By N. Katherine Hayles
The Electronic Literature Organization (ELO)

The shortcomings of importing theoretical assumptions developed in the context of print into analyses of electronic media were vividly brought to light by Espen J. Aarseth's important book Cybertext: Explorations of Ergodic Literature. Rather than circumscribe electronic literature within print assumptions, Aarseth swept the board clean by positing a new category of "ergodic literature," texts in which "nontrivial effort is required to allow the reader to traverse the text" (1). Making a different analytical cut through textual groupings that included computer games, print literature and electronic hypertexts, among others, Aarseth established a grid comprised of eight different operators, many of which have purchase mostly with electronic texts rather than print. The grid yields a total of 576 different positions on which a variety of different kinds of texts can be located. (Note 88) Although the method has limitations, notably that it is blind to content and relatively indifferent to the specificity of media, it has the tremendous virtue of demonstrating that electronic texts cannot simply be shoved into the same tent with print without taking into account their different modes of operation. These innovations have justifiably made Cybertext a foundational work for the study of computer games and a seminal text for thinking about electronic literature. (Note 89) Markku Eskelinen's work, particularly "Six Problems in Search of a Solution: The challenge of cybertext theory and ludology to literary theory," further challenges traditional narratology as an adequate model for understanding ergodic textuality, making clear the need to develop frameworks that can adequately take into account the expanded opportunities for textual innovations in digital media. Proposing variations on Gérard Genette's narratological categories, Eskelinen demonstrates, through a wide variety of ingenious suggestions for narrative possibilities that differ in temporal availability, intertextuality, linking structures, etc., how Aarseth's ergodic typology can be used to expand narratology so it would be more useful for ergodic works in general, including digital works. (Note 90)

Similar ground-clearing was undertaken by Lev Manovich in his influential The Language of New Media. (Note 91) Although his emphasis is primarily on cinema rather than electronic literature, his "five principles of new media" have helped to define the distinctiveness of new media forms in contrast to print and other electronic media such as broadband television. (Note 92) Four of the five follow in straightforward fashion, respectively, from the binary basis for digital computers (numerical representation), object-oriented programming (modularity and variability), and networked architectures with sensors and actuators (automation). The deepest and most provocative for electronic literature is the fifth principle of "transcoding," by which Manovich means the importation of ideas, artifacts, and presuppositions from the "cultural layer" to the "computer layer" (46). Although it is too simplistic to posit these "layers" as distinct phenomena (because they are in constant interaction and recursive feedback with one another), the idea of transcoding nevertheless makes the crucial point that computation has become a powerful means by which preconscious assumptions move from such traditional cultural transmission vehicles as political rhetoric, religious and other rituals, gestures and postures, literary narratives, historical accounts, and other purveyors of ideology into the material operations of computational devices. This is such an important insight that, although space does not allow me to develop it fully here, I will return to it later to indicate briefly some of the ways in which it is being explored. (Note 93)

With these ground-clearing arguments, new opportunities became available to re-think the specificities of print and electronic literature and to explore their commonalities without collapsing one into the other. Loss Pequeño Glazer's Digital Poetics, cited earlier, argues that the materiality of practice is crucial both to experimental print literature and to innovative electronic work. As he and others have argued, notably Matthew Kirschenbaum, John Cayley, and Matthew Fuller, code must be considered as much a part of the "text" of electronic literature as the screenic surface. Web pages, for example, rely on HTML, XML, or similar markup languages to be properly formatted. Alexander Galloway in Protocol puts the case succinctly: "Code is the only language that is executable" (emphasis in original) (Note 94). Unlike a print book, electronic text literally cannot be accessed without running the code. Critics and scholars of digital art and literature should therefore properly consider the source code to be part of the work, a position underscored by authors who embed in the code information or interpretive comments crucial to understanding the work.

Jerome McGann, whose work on the Rossetti Archive (Note 95) and contributions to Institute of Advanced Technology in the Humanities (IATH) at the University of Virginia have made him a leading figure in the field, turns this perspective on its head in Radiant Textuality: Literature after the World Wide Web by arguing that print texts also use markup language, for example, paragraphing, italics, indentation, line breaks and so forth. (Note 96) Although this point somewhat muddies the waters in that it conflates operations performed by the reader with those performed by the computer, it nevertheless establishes common ground between scholars interested in bibliographic and textual criticism of print works and those oriented to close examination of digital texts. Also contributing to building bridges between digital protocols and close reading practices is the The Ivanhoe Game, a joint project of Johanna Drucker and Jerome McGann, now being developed at Speculative Computing Laboratory at the University of Virginia. (Note 97) Part literary criticism, part creative play, and part computer game, The Ivanhoe Game invites participants to use textual evidence from a given literary text to imagine creative interpolations and extrapolations, facilitated through a computer interface. (Note 98) Noah Wardrip-Fruin and David Durand follow similar lines of inquiry in Cardplay, a program that uses virtual playing cards to create the script of a play. Similar projects are Mark Bernstein's Card Shark and Thespis, systems to create hypertext narrative using AI techniques. (Note 99) As with Regime Change and News Reader discussed earlier, Wardrip-Fruin and Durand call these programs "textual instruments," likening them both to computer games and musical instruments.

