have noticed that I have been using the term user rather than reader because um in elic literature we
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don't just read sometimes we never even have to read and so um um the the scholars working on that on that uh on that um type of Electro of of
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experimental literature have have suggested that we should um that we should use a more General notion um such as the user okay um you may have noticed this uh rather basic logo on the right
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hand side it comes from the late 1990s which is probably uh why it looks the way it does it stands for uh the electronic literature organization which was um established in the at the very
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end of the 21st century and um to this day it Remains the the most important institution that Champions promotes um electronic literature it also um Awards
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annual prizes to some of the most exciting um um examples of the genre let's move on to um a very quick uh recap of the um of the history of
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electronic literature um I would locate its origins in the early 1990s however um some Scholars suggest that we could go as far back as to the early
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1950s um when um Christopher stry one of um Alan Jing's uh collaboration um came up with a with
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a computer generated uh set of Love Letters uh that uh the employees of the Manchester University lab would find um on their tables uh every consecutive day
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um stry came up with a with a very simple formula um which uh which which you can of which um a very simple representation you can find um on
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the right um he created a system that sort of generates random words from a certain um base of vocabulary that he took from R's thesaurus and it arranges
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them in accordance with a with a simple linguistic formula formula such as you are my adjective noun my adjective noun Etc and uh it
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throws up some peculiar um uh connections okay uh but now moving on uh to I would say the actual origins of this notion
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1991 um a hypertext uh novel um uh created by Stuart malop titled victory garden um it
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um takes uh place um in uh during the time of the Gulf War and it is very simple and in its layout we need to remember it's the 1990s um let us start
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wherever we like um for example here and um what we get um is um a text with some hyperlink uh passages we can either
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ignore them or click on them if we click on them they send us to other um texts we can go back or else we can you know it's uh it becomes a um a journey with
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multiple um end points uh um and um yeah it's but but uh visually um it's uh pretty uh pretty pretty simple okay um
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let's go back uh to uh to to our presentation just a moment um and yes I mentioned uh um that
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victory garden um or I haven't mentioned but I should have done um is an example of the first generation of digital fiction um this name refers to the period um uh before the arrival of the
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worldwide web um the internet in other words and then uh comes the second generation of electronic literature which um draws on the possibilities of the internet and I would like to show
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you um just one example uh from that uh representing that uh period it's one of my favorite um examples of electronic literature despite its uh apparent
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Simplicity I think it's it can be a lot of fun to to explore its multiple possibilities um let's take a look uh again visually uh uh you can you can you
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can tell again that it's uh not very complex and um sophisticated uh we are um we get an introduction to a um a story uh of a
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man whose um whose outcome a story whose outcome will depend on our intervention and so uh in order to activate the story
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um we hit do it and then we get a brief intro which uh introduces the the atmosphere of the of the story as um or the setting of the story as a a
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supermarket late at night um it seems that um we are a um a man um who is um in a you know in a Shar shopping and notices and he notices a a
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brunette um a few meters ahead uh who is filling her trolley with sources and um at this point point we are supposed to time type in a command uh that will um
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uh Propel the story towards its resolution um until very recently um I have been convinced that there were that that there were only several um several phrases that that worked that the system
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that the website recognized such as talk to her um kiss her um and several others but um my student Julia yila who became
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fascinated with the story told me a couple of days ago um that there is actually a great multiplicity of of options among which um phrases such as
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eat the noi the noi that um we have just put into our trolley uh jump sing um throw the noi at her undress smile laugh
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cry Etc let's just uh maybe um type in like a random one um that works that I know works if we type in Jump here we are we get the the resolution of the
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story we don't have the time to read through any of this but obviously um um because you're viewing it on YouTube I imagine uh you have the option of uh of
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pausing and um by the way um you um will be able to to to find um all the works I'm showing you um online by you know typing in their uh title and author but
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um as soon as I can uh as soon as the the video is posted on YouTube I'm going to um add a comment post a comment in which I'm going to place um the links to all the works I'm mentioning so maybe
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when you're watching it um as you're watching it maybe his uh comment already exists okay uh let's uh move on to to something else um we're um leaving aside the the
