{"id":87,"date":"2008-08-27T22:54:34","date_gmt":"2008-08-28T02:54:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/?p=87"},"modified":"2008-11-04T16:20:31","modified_gmt":"2008-11-04T20:20:31","slug":"jabber-just-nonsense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/2008\/08\/27\/jabber-just-nonsense\/","title":{"rendered":"JABBER: Just Nonsense?"},"content":{"rendered":"

First, I\u2019d like to respond to ekimbell\u2019s comment about Orson Whales<\/em>. <\/span>I agree that although Orson Whales<\/em> is unchanging, it does have an element of randomness in the sense that it can be interpreted in several different ways. <\/span>If the same holds true for \u201cold media,\u201d however, in what ways is Orson Whales<\/em> considered new media? <\/span>Does it really just go back to the rather dull definition of new media as cultural objects that make use of digital technologies? <\/span>I don\u2019t think there\u2019s a clear-cut answer here, but I will take a stab at another definition. <\/span>It seems to me that new media is a amalgamation of several different media forms. <\/span>For instance, Orson Whales<\/em> can be considered literature, art, music, all of the above or a combination of these things. <\/span>New media challenges our ideas about text, as well as the ways in which we experience and thus interpret text. <\/span>We read Moby Dick<\/em> and think about the several different meanings it can possess. <\/span>As for Orson Whales<\/em>, we\u2019re not really sure how to read it or if we can even read it at all. <\/span>Do we read Orson Whales<\/em>? <\/span>Do we watch Orson Whales<\/em>? <\/span>Or do we listen to Orson Whales<\/em>? <\/span>This is what I mean when I say new media challenges the way we experience and interpret\u00a0text.<\/span><\/p>\n

In terms of representational meaning, Neil Hennessey\u2019s JABBER: The Jabberwocky Engine<\/em> is pretty much what it looks like. <\/span>In short, it\u2019s a bunch of letters that when bonded together, form \u201cnonsense words.\u201d <\/span>According to Hennessey, \u201cJABBER realises a linguistic chemistry with letters as atoms and words as molecules.\u201d <\/span>In this way, Hennessey challenges our preconceived notions about language and text and how we interpret them. <\/span>After all, you usually don\u2019t think about chemistry when talking about letters and words. <\/span>At face value, JABBER<\/em> is just like the game of Boggle: You put certain letters together to form certain words. <\/span>The irony in JABBER<\/em>, however, is that although the bonds between letters are determined by the likelihood that they would appear alongside each other in the English dictionary, the words those letters form are mere gibberish. <\/span>This is where evocative meaning comes into play.\u00a0 Could Hennessey be commenting on the arbitrariness of the English language? <\/span>Well, he\u2019s definitely underlining the concepts of letters and words, concepts that we overlook on a day-to-day basis. But w<\/span>ho determines which combinations of letters constitute a word? <\/span>We are all guilty of throwing our words around or talking gibberish, if you will. <\/span>As a result, others can misconstrue our intended meanings. <\/span>Although the nonsense words in JABBER<\/em> and the gibberish we speak have no true meanings to outsiders, they\u00a0still have some meaning to us. <\/span>In Electronic Literature<\/em>, Katherine Hayles asks, \u201cIs literary quality possible in digital media or is electronic literature demonstrably inferior to the print canon?\u201d (2). <\/span>I think Hennessey prompts his audience to ask a similar question. <\/span>JABBER<\/em> just produces nonsense words, but isn\u2019t there more to it?\u00a0 After all, why are we studying it in the first place? <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

First, I\u2019d like to respond to ekimbell\u2019s comment about Orson Whales. I agree that although Orson Whales is unchanging, it does have an element of randomness in the sense that it can be interpreted in several different ways. If the same holds true for \u201cold media,\u201d however, in what ways is Orson Whales considered new … Continue reading JABBER: Just Nonsense?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[7,10,4,12,11],"class_list":["post-87","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflections","tag-electronic-literature","tag-evocative","tag-literature","tag-meaning","tag-representational"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":719,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87\/revisions\/719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}