Complementing studies focusing on the materiality of digital media are analyses that consider the embodied cultural, social, and ideological contexts in which computation takes place. Although a full account of this body of work is beyond the scope of this discussion, a few seminal studies should be noted. Mark Hansen, focusing more on digital arts than electronic literature, makes powerful arguments for the role of the embodied perceiver as not only a necessary site for the reception of digital art work but as a crucial aspect foregrounded by works that literally do not make sense without taking embodiment into account. (Note 100) Working the opposite side of the street, so to speak, is Friedrich A. Kittler's emphasis on the genealogy of technology as a formative force in its own right. (Note 101) Kittler's controversial opening line in the "Preface" to Gramophone, Film, Typewriter, "Media determine our situation," although not unproblematic, suggests the larger contours within which electronic literature can be seen as a cultural force helping to shape subjectivity in an era when networked and programmable media are catalyzing cultural, political, and economic changes with unprecedented speed. (Note 102) Writing on New Media poetics, Adalaide Morris aptly discusses this aspect of digital literature by commenting that it articulates for us what we already in some sense know. (Note 103) To this I would add it creates practices that help us know more about the implications of our contemporary situation. Much as the novel both gave voice to and helped to create the liberal humanist subject in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, so contemporary electronic literature is both reflecting and enacting a new kind of subjectivity characterized by distributed cognition, networked agency that includes human and non-human actors, and fluid boundaries dispersed over actual and virtual locations.

Located within the humanities by tradition and academic practice, electronic literature also has close affinities with the digital arts, computer games, and other forms associated with networked and programmable media. It is also deeply entwined with the powerful commercial interests of software companies, computer manufacturers, and other purveyors of apparatus associated with networked and programmable media. How and in what ways it should engage with these commercial interests is discussed in Alan Liu's magisterial work, The Laws of Cool: Knowledge Work and the Culture of Information. (Note 104) Liu urges a coalition between the "cool" — designers, graphic artists, programmers, and other workers within the knowledge industry — and the traditional humanities, suggesting that both camps possess assets essential to cope with the complexities of the commercial interests that currently determine many aspects of how people live their everyday lives in developed societies. Whereas the traditional humanities specialize in articulating and preserving a deep knowledge of the past and engage in a broad spectrum of cultural analyses, the "cool" bring to the table expert knowledge about networked and programmable media and intuitive understandings of contemporary digital practices. Electronic literature, requiring diverse orientations and rewarding both contemporary and traditional perspectives, is one of the sites that can catalyze these kinds of coalitions. Realizing this broader possibility requires that we understand electronic literature not only as an artistic practice (though it is that, of course), but also as a site for negotiations between diverse constituencies and different kinds of expertise.

Among these constituencies are theorists and researchers interested in the larger effects of network culture. Of the very large number of studies that have appeared in recent years, I will mention two to illustrate the kinds of scholarship that should rightly fall within the domain of electronic literature. First is Alexander Galloway and Eugene Thacker's The Exploit, a work that builds on Gilles Deleuze's notion of the control society (Note 105) and Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's Empire and Multitude (Note 106) to argue that the materiality, rhetorical force, and structure of the network provide the basis for new kinds of political power and oppression while also opening possibilities for new modes of theoretical analysis and political resistance. (Note 107) Complementing their study is Rita Raley's Tactical Media, a brilliant analysis of a systemic shift from strategy to tactics in contemporary political resistance as enacted by a diverse group of artistic computer games, online art works, and art installations. Adrian Mackenzie's Cutting Code: Software as Sociality studies software as collaborative social practice and cultural process. (Note 108) Analyzing a range of technical practices from Unix operating systems to extreme programming, Cutting Code explores how social forms, subjectivities, materialities and power relations entwine in the creation, marketing, and use of software.

