ELO 08: Day 3
Jun 22 2008, 4:26AM
Reading Digital Media
Laura Borràs Castanyer and Joan Elies Adell both from Hermeneia discussed how the operation of reading works in the light of new and changing technologies. As in other presentations they brought up the contrast between 'surface' reading, or 'sufing' the text instead of immersion in a text. Castanyer connected this pattern to reading the poetry of John Ashbery as an example (this Slate article discusses 'skimming' Ashbery poetry). They also had interesting observations about the modernist aspect of new technologies. They described our culture as experiencing a cyclical interference from the next 'new' thing - disruptions that suit the modernist pattern of breaking with convention and finding new means of expression.
Cheri Crenshaw's presentation concerned a dialogic approach to electronic literature in which a classic work is 'remediated' in an electronic medium. An example is Shelly Jackson's Patchwork Girl as it relates to Mary Shelly's Frankenstein. Crenshaw argues that this kind of 'transgression' (Crenshaw referenced Donna Haraway here) creates a potent fusion.
Daniel Howe presented his work on RiTa - natural language processing software for generative literature. Howe argues that computational technology has fostered generative art in visual/cinematic/musical domains much more than in the literary domain. RiTa is an attempt to address this issue.
Media Art Labs
These three presentations were on labs from different universities... Talan Memmott presented the Karlskrona Remixological Postcinematic Performance Machine. Caitlin Fisher described some of the work they're doing in their augmented reality lab (for example using fiducial markers similar to this). Carolyn Guertin presented the eCreate Lab at UTA, and Dene Grigar presented the MOVE Lab.
Vision Scapes
The last set of projects/research started with Roderick Coover's work on Digital Panoramas (his paper is posted there). He drew very interesting connections between 19th century rotunda panoramic murals (spacial continuity) and the the cinematic long take (temporal continuity). He is investigating the possibilities that a digital panorama offer as a fusion of those two traditions.
Martha Gabriel presented her Digital Oracles project. She asks very interesting questions about our culture's relationship to search engines. She takes a critical stance, pointing out that only 2% of the web is searchable, and yet most people consider search fairly comprehensive. Search, she asserts, affect us more than televised propaganda. She also highly recommends watching Epic 2015 (I'll watch tonight).
Tags : elo08 literature reading research theory
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