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historical outline we're in the 21st century and we're focusing on um single representatives of a handful of
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subgenres of electronic uh literature um I would like us to start with um with the distributed narrative uh which is um a narrative
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that um we get uh sent in small portions um the way it works is that we usually sign up in some way um via email or uh
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well any other way um and um we uh begin to receive um uh the pieces of text um not necessarily text uh pieces of the
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work in some some installments regular regular or irregular as the author um wants us to receive it um um there have been quite a few examples of this um
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genre but I I would just like to mention one of them um which um sounds fascinating to me I regret that uh I didn't know about this project in 2001 and that I I wasn't able to to
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participate participate uh in it and Tim ael's Sur surrender control a project um which involved being sent 75 uh text messages over the period of five days
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and um what you can see on the right is um um yeah um just breakdown of all the all the messages and the time of their sending um from the beginning of day
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one um the opening commands that uh the well readers users participants maybe um in this case uh received um sound fairly
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um simple and maybe um I don't know like unpr problematic put your fingers in your mouth okay at 11:22 that's that may not be um a moment we may not be finding
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ourselves in a situation when we can do this without um attracting um any attention um but it's doable but then with the passage of time the commands
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become stranger and stranger um at one point for instance we are asked to skip lunch and that's a that that that's perhaps the moment when we begin to
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wonder whether uh those commands are not interfering um a little bit too much with our daily habits uh at some point we uh we well
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the participants uh received a message reading steal something and that it gets uh kind of weirder and weirder okay um there is more to be said
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about this um but we need to uh move on to another example locative narratives are work that take advantage
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of um some form of locative applications like um Google street view or Google Maps or or any other ones not necessarily provided by Google um one of
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the instances of of this this kind of experiment is um entrances and exits by uh Rafe lawsen from 2016 it's a work which is best experienced on a
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smartphone um it's not free um actually um but uh you can take a look at uh at a at a free sample um um you go to the website you you click on it and then um
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you get a um you get um you know the application looks um it's not an application it's a it's a it's a website that um looks like Google street view it is um greatly influenced by it or
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inspired by it and um there is this sense that uh that we're experiencing a story that is um located in in specific places and we can uh we can U explore
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the the surroundings the way we we can explore any any place on Earth with with Google street view um now um again one of the most um I
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would say enjoyable um examples of electronic literature um an example of a of a non-interactive narrative where or in which the the
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user's role is rest restricted to hitting the space button whenever you're ready to move on to the next um Step or to the next uh well well we would say
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page if this was a traditional novel but uh well whatever to the next uh well okay Point um I would like us to uh to take a look at least at the beginning of
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part one of how to rob a bank by Alan Bigalow um this work um won um the Robert couver award um um Ed by the the electronic literature
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Organization for for the for the best um electronic uh work of the Year okay uh yes we're advised to uh have the
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sound on I'm clicking the but the the the the space bar and we begin um part one [Music]
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so we we're already getting the sense that uh uh um we're inhabiting as if the the mind of of somebody who wants to um rob a bankle who's uh doing some
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research and trying to um find the right equipment get the necessary expertise now looking for the the B to ro Buffalo with a very high
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traditionally very high crime rate maybe the place to to do it he looking for an accomp [Music]
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and wondering um which Su would have been settled for the rest of his [Music] life doing some q&as wondering if he's
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capable ofing it through is so far a successful search [Music] for trying to win and this
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over okay um this goes on uh quite a while uh we don't have any more whils to devot to this but I um strongly
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um encourage you to uh give it to go it's a it's a very fun piece okay now um computer generated
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literature um um it's a notion that doesn't so doesn't mean um comput literature created with with the use of a of a computer because there's um
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obviously um um applies to most of if not all literary works today it it means that um a given work was um just to a
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large extent determined by uh by some software that obviously there was a human being um who came up with some concept but then um the the ultimate
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form of of that work is to a large extent dependent on um well artificial intelligence or uh or some some kind of tech
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technology um there are a number of examples of um of this uh very Niche uh um type of electronic literature um many of them by Nick monford who you can see
