Rob Swigart has been a journalist, a research affiliate at the Institute for the Future, a technical writer for Apple Computer, designer and writer of several computer games, secretary of the board of the Electronic Literature Organization, and is the author of nine novels, the latest of which is Xibalba Gate, A Novel of the Classic Maya. An interactive novel, Portal, was published in 1986 on computer disk and two years later in ‘hard copy’. Rob Swigart has been a journalist, a research affiliate at the Institute for the Future, a technical writer for Apple Computer, designer and writer of […]
[…]to enlighten critical discussion of works such as John McDaid’s Uncle Buddy’s Funhouse and Rob Swigart’s Portal, which present puzzling worlds that the operator must decipher. Aarseth only touches on the ludic nature of Deadline, though he at least makes mention of the game-like qualities of this and other cybertexts. In a comment on one specific Deadline interaction, Aarseth complains that some of the replies provided are “pure nonsense,” giving the example of the work’s response to the command “fingerprint me”: “Upon looking over and dusting the me you notice there are no good fingerprints to be found.” Actually the […]
[…]I discovered that HyperCard was one of the programs that a number of early hypertext authors—Rob Swigart, Stuart Moulthrop, Deena Larsen, John McDaid—used to build their hypertexts. At the same time I found out about Storyspace, the authoring environment that Michael Joyce and Jay Bolter created to publish Joyce’s novel afternoon (1987)—what the New York Times called “the granddaddy of hypertext fictions,” which sure sounded significant. So I tried out both programs, and after a couple years settled on Storyspace. Brian: So you began reading e-lit in 1992. Between 1984 and 1992 were you writing much? Bill: Oh, yes. Back then I […]
Steve Tomasula’s robust new anthology delivers its readers a dazzling variety of aesthetic artifacts, as the list after the title’s colon suggests. The diversity across its 500+ pages and 14+ hours of online content separates Conceptualisms from collections of a more mainstream bent. He has gathered online animations, recorded performances, and interactive platforms along with experimental works of fiction, essays, and poetry; in the collection’s last section, we see a transcript, a legal summary, a grant proposal, and a contract, all of which Tomasula argues can be classed as literature (while also proposing that the entries raise the question of […]
This special gathering collects reflections of the Critical Code Studies Working Group 2020 (CCSWG ‘20), a biannual meeting to explore the intersections of humanistic inquiry and computer code studies. Coordinated by Mark Marino (USC), Jeremy Douglass (UCSB), and Zach Mann (USC), the 2020 Working Group was held online from January 20 to February 3. It brought together more than 150 participants from around the world to share ideas, populating dozens of discussion threads with hundreds of comments, critiques, and critical readings. The need to attend to code could not be more urgent. Code exerts a regulatory effect over society and […]
Joe, (I’ve copied this to Mark and Steve who might be interested in listening in on the discussion – Hi Mark! Hi Steve!) I had a fruitful and interesting discussion with Ewan yesterday. He’s going to pull together some time estimates and costs for re-working the interface and building the database. You know, he’s the perfect collaborative partner for this – he not only knows how to build the stuff, he thinks the dynamic activities through from a conceptual standpoint, and he’s familiar with the issues involved with scholarly publishing. He’s also attempting to create a hybrid practice that includes […]
Hi All, I just had to jump in here. What a courageous document / email “essay” this is. These issues of database construction, interface design and context, publication as active event, navigational cues, visual metaphors, environmental logic, reader-response “picture theory” etc., are crucial. So my first suggestion is that we archive these group emails as they evolve. We’re definitely onto something here. A lot of these issues are coming up in the net/web art scene too. Calling into question how an online publication presents itself is similar to calling into question how an exhibition context emerges for net-specific works of […]
An “eighteenth-century” novel, Ingenious Pain seamlessly combines various cultures of eighteenth-century England: it features the medical world, with its progress in surgical and other techniques (not to mention some entertaining in-fighting among schools of both physicians and “psychologists”), but it also offers a background and foreground peopled with less “officially” recognized members of the cultural terrain – a mermaid, a cabinet of wonders, table-top-sized automata, and a hermaphrodite doctor who collects human oddities for medical experiment. With its combination of high and low culture, the novel presents a full and rounded eighteenth century, but does so with a wit and […]
What follows is a transcript of a talk I gave on April 4, 2000 at a symposium held by the Science and Technology Law Center at Albany Law School. The symposium was called “Internet Crimes and Civil Violations”; I was asked to talk about music and the Internet in that context. I had been excitedly following the growth of the Internet, and particularly the implications for music and art. The invitation to speak gave me an opportunity to try to put a bunch of disparate ideas together. I’m pretty sure I failed in doing that (and I sure didn’t talk […]
Editor’s Note: Olivia Block and Seth Nehil are two sound artists who create music by integrating sounds from electronic sources, traditional instruments, field recordings and found objects such as old tape recordings or leaves, rocks, and pieces of glass. Collaborating together and at times with others, they are part of a world-wide community of composer/performers who are developing a new lingua franca of sound that puts the natural and the artificial into play with one another: composer/performers that blur genres of sound and music, as well as sound and silence. They extend the tradition of John Cage through their use […]