Electronic Literature, pp. 131-145, 155-157
Does anyone know what the author is trying to articulate here? On the first page of the reading, “This chapter elucidates further a framework in which digital literature can be understood as creating recursive feedback loops among embodied practice, tacit knowledge and explicit articulation.” A good point is mentioned on page 132—when you think about it, nearly all of human communication at least in modern societies is translated into a digital form, with the exception of face-to-face talk. On 135-136, it appears the recursive feedback loop in electronic literature is human to computer and computer to human interaction with the text that is displayed on the screen. The author’s two main points are given on p136, “verbal narratives are simultaneously conveyed and disrupted by code” and the second, “distributed cognition implies distributed agency.” Tachistoscope, from the reading is based on an experiment from the early 20th century; it tries to flash many images at once at the user and not being able to acquire meaning in each image— it is suggested that we still receive subliminal messages through such a process. The key aspect from the reading about Sundays in the Park (p145), it “brings to conscious attention the link between vocalization and linguistic richness.” On page 156, Stefan’s randomizing algorithm is noted for picking apart pieces of texts and creating a poem—unless the algorithm was designed to create that, a poem—wouldn’t human intervention still be required to see if the poem made sense to a human as artificial intelligence (AI) is not advanced enough yet to do this for us?
William Poundstone, Project for Tachistoscope (also on E-Lit CD)
The sprites around the middle-Start button-area are nice to help explain the concepts behind the work itself. While subliminally, I may be exposed to the items I cannot comprehend— between the music, changing colors of the expanding and contracting circle and later imagery makes the work a bit difficult to understand. However, in the reading it does note the analogy between certain images and what they are supposed to represent, so that was helpful somewhat when looking into this work. I thought the statistic in the Subliminal Con was interesting in that “Drink Coca-Cola” increased 18.1% and a similar ad for popcorn increased sales by 57.5%– this is interesting because in the presidential election four years ago when it flashed “Democrats” as “Rats” on the screen, that backfired on the republican base. Perhaps these ads work best when one cannot pause and watch the medium frame-by-frame?
Millie Niss and Martha Deed, Oulipoems (also on E-Lit CD)
In the beginning, it states that “oulipo” is created by a combination of math and poetry generated by rules or constraints. Is that the audio is supposed to represent—in the entry page? I appreciate the existence of an introduction in this piece as the explanations for subliminal messages in the last; it offers insight into how it works and what one should expect when interacting with a particular work. Overall the structure and outline of this work reminded me of The Bomar Gene in that there are separate doors one can walk through and in each door or selection, one is presented with a different work. Whether it is a game, matching or putting a paragraph together, it seemed highly reminiscent of The Bomar Gene. Just like the Bomar Gene, sometimes its best to turn the audio off to better-understand the work at hand.