Mackenzie's work serves as a salutary reminder that just as one cannot understand the evolution of print literature without taking into account such phenomena as the law cases that established legal precedent for copyright and the booksellers and publishers who helped promulgate the ideology of the creative genius authoring the great work of literature (for their own purposes, of course), so electronic literature is evolving within complex social and economic networks that include the development of commercial software, the competing philosophy of open source freeware and shareware, the economics and geopolitical terrain of the Internet and World Wide Web, and a host of other factors that directly influence how electronic literature is created and stored, sold or given away, preserved or allowed to decline into obsolescence.
4 Preservation, Archiving, and Dissemination

Over the centuries, print literature has developed mechanisms for its preservation and archiving, including libraries and librarians, conservators, and preservationists. Unfortunately, no such mechanisms exist for electronic literature. The situation is exacerbated by the fluid nature of digital media; whereas books printed on good quality paper can endure for centuries, electronic literature routinely becomes unplayable (and hence unreadable) after a decade or even less. The problem exists at both the software and hardware levels. Commercial programs can become obsolete or migrate to new versions incompatible with older ones, and new operating systems (or altogether new machines) can appear on which older works will not play. With a foreshortened canon limited to a few years and without the opportunity to build the kinds of traditions associated with print literature, electronic literature would be doomed to the realm of ephemera, severely hampered in its development and the influence it can wield.

The Electronic Literature Organization has taken a proactive approach to this crucial problem with the Preservation, Archiving and Dissemination Initiative (PAD). Part of that initiative is realized in the Electronic Literature Collection Volume 1, co-edited by me and Nick Montfort, Scott Rettberg, and Stephanie Strickland. Featuring sixty works of recent electronic literature, some of which are only available in the ELC, the ELC includes a brief description of each work, a note by the author(s), and a keyword index. Available for free downloading at the Electronic Literature Organization site (http://collection.eliterature.org), it offers the literary works through a Creative Commons license that allows them to be freely disseminated, so long as they are not altered. Collecting innovative, high-quality work is an important step forward in opening electronic literature up to a wider audience and moving it into the classroom. (I am frequently asked by colleagues how they can find "the good stuff" among the immense flood of works available on the Web; now there is an easy — albeit still very partial-- answer to that question). It is anticipated that the ELC will continue on a biennial basis, with each subsequent volume compiled by an editorial collective that will take responsibility for soliciting important works and making them available in accessible cross-platform formats.

Another part of the PAD initiative is this essay, intended as a general introduction that can serve to orient newcomers to the field. By attempting to give a recognizable shape to this fast-moving and diverse community of artists, writers, designers, programmers, and critics and the works they create and interpret, I hope this essay will also interest specialists who may be familiar with one or more areas of electronic literature but not necessarily with the field as a whole. This essay is the final component of a triad of critical works commissioned by the Electronic Literature Organization as part of the PAD initiative, joining two white papers published at the ELO site, "Acid-Free Bits" by Nick Montfort and Noah Wardrip-Fruin, (Note 109) and "Born-Again Bits" by Alan Liu, David Durand, Nick Montfort, Merrilee Proffitt, Liam R. E. Quin, Jean-Hughes Rety, and Noah Wardrip-Fruin. (Note 110) Whereas this essay focuses on surveying the field (and thus on dissemination), the two white papers are centrally concerned with preserving and archiving electronic literature.

"Acid-Free Bits" offers advice to authors to help them "find ways to create long-lasting elit, ways that fit their practice and goals" (3). The recommendations include preferring open systems to closed systems, choosing community-directed systems over corporate driven systems, adhering to good programming practices by supplying comments and consolidating code, and preferring plain-text to binary formats and cross-platform options to single-system options. Since electronic literature does not have the economic clout to convince commercial developers to insure its continuing viability on their platforms, it is simply good sense to prefer open systems to closed. Likewise, plain-text formats will remain human-readable while binary formats will not, and cross-platform options increase the availability of works to interested audiences. These commonsense recommendations make available to writers and authors issues they can consider at the beginning of projects, before substantial time and resources are invested in options that may prove damaging to long-term preservation and costly to change, once the work has been implemented.

More encompassing, and even more visionary, is the proposal in "Born-Again Bits" for the "X-Literature Initiative." The basic premise is that XML (Extensible Markup Language) will continue to be the most robust and widespread form of Web markup language into the foreseeable future. Working from this assumption, the proposal envisions a set of practices and tools that will enable older electronic literature to be migrated to XML for preservation, facilitate XML compliant authoring, insure the inclusion of appropriate metadata to allow works properly to be identified and archived, develop tools for the easy reading, annotating, and teaching of electronic literature, and provide authors with applications for creating electronic literature in X-Lit formats. The scope here is breathtaking, and if even a portion of the proposal can be successfully implemented, the contribution to the preservation, dissemination and archiving of electronic literature will be immense.

