Read N. Katherine Hayles, “Electronic Literature: What is It?” http://eliteratur

Question

Read N. Katherine Hayles, “Electronic Literature: What is It?” http://eliterature.org/pad/elp.html. Read Abstract, Preface, Section 1 (“A Context for Electronic Literature”), Section 2 (“Genres of Electronic Literature”), Section 3 (“Electronic Literature Is Not Print”), Section 4 (“Preservation, Archiving, Dissemination”).

Please write a response to the article above. Please write about your thoughts about what Hayles discusses not your impressions about the artworks.

LINK:

http://eliterature.org/pad/elp.html

Explanation / Answer

By studying the  “Electronic Literature: What is It?” I understood what I am written in below

OUR ROLE

The Role of the Electronic Literature Organization:

With just over 30 years of development under its belt, electronic literature, the field that the ELO represents, is relatively a new area of investigation when we consider it within the historical context of literary works produced for the oral, written, and print mediums. But if we think of it within the framework of literature expressed in yet another medium, the digital, then it can easily be regarded as the continuation of a very long tradition, one that is exploring the affordances and constraints of this new medium much like we saw the “written” visual/concrete poetry in the 2nd and 3rd centuries in Alexandria and “printed” novels like Laurence Stern’s Tristram Shandy in 18th century did in theirs. What makes the work that the ELO does absolutely imperative in this “Digital Information Age,” as scholar Paul Ceruzzi calls it, is its leadership in developing methods for evaluating quality of “digital” creative and critical works and its insights into cataloging its growing body of “digital” fiction, poetry, and other literary forms, for the ELO is the only scholarly body in the U.S. dedicated solely to the investigation of literature produced for the digital medium.

From the start the ELO has made common cause with organizations such as Creative Commons, Archiving the Avant Garde, ArchiveIT.org, and the Library of Congress, to ensure the open circulation, attributed citation, and preservation of works, without which no field can develop.

Equally important is the discovery of talent and common areas of interest among our membership. Our affiliation with numerous organizations attests to the extensive network of people who produce works and the growing audience that reads, discusses, and teaches e-lit. The collection and circulation of works is another way that developments in the field are recorded and made available to our membership – continuously in the Electronic Literature Directory, serially in the Electronic Literature Collection, our archival work, and perennially in the Library of Congress Archive-IT initiative. Through our conference series, we provide a way for artists, writers, and scholars to productively discuss existing work and to further develop the field.

Electronic literature

Electronic literature or digital literature is a genre of literature encompassing works created exclusively on and for digital devices, such as computers, tablets, and mobile phones. Some platforms of this new digitized world include blog fiction, twitterature as well as facebook stories. This means that these writings cannot be easily printed, or cannot be printed at all, because elements crucial to the text are unable to be carried over onto a printed version. The digital literature world continues to innovate print's conventions all the while challenging the boundaries between digitized literature and electronic literature. Some novels are exclusive to tablets and smartphones for the simple fact that they require a touchscreen. Digital literature tends to require a user to traverse through the literature through the digital setting, making the use of the medium part of the literary exchange. Espen J. Aarseth wrote in his book Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature that "it is possible to explore, get lost, and discover secret paths in these texts, not metaphorically, but through the topological structures of the textual machinery".

Definitions

It is difficult to accurately define electronic literature. The phrase itself consists of two words, each with their own specific meanings. Arthur Krystal in What Is Literature explains that "lit(t)eratura referred to any writing formed with letters". However, Krystal goes on to explore what literature has transformed into: "a record of one human being's sojourn on earth, proffered in verse or prose that artfully weaves together knowledge of the past with a heightened awareness of the present in ever new verbal configurations". Electronic denotes anything "of, relating to, or being a medium...by which information is transmitted electronically". Thus electronic literature can be considered a branch from the main tree of literature. Katherine Hayles discusses the topic in the online article Electronic Literature: What Is It. She argues "electronic literature, generally considered to exclude print literature that has been digitized, is by contrast 'digital born', and (usually) meant to be read on a computer". A definition offered by the Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) states electronic literature "refers to works with an important literary aspect that takes advantage of the capabilities and contexts provided by the stand-alone or networked computer".

On its official website, the ELO offers this additional definition of electronic literature as consisting of works which are:

While the ELO definition incorporates many aspects that are applied in digital literature, the definition lacks any solid guidelines and also fails to recognize literature created on social media platforms including Twitterature. With the apparent vagueness, many debate on what truly qualifies as a piece of e-literature. A large number of works fall through the cracks of the imprecise characteristics that generally make up electronic literature.

A gradual transition into the digital world beginning with new advancements in technology to makes things more efficient and accessible. This is comparable to the release of the printing press in the 15th century, as people did not consider it a major contributor to literature at first. In the 1960s and 1970s, the creation of the personal computer allowed people to begin expanding literature into the electronic realm.