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um on the right he is perhaps um the most important or definitely one of the most important representatives of electronic literature he was the first president of the electronic literature Association he is a a professor of uh
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poetry uh at Yale he's a poet who uh primarily um works with um with electronic literature and I'd like to show you his animated poem um computer
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generated this is what it looks like um and um you we can tell easily that uh flow my tears is the basic line that uh
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recurs but we can also see um that there are some some other words that um occasionally replace tears such as urine uh um
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semen Flem mucus Menses all of them bodily fluids occasionally um other words appear such as fall police um and uh their existence is um
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somewhat mysterious and I haven't um exactly worked out um what it uh what it signifies um um police might be the word police is is perhaps
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relevant to the to the to the point that um um blow my tears is a phrase that appears in the title of one of one of Philip K Dick's novels titled flow my
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tears the policeman said from 1974 um the phrase um flow my tears is um mostly associated with um um a late 16th century song by John
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Dand okay that's a A peculiar instance of electronic literature but I would like to show you a um a wide variety of uh of of options a wide range uh of
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possibilities um now a hyper media novel um hyper media novels um have become I would say um quite quite popular over
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the last uh 10 years Steve Thomas's talk um was perhaps the the first milestone for the for the genre um but because that work is not
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available online um I um would like to U show you um an example the example of a of a of a more recent work by Ilia shilak titled queer skins
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which uh take tells the story um of a of a young gay um Doctor Who Um uh was infected with HIV at the
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beginning of the AIDS pandemic in the US and uh died several years later and the novel um takes the form of a of an archive that he left behind uh and that
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and that we are invited to sift through it's um at the bottom you can see uh chapters uh we don't need to start with the first one Missouri we can start with anyone we
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like we like let's take Alex uh it'll take a second for us to this is like um uh like a a box with various um
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things in it we have letters we have videos uh not that many in that sections but uh most of the other ones are are more more spacious uh we have more more things to explore for instance if we're
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left with a okay if we if we click on a letter we can read it um if we click on a video um well we can watch it there are also um sound
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files um some of them as you can see seem pretty random let's go to maybe a different let's go to carus for
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instance uh it's loading okay um some more letters some more videos I thought I'd have a few drinks go home and apologize
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but by the time I got back Sebastian was gone um we get uh um insights into uh the protagonist's uh life and and disease um from the perspectives of of
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various people who knew him and let me just add that um the author Ilia shilak um took the idea from from her experience as a as a doctor um who was involved in the uh in the
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AIDS epidemic in the in the United states in the in the late 1980s and early 1990s uh moving on um to nonlinear net
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art uh that sounds like a fairly complicated name um net art uh means internet art is short for internet artwork nonlinear means that um there
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are multiple entry points uh as was the case with um um with the hyper media novel we looked at a moment ago right there is no obvious place to begin um
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and um I would like to illustrate this uh um genre uh with um a work of my very favorite um artist of electronic literature David Clark a Canadian um
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artist whose um 88 constellations for viken Stein uh an electronic biography of uh vidin work is I would argue the very best that electronic literature has
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achieved so far but unfortunately this work is not available at the moment um in any shape or form um at least I don't have access to it and um I uh um for that reason I'm going to Illustrated
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with another work by David Clark which I also love uh it's titled the end a death in seven colors and it's a piece that um um
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is um an exploration of the contexts under which seven famous uh 20th century icons
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died uh maybe you can you I'm sure you can recognize some of the faces at least Sigman Freud Jim Morrison valter Benjamin uh Alan juring earlier
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mentioned briefly Judy Garland Marcel Dua and Princess Diana let's take a look um this is um the the kind of starting menu
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um and we can choose between the seven chapters Each of which corresponds to uh one of the colors of the rainbow um and um I would like us to actually even though we can start
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anywhere we like um I would like us to um look at the intro which uh um perhaps will be a good kind of way of of kind of introducing what the what this work uh
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what this work is like to get a taste of [Music] it but if I told
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me the seven colors to a rainbow I said yeah what the hell do they know and so this is how he divided up the Spectrum into these seven colors Newton did that not for any objective
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reason um he did it because he had an almost mystical belief that there should be seven colors and the reason for that belief was that he thought there should be some analogy between the spectrum of
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different colors and musical notes in a [Music]