The "X-Literature Initiative" makes startlingly clear that the formation we know as "literature" is a complex web of activities that includes much more than conventional images of writing and reading. Also involved are technologies, cultural and economic mechanisms, habits and predispositions, networks of producers and consumers, professional societies and their funding possibilities, canons and anthologies designed to promote and facilitate teaching and learning activities, and a host of other factors. All of these undergo significant transformation with the movement into digital media. Exploring and understanding the full implications of what the transition from page to screen entails must necessarily be a community effort, a momentous task that calls for enlightened thinking, visionary planning, and deep critical consideration. It is in these wide and capacious senses that electronic literature challenges us to re-think what literature can do and be.
Notes

Note 1. Among many manifestations of these questions, I single out one as particularly telling, a high-profile panel discussion in Paris, organized by the French government, to debate the following topic: "The Internet: A Threat to Culture?". Panelists include representatives from Virgin Records and AOL and the Director of the Bibliothéque nationale de France, October 2006.

Note 2. See for example Peter L. Galison, Image and Logic: A Material Culture of Microphysics (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1997), pp. 47, 55.

Note 3. Michael Joyce, afternoon: a story (Watertown MA: Eastgate Systems, 1990). An earlier version was circulated in 1987; see Matthew Kirschenbaum, "Save As: Michael Joyce's afternoons," Mechanisms: New Media and Forensic Textuality (Cambridge: MIT Press, forthcoming 2007) for a detailed account of all the different versions and editions.

Note 4. Stuart Moulthrop, Victory Garden (Watertown MA: Eastgate Systems, 1995).

Note 5. Shelley Jackson, Patchwork Girl (Watertown: Eastgate Systems, 1995).

Note 6. George P. Landow popularized the term "lexia" in Hypertext: The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991). Terry Harpold in Exfoliations (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, forthcoming 2007) objects to the term, arguing that in its original source, Roland Barthes's S/Z, it denoted textual divisions that the reader made as part of her interpretive work. The term is now so well-established, however, that it seems difficult to change. Moreover, terms frequently change meanings when they migrate across fields, disciplines, and media.

Note 7. N. Katherine Hayles, "Deeper into the Machine: Learning to Speak Digital," Computers and Composition 19 (2002): 371-386; reprinted in revised form with images in Culture Machine 5 (Feb. 2003) http://culturemachine.tees.ac.uk/frm_f1.htm and in State of the Arts: The Proceedings of the Electronic Literature Organization's 2002 State of the Arts Symposium, edited by Scott Rettberg (Los Angeles: Electronic Literature Organization), pp. 13-38.

Note 8. David Ciccoricco, in Reading Network Fiction (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, forthcoming 2007), takes issue with the first and second generation characterization, arguing that the use of images is a matter of degree rather than an absolute break. My distinction, however, was concerned not only with the increased visuality of post-1995 works but also the introduction of sound and other multimodalities, as well as the movement away from a link-lexia structure into more sophisticated and varied navigational interfaces. The major factor in precipitating the shift, of course, was the huge expansion of the World Wide Web after the introduction of the Netscape and other robust and user-friendly browsers. In any construction of periods, there will always be areas of overlap and remediation, but it nevertheless seems clear that a major shift took place around 1995.

Note 9. M. D. Coverley, Califia (Watertown: Eastgate Systems, 2000); Egypt: The Book of Going Forth by Day (Newport Beach: Horizon Insight, 2006).

Note 10. Scott Rettberg, William Gillespie, and Dirk Stratton, The Unknown (1998) http://www.unknownhypertext.com.

Note 11. Michael Joyce, Twelve Blue, Electronic Literature Collection 1, eds. N. Katherine Hayles, Nick Montfort, Scott Rettberg, and Stephanie Strickland (Maryland: Electronic Literature Organization, 2006) http:collection.eliterature.org (hereafter noted as ELC 1). When works are also available at other locations, these will be listed second; for Twelve Blue (Eastgate Hypertext Reading Room, 1996) http://www.eastgate.com/TwelveBlue/Twelve_Blue.html.

Note 12 Caitlin Fisher, These Waves of Girls (2001) http://www.yorku.ca/caitlin/waves/.

Note 13 Stuart Moulthrop, Reagan Library (1999) http://iat.ubalt.edu/moulthrop/hypertexts/rl/pages/intro.htm.

Note 14 Judd Morrissey in collaboration with Lori Talley, The Jew's Daughter, ELC 1 and (2000) http://www.thejewsdaughter.com.

Note 15 Talan Memmott, Lexia to Perplexia (2000) http://www.uiowa.edu/~iareview/tirweb/hypermedia/talan_memmott/index.html.

