## serge bouchardon
digital literature exists in the wake of things like: - combinatorial lit (oulipo) - constraint lit (idem) - fragment lit (?) - audio/visual lit
literary experiments (-> which implies that the experiment is the first intent, no? could it be that art flourishes on the margin, like the hacker code of paloque berges?)
literary expression: writing, narrative, position of the reader
what has source code writing to offer when it comes to literary creation? (and vice-versa)
the digital only refers to itself (yes, but the digital is inseparable from the act of writing, which then involves a human and therefore necessarily (?) a relationship to other worlds). but also the very first thing is hardware
form and meaning are closely linked (cf. j. rousset, forme et signification, 1966)
the bizarre love triangle of media studies: - technically - semiotically - socially
source code could be a particular modality/mode of text (now i need to define which one!)
“possesses aesthetic properties everything which sets in motion, which makes do (fait faire)” (materialized abstraction)
what is the relationship between literature and communication?? (text as an object to think through)
“the interrogative stance can not only stand in what has been done, but also in what can be anticipated, through conception and creation” (epistemological constructivism, hacking, 1983). “the creative moment sets up the conditions to observe a phenomenon”
halfway between the concrete object that belong in the observation field and the scientific object which has alread-established explanations of the real
the digital lit object is complex: need to explicit these webs of relationships (historical, geographical, means vs. ends, broadcasting techniques); it stands at the frontier of a lot of domains.
in the poetic dimension of technical objects, there is this idea that, as we realize a technical object, new ideas appear and transform the initial project. it is a literature OF the technical apparatus.
is there really a tension between the imperative formal semantics of programming and the cultural forms of writing? writing is an apparatus of externalizing memory and thought, while the program is “a means to certify the future, to eliminate uncertainty and the unlikely in order to bring it back under control, mastery”. (while i don’t see this as a tension), the author says that out of this initial seemingly-impossibility. (closeness of the program, openness of the language)
question of the architectural literature. «<
L’INTERSEMIOTISATION DU LANGUAGE ET DU TEXTE (how these systems of signs interact with each other)
the aesthetic experience can result from the tension between materiality and the revelation of meaning/direction (transcendance). it is a bit like the double-coding that CPB was talking about, but perhaps could be extended by defining (precise/multiple) what materiality and transcendentality; but nonetheless advancing an aesthetics of materiality.
dual-positioning of source code text 1. against text (against literary) 2. against text (against productive software)
e-lit is at the frontier between print and digital, text and multimedia, litterature and art (??) e-lit is at the frontier surroundable, by authors, researchers, movements, and institutions e-lit is a laboratory, in which the researcher works on samples but those samples could influence the broader world
but it has first and foremost a quadruple dimension (social, technical, semotic and aesthetic) as such, it is a polysemiotic object (made out of the encounter of different signs)
classical rhetoric has: 1. invention 2. disposition 3. memory 4. elocution 5. action
today: 1. structure 2. choice of words 3. choice of figures
pierre fontanier: 1. metonymy (contiguity) (a thing for another thing) 2. synecdoche (intersection) (a part for the whole or vice versa) 3. metaphor (superposition) (a lower thing for a higher thing)
(klinenberg): une figure est un dispositif consistant a produire des sens implicites, de telle maniere que l’enonce ou on le trouve soit polyphonique. how do programming languages enrich this definition of figure?
materiality as hardware, as interaction, but also as RESISTANCE
CORPUS: jean pierre balpe, lejourleplusclair, p. 189
e-lit has an aesthetics: - of noise/saturation - of letting go (the text can be out of our control) - of the ephemeral - of reenchating (alexandra saemmer)
e-lit extends existing theories: - the novel - the text - the figure - the materiality - the memory
hayles analyzes e-lit to produce theories of media studies
two important things tension between programmed language and cultural language, and tension of communication between the individual and the group
grammatization is the transforming of a time-based continuum into a space-based discrete suite
there is a continuum between ordinary writing and literary writing (the literate offers a different perspective on the ordinary)
writing: normative system and human activity and products (means that humans have found to make language visible)
keys to understand e-lit - textuality - narrativity - gesture (interactivity)
etre litteraire, c’est peut etre avant tout etre sensible a l’epaisseur signiante d’un message et aux infinis jeux de l’interpretation. ce que les etudes litteraires peuvent egalement apporter aux sciences de l’information et de la communication, c’est ainsi une sensibilite a la complexite des postures d’interpretation, mais aussi a l’esthetique d’un message a travers la question inepuisable du style