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scale [Music] um so maybe uh you you can by now uh notice uh certain like the the kind of the connective Poetics of of this piece
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uh we've had sort of little Snippets of Jim Morrison proud though some called the thou not arily distinguishing
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between the seven of the rainbow the rainbow corresponding to the the division into seven Parts
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um let's go back to home and um maybe just one little uh uh snippet from the palace at 4 4 a.m. which is um um the title of a of sculpture by Alberto
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jacketti and let's look at at Chariots of Fire it's a performance of um Jerusalem by [Music]
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William one of the one of the most often performed songs the notice that um is the phase Chariot of [Music]
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fire and now they PL Destro us um the pr of the 1981 film Chariots of Fire which went on to win multiple Academy Awards Diana Princess of Wales has been
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seriously injured and her companion DOD alide has been killed in a motor accident in the French Capital Paris Reports say say a vehicle carrying the princess and her Entourage was being
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chased by a carload of Paparazzi photographers goodbye Rose goodbye let's stop this um and at some
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point um you were able to see perhaps um if you're very observant uh that um during the credits we could see this small inscription reading executive producer do
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aled who uh happens to have been Princess Diana's um lover partner and companion at the time when she uh when their car crashed uh in the alma uh
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passage in Paris and at that moment we could hear the voice over of a of a journalist talking about that crash and this was followed by Elton John singing a reworked version of a candle of Candle
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in the Wind um during Princess Diana stun Al so this is just a this is just um like a a brief um fragment showing you how um in David Clark's universe
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everything connects with everything else it's a it's sometimes a a dizzying and a and a and an infinitely fascinating experience um for me at
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least okay um and the very last uh piece that I I would like to uh share with you an app fiction so um um as the name suggests um app
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fictions are are experienced through uh um applications that one can uh download U on one's smartphone um and U Caren for
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instance a piece from 2015 um created by um this artistic Collective known as blast Theory um is um freely available
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on um Google uh Play for instance um and uh when you when you download this application it doesn't occupy that much space you are um you can begin a
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peculiar um session of like peculiar kind of therapy series of therapeutic sessions uh with a psychologist psychotherapist named Karen um who um a couple of times
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a day uh sends you messages and they really appear on your phone um this is oh I haven't got a sorry I haven't got a a print screen of that but uh it's a it's a peculiar kind of experience when
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you can see that you have a text message from Karen um inviting you to your first session um this is obviously sent by the app that's already on your phone and then um you're invited to um speak to
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her at a specific times a day uh you click she talks to you she asks for your input um um uh which you can convey through clicking on specific buttons on
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your um on your screen and I have made a couple of um print screens uh myself and then when you're done with a specific session uh
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you you see when the next episode will be available for you and you can't um go through this experience at your own pace the pace is dictated by Karen or else by
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uh by the piece itself okay um this is this is the end of this um very quick um introduction to the possibilities of electronic literature I hope that at least some of
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the works are going to kind of push you to explore them on your own um which is all the fun um and um I would like to finish by um making a couple of very quick uh
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remarks um about some of the characteristic features advantages and maybe tiny dis advantages of electronic literature uh W which is uh multimodal multimedial um in the sense that it
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combines you know um text and sound and image uh tactile experience Etc so it's it can do it can you know rely on activate maybe um all the
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senses uh and so it's a it could be a much more immersive experience than um reading a traditional book it it is often interactive which also contribute contributes to to this sense of
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Engagement and and immersion um and um it's Cutting Edge in the sense that it constantly draws on new technologies and so it's a yeah it's
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a genre that keeps evolving the downside of this is that after a while um some of the The Works of electronic literature um no longer work because the the
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software has has become Obsolete and this is for instance what what has happened um with my favorite work of electronic literature the earlier mentioned 88 constellations for vikin Stein so um sometimes you may hear you
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know read about you know a magnificent work that was created 15 years ago and there's just no way you can ever see it again um and yes it's future oriented in
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the sense that it's you know yes it's uh always on the lookout for for new for new possibilities new um yeah technological kind of developments and um it it's definitely um a branch of of
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literature that has a a future and that future um is uh is seems to be quite quite exciting and uh I uh look forward to to to um um witnessing
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how it um develops I hope that uh I managed to get you at least a little bit um interested in the uh in the subject this is all from me um thank you so much
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uh take good care byebye
End of transcript