Note 16 Richard Holeton, "Frequently Asked Questions about 'Hypertext,'" ELC 1.

Note 17 David Ciccoricco, Reading Network Fiction, "Introduction," p. 7 ms.

Note 18 An interesting illustration of the difference between narrative and game is provided by Natalie Bookchin's, "The Intruder," in which she makes computer games from Jorge Luis Borges's fiction http://www.calarts.edu/~bookchin/intruder/ .

Note 19 Markku Eskelinen, "Six Problems in Search of a Solution: The Challenge of Cybertext Theory and Ludology to Literary Theory," dichtung-digital (2004) http://www.dichtung-digital.com/2004/3-Eskelinen.htm.

Note 20 Nick Montfort, Twisty Little Passages (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003), pp. vii-xi.

Note 21 Emily Short, Savoir-Faire (2002) ELC 1.

Note 22 Jon Ingold, All Roads, ELC 1 and (2001) http://www.ingold.fsnet.co.uk/if.htm.

Note 23 Donna Leishman, The Possession of Christian Shaw, ELC 1 and (2003) http://www.6amhoover.com/xxx/start.htm.

Note 24 The Iowa Review Web 8.3 (September 2006) http://www.uiowa.edu/~iareview/mainpages/new/september06/sept06_txt.html.

Note 25 The move is, however, not without caveats. Aya Karpinska comments that "a screen is a screen. It's not space," anticipating that her future work will move into actual space through mobile technologies, Rita Raley, "An Interview with Aya Karpinska on 'mar puro'" http://www.uiowa.edu/~iareview/mainpages/new/september06/karpinska/karpinska_intervew.html. Dan Waber comments that "I think the word and the letter have been three dimensional in many ways for a very long time. As long as there has been language there has been a way of looking at its materiality, and that way of looking at it adds a dimension automagically," Rita Raley, "An Interview with Dan Waber on 'five by five'" http://www.uiowa.edu/~iareview/mainpages/new/september06/wabere/waber_interview.html.

Note 26 "Artist's Statement: Ted Warnell" http://www.uiowa.edu/~iareview/mainpages/new/september06/warnell/warnell.html.

Note 27 Ted Warnell, TLT vs. LL (2006) http://www.uiowa.edu/~iareview/mainpages/new/september06/warnell/11x8.5.html.

Note 28 David Knoebel, "Heart Pole" http://home.ptd.net/~clkpoet/htpl/index.html.

Note 29 Janet Cardiff, The Missing Voice (Case Study B) (1999); print book edition (London: Artangel, 1999); for a description, see http://www.artfocus.com/JanetCardiff.html; Her Long Black Hair (2005) http://www.publicartfund.org/pafweb/projects/05/cardiff/cardiff-05.html.

Note 30 Blast Theory, Uncle Roy All Around You (premiered London, 2003) http://www.blasttheory.co.uk/bt/work_uncleroy.html.

Note 31Joan Campàs in "The Frontiers between Digital Literature and Net.art" finds several areas of convergence, including emphasis on process, information and algorithm, "new perceptual situations, hybridization and simulation, the artistic and literary objectivization of the concept of the Net" and "software as work of art and as a text," among others, dichtung-digital 3 (2004): 12 http://www.dichtung-digital.com/2004/3-Campas.htm. She also has trenchant observations about how electronic literature is more often browsed than read; although, recently, in what we might call the second generation of hypertext criticism as practiced by such critics as David Ciccoricco, Terry Harpold, Matthew Kirschenbaum, and Jessica Pressman, electronic literature is read, and read very closely.

Note 32 For a description of Screen, see Josh Carroll, Robert Coover, Shawn Greenlee, Andrew McClain, and Noah Wardrip-Fruin http://www.uiowa.edu/~iareview/mainpages/tirwebhome.htm.

Note 33 William Gillespie, with programming by Jason Rodriguez and David Dao, Word Museum; see documentation, http://www.uiowa.edu/~iareview/mainpages/new/september06/gillespie/wordmuseum.html.

Note 34 Rita Raley discussed Torus in the broader context of digital works using haptic and proprioceptive stimuli in "Reading Spaces," Modern Language Association Convention, Washington DC, December 28, 2005.

Note 35 See John Cayley's website www.shadoof.net/in for a download of lens in a QuickTime maquette; the piece was originally designed for the CAVE.

Note 36 Information from Robert Coover in an email dated September 25, 2006.

Note 37 Paul Sermon, Steven Dixon, Mathias Fucs, and Andrea Zapp, Unheimlich (2006) http://creativetechnology.salford.ac.uk/unheimlich/.

Note 38 Michael Mateas, Façade (2005) http://www.interactivestory.net/.

Note 39 Janet Murray, Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998), p. 40

Note 40 Marie-Laure Ryan, Avatars of Story (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006).

Note 41 Deena Larsen, Disappearing Rain (2001) http://www.deenalarsen.net/rain/.

Note 42 Electronic Poetry Center http://epc.buffalo.edu/; Ubuweb http://www.ubu.com/.

Note 43 Loss Pequeño Glazier, Digital Poetics: Hypertext, Visual-Kinetic Text and Writing in Programmable Media (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama, 2001).

Note 44 Loss Pequeño Glazier, White-Faced Bromeliads on 20 Hectares, ELC 1 http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/glazier/java/costa1/00.html.

Note 45 Generative art is, of course, a major category of digital arts generally. For example, Bill Seaman's ambitious installation work, The World Generator (1996), used images, sound, and spoken text to create a recombinant poetics that created emergent and synergistic combinations of all these modalities http://digitalmedia.risd.edu/billseaman/poeticTexts.php.

Note 46 Philippe Bootz, "The Functional Point of View: New Artistic Forms for Programmed Literary Works," Leonardo 32.4 (1999): 307-16. See also the earlier article "Poetic Machinations," Visible Language 30.2 (1996): 118-37, and the later "Reader/Readers," p0es1s: Ästhetik Digitaler Poesie/The Aesthetics of Digital Poetry, edited by Friedrich W. Block, Christiane Heiback, and Karin Wenz (Berlin: Hatje Cantz Books, 2004), pp. 93-122, which gives a further elaboration and refinement of the functional model. In "Digital Poetry: From Cybertext to Programmed Forms," Leonardo Electronic Almanac 14.05/06 (2006) http://leoalmanac.org/journal/lea_v14_n05-06/pbootz.asp, he slightly shifts terminology to technotexts and intermedia, with a focus on a procedural model of communication.

Note 47 Philippe Bootz discusses the web-based literary journal created by L.A.I.R.E in "Alire: A Relentless Literary Investigation," Electronic Book Review (March 15, 1999) http://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/wuc/Parisian.

Note 48 Philippe Bootz, La série des U, ELC 1; Alire 12 (2004).

Note 49 Noah Wardrip-Fruin with Brion Moss and Elaine Froehlich, Regime Change and News Reader http://hyperfiction.org/rcnr/.

Note 50 Jim Andrews, On Lionel Kearns, ELC 1 and http://www.vispo.com/kearns/index.htm.

Note 51William S. Burroughs and his partner in crime, Brion Gysin, wrote extensively about the technique and philosophy of the cut-up that Burroughs pioneered in Naked Lunch, among other works. For more information and algorithms allowing you to cut up your own texts, see http://www.reitzes.com/cutup.html.

Note 52 Jim Andrews and collaborators, Stir Fry Texts http://www.vispo.com/StirFryTexts/.

Note 53 Geniwate and Brian Kim Stefans, When You Reach Kyoto (2002) http://www.idaspoetics.com.au/generative/generative.html.

Note 54 Millie Niss with Martha Deed, Oulipoems, ELC 1 and (2004) http://www.uiowa.edu/~iareview/tirweb/feature/sept04/oulipoems/.

Note 55 Patrick-Henri Burgaud, Jean-Pierre Balpe ou les Lettres Dérangées, ELC 1 (2005).

Note 56 John Cayley has a trenchant criticism of "code work" in "The Code is not the Text (unless it is the Text)," Electronic Book Review (2002) http://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/electropoetics/literal.

Note 57 For a fuller explanation of intermediating dynamics between language and code, see N. Katherine Hayles, "Making: Language and Code," My Mother Was a Computer: Digital Subjects and Literary Texts (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), pp. 15-88.

Note 58 Diane Reed Slattery, Daniel J. O'Neil and Bill Brubaker, The Glide Project http://www.academy.rpi.edu/glide/portal.html. Slattery is also the author of The Maze Game (Kingston NY: Deep Listening Publications, 2003), a print novel that gives the backstory of the development, politics, and cultural significance of the Glide language.

Note 59 Sha Xin Wei, TGarden, http://f0.am/tgarden/; see also Sha Xin Wei and Maja Kuzmanovic. "Performing Publicly in Responsive Space: Agora, Piazza, Festival and Street." Worlds in Transition: Technoscience, EASST Conference: Citizenship and Culture In the 21st Century (September 2000), Vienna, Austria http://www.univie.ac.at/Wissenschaftstheorie/conference2000.

Note 60 Carrie Noland, "Digital Gestures," New Media Poetics: Contexts, Technotexts, and Theories, edited by Adalaide Morris and Thomas Swiss (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006), pp. 217-244.