Predecessors

In 1877, spoken word recordings began with the invention of the phonograph. In the 1930s, the first "talking book" recordings were made to hold short stories and book chapters.The 1970s were when the term "audiobook" became part of the vernacular as cassette tapes entered the public.1971 was the year officially accepted as the year of the first e-book. Although there were several contenders to the invention of an "electronic book" prior to this, Michael Hart, the founder of the Gutenberg Project, has been accepted as the official inventor of the e-book after creating a digital copy of the Declaration of Independence.

“Electronic Literature Is Not Print”

In terms of what exactly separates one genre from another, I think in that case it’s more a question of degree than anything. Poems can have narrative elements and novels be poetically written, but it seems (in general) that these elements aren’t the aim of the work. In terms of the e-lit/print literature debate, I’d probably say that while print literature certainly can invite reader participation (side note: you mentioned Pale Fire, so you should check out Dictionary of the Khazars if you haven’t, because it’s similarly experimental and delightful), the fact that print lit is print means that its text nevertheless remains immobile. You can reread the text presented by print lit, but that transformation occurs within your head and not on the page; the text before you cannot physically change, while it can in e-lit. The change isn’t absolute, of course, but it certainly gives the impression of linked causality. Ultimately, though, I’d say that it’s all relative, and that are definitely cases where it might not be as useful to analyze a piece as e-lit instead of as print literature (for example, if it’s just some dry New York Times article online that doesn’t take advantage of its media-specific properties the way, say, a Buzzfeed article full of gifs would).

With all of that said, and to return to your original point (and Cynthia’s subsequent observations), in many ways the supposed examples of ‘electronic literature’ merely situate already existing narrative strategies and forms in a new medium. Incidentally, I kind of wrote about this as well in my blog post about Moby-Dick anticipating electronic media. For me, electronic literature as a toolbox opens new ways to engineer and develop narrative, though few seem able to think imaginatively outside the box enough to achieve anything more than transferring your everyday article from print magazine to blog post. Maybe the form has yet to be fully explored? Where is that Nabokov or Joyce using all manner of code to blow up narrative–to transform each letter of the language into a kind of user-activated cubist puzzle simultaneously active on several levels simultaneously for academics and children readers alike.

Preservation, Archiving, Dissemination

At last year’s Electronic Literature conference in Los Angeles, Katherine Hayles gave a keynote that warned that the incessant development of the software and hardware is rendering old computer based works obsolete and inaccessible. Although obsolescence is a problem for every form of cultural production (someday even the pyramids will wear away), the reliance of computer-based creations upon a particular and delicate matrix of software and hardware, makes preserving and archiving digital work especially challenging. Out of last Spring’s discussions emerged the “PAD” initiative: it is an effort to develop a software standard (and perhaps eventually software products) that would give writers and artists some influence over the future development of the hardware/software interface, especially with regard to three related activities: preservation, archiving, and dissemination. Like most things in life, what may seem to have a simple solution (for example, preserving digital works by creating emulators that allow us to migrate them to new platforms) ends up becoming complex, and implicated in many other issues. Here are a few: the value of earlier works (are they worth saving?); cost (at what expense?); technical feasibility (how can it be done?); ownership of works and software platforms (what sort of open-ness is necessary for preservation, archiving and dissemination); the various interests of users (who benefits, and it what ways?).

The April conference has two primary purposes: to address the many general issues surrounding an attempt to preserve, archive and disseminate digital works, and, in dialogical spirit, we hope to offer an account of the PAD project that will allow us to benefit from those participating in the conference.

Electronic literature, according to Hayles, becomes unplayable after a decade or less due to the "fluid nature of media". Therefore, electronic literature risks losing the opportunity to build the "traditions associated with print literature". On the other hand, classics such as Michael Joyce's afternoon, a story (1987) are still read and have been republished on CD, while simple HTML hypertext fictions from the 1990s are still accessible online and can be read in modern browsers.

Several organizations are dedicated to preserving works of electronic literature. The UK-based Digital Preservation Coalition aims to preserve digital resources in general, while the Electronic Literature Organization's PAD (Preservation / Archiving / Dissemination) initiative gave recommendations on how to think ahead when writing and publishing electronic literature, as well as how to migrate works running on defunct platforms to current technologies.

The Electronic Literature Collection is a series of anthologies of electronic literature published by the Electronic Literature Organization, both on CD/DVD and online, and this is another strategy in working to make sure that electronic literature is available for future generations.

The Maryland Institute for Technologies in the Humanities also works to archive electronic literature.

Notable people and works

Noteworthy authors, critics, and works associated with electronic literature include:

Pry, a novella, a collaboration between Danny Cannizzaro and Samantha Gorman (also known as Tender Claws). It is an electronic literature application for phones and tablets. By utilizing the touch-based gestures used on tablets, Pry proves to be a very dynamic approach to the emerging e-lit genre. The use of these gestures allow the reader to dig beneath the story at the surface of Pry.

Game, game, game and again game (2008), Nothing you have done deserves such praise (2013), I made this. you play this. we are enemies (2009), and Scrape Scraperteeth(2011) are important examples of the intersection of games and poetry. They are created by digital poet and net-artist Jason Nelson whose career has been devoting to exploring interface, interactivity, and surrealism within electronic literature.

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