Note 61 John Cayley, "Literal Art: Neither Lines nor Pixels but Letters," First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game, eds. Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan (MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass, 2004), pp. 208-17; see also John Cayley, "Literal Art" http://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/firstperson/programmatology.

Note 62 John Cayley, riverIsland http://www.shadoof.net/in/.

Note 63 Stephanie Strickland, with technical implementation by Janet Holmes (1999), "The Ballad of Sand and Harry Soot" http://www.wordcircuits.com/gallery/sandsoot/frame.html. The poem appeared first in print as the winner of the Boston Review's Second Annual Poetry contest.

Note 64 Jason Nelson, Dreamaphage, version 1 (2003) and version 2 (2004), ELC 1 and http://www.secrettechnology.com/dreamaphage/opening.html.

Note 65 Stephanie Strickland, V: WaveSon.nets/Losing L'una (New York: Penguin, 2002); Stephanie Strickland with Cynthia Lawson, V: Vniverse http://www.vniverse.com/.

Note 66 Lance Olsen, 10:01 (Portland: Chiasmus Press, 2005). Lance Olsen with Tim Guthrie, 10:01, ELC 1.

Note 67 Geoff Ryman, 253: The Print Remix (London: St. Martin's Press, 1998); the Web version is at http://www.ryman-novel.com.

Note 68 Gregory L. Ulmer, Internet Invention: From Literacy to Electracy (New York: Longman, 2002).

Note 69 Alan Sondheim's writings are represented in a collection of texts made over a ten-year period in "Internet Text, 1994 [Through Feb. 2, 2006]," ELC 1; Brian Kim Stefans, Fashionable Noise: On Digital Poetics (Berkeley: Atelos Press, 2003); Stephanie Strickland, "Writing the Virtual: Eleven Dimensions of E-Poetry," Leonardo Electronic Almanac 14:05/06 (2006) http://leoalmanac.org/journal/vol_14/lea_v14_n05-06/sstrickland.asp and "Dali Clocks: Time Dimensions of Hypermedia," Electronic Book Review ll (2000) http://www.altx.com/ebr/ebr11/11str.htm.

Note 70 Ian Bogost, Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006); Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Control and Freedom: Power and Paranoia in the Age of Fiber Optics (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006); Florian Cramer, Words Made Flesh: Code, Culture, Imagination (Rotterdam: Piet Zwart Institute) http://pzwart.wdka.hro.nl/mdr/research/fcramer/wordsmadeflesh/); Matthew Fuller, Behind the Blip: Essays on the Culture of Software (New York: Autonomedia, 2003); Mark B. N. Hansen, New Philosophy for New Media (Cambridge: MIT Press,2004); Matthew Kirschenbaum, Mechanisms: New Media and Forensic Textuality (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006); Adalaide Morris, "New Media Poetics: As We May Think/How to Write," New Media Poetics, edited by Adalaide Morris and Thomas Swiss (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006), pp. 1-46; Rita Raley, Tactical Media (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, forthcoming 2007).

Note 71 Espen J. Aarseth, Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997).

Note 72 Stephanie Strickland, "Writing the Virtual: Eleven Dimensions of E-Poetry," Leonardo Electronic Almanac 14:05/06 (2006) http://leoalmanac.org/journal/vol_14/lea_v14_n05-06/sstrickland.asp.

Note 73 Jim Rosenberg, Diagram Series 6: 6.4 and 6.10, ELC 1; see also Diagram Poems http://www.well.com/user/jer/diags.html

Note 74 Raymond Queneau, Cent mille milliards de poèmes (Paris: Gallimard, 1961); John Cage, M: Writings '67-'72 (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1973); Jackson Mac Low, The Virginia Woolf Poems (Providence RI: Burning Deck, 1985).

Note 75 Brian Kim Stefans, Fashionable Noise: On Digital Poetics (Berkeley: Atelos Press, 2003).

Note 76 Ian Bogost, Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006), especially p. 4.

Note 77 Stephanie Strickland and M. D. Coverley, "Errand Upon Which We Came" http://www.thebluemoon.com/coverley/errand/home.htm.

Note 78 Brian Kim Stefans, "The Dreamlife of Letters," (1999) http://www.chbooks.com/archives/online_books/dreamlife_of_letters/.

Note 79 Robert Kendall, "Faith," ELC 1; also Cauldron and Net, 4 (Autumn 2002) http://www.studiocleo.com/cauldron/volume4/confluence/kendall/title_page.htm.

Note 80 Young-hae Chang Heavy Industries, "Dakota" http://www.yhchang.com/DAKOTA.html.

Note 81 Jessica Pressman, Digital Modernism: Making It New in New Media, Ph.D. dissertation (2007: Los Angeles, University of California, Los Angeles).

Note 82 Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries, "Nippon" http://www.yhchang.com/DAKOTA.html.

Note 83 Jay David Bolter, Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext, and the History of Writing (New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1991); George P. Landow, Hypertext: The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991).

Note 84 Aarseth, Cybertext, pp. 77, 89 and passim.

Note 85 Jay David Bolter, Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext, and the History of Writing, p. 147.

Note 86 Richard Grusin and Jay David Bolter, Remediation: Understanding New Media (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000).

Note 87 George P. Landow, Hypertext 2.0: The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997) and Hypertext 3.0: Critical Theory and New Media in an Era of Globalization (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006).

Note 88 Espen J. Aarseth, "Textonomy: A Typology of Textual Communication," Cybertext, pp. 59-75.

Note 89 Espen J. Aarseth has also taken a leading role in establishing game studies as an academic discipline, being one of the founders of the field and of the leading journal in the field, The International Journal of Game Studies.

Note 90 Markku Eskelinen, "Six Problems in Search of a Solution: The challenge of cybertext theory and ludology to literary theory," dichtung-digital (March 2004) http://www.dichtung-digital.com/index.

Note 91 Lev Manovich, The Language of New Media (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000).

Note 92 Manovich, The Language of New Media, pp. 27-46.

Note 93 For an example, see N. Katherine Hayles, "Traumas of Code," Critical Inquiry 33.1 (Autumn 2006): 136-157.

Note 94 Alexander Galloway, Protocol: How Control Exists after Decentralization (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2004), p. 165.

Note 95 Jerome J. McGann, The Complete Writings and Pictures of Dante Gabriel Rossetti: A Hypermedia Archive http://www.rossettiarchive.org/.

Note 96 Jerome McGann, Radiant Textuality: Literature after the World Wide Web (New York and London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001).

Note 97 For information on the computerized version of The Ivanhoe Game, see http://www.patacriticism.org/ivanhoe/; for information on the Speculative Computing Laboratory, see http://www.speculativecomputing.org/.

Note 98 See Johanna Drucker, The Ivanhoe Game.

Note 99 Noah Wardrip-Fruin and David Durand, "Cardplay, a New Textual Instrument," Association for Computers and the Humanities and Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing (ACH/ALLC), University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada (June 15-18, 2005) http://mustard.tapor.uvic.ca:8080/cocoon/ach_abstracts/proof/paper_175_durand.pdf; Mark Bernstein, "Card Shark and Thespis: Exotic tools for hypertext narrative," Proceedings of the twelfth ACM conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia, Århus, Denmark ( New York: 2001), pp. 41-50.

Note 100 Mark B. Hansen, New Philosophy for New Media (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2004).

Note 101 Friedrich A. Kittler, Discourse Networks 1800/1900 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992); .Friedrich A. Kittler, Literature Media Information Systems, edited by John Johnston (New York: Routledge, 1997).

Note 102 Friedrich A. Kittler, "Preface," Gramophone, Film, Typewriter (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), p. xxxix.

Note 103 Adalaide Morris, "New Media Poetics: As We May Think/How to Write,". New Media Poetics: Contexts, Technotexts, and Theories, pp.1-46.

Note 104 Alan Liu, The Laws of Cool: Knowledge Work and the Culture of Information (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004).

Note 105 Especially pertinent to their discussion is Gilles Deleuze, "Postscript on Societies of Control," October 59 (Winter 1992): 3-7.

Note 106 Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001); Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (New York: Penguin, 2005).

Note 107 Alexander Galloway and Eugene Thacker, The Exploit (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, forthcoming 2007).

Note 108 Adrian Mackenzie, Cutting Code: Software as Sociality (London: Peter Lang, 2006).

Note 109 Nick Montfort and Noah Wardrip-Fruin, "Acid-Free Bits," Electronic Literature Organization (June 14, 2004) http://eliterature.org/pad/afb.html.

Note 110 Alan Liu, David Durand, Nick Montfort, Merrillee Proffitt, Liam R E. Quin, Jean-Hughes Rety, and Noah Wardrip-Fruin, "Born Again Bits" (September 30, 2004) http://eliterature.org/pad/bab.html.

ELO logo

The Electronic Literature Organization
http://www.eliterature.org

Colophon • The template for the Web edition of this document was marked up by Nick Montfort in valid XHTML 1.1 with a valid CSS2 style sheet. It is screen-friendly and printer-friendly; a style sheet for printer output is provided which browsers should use automatically when users print the document. To cite a specific part of this document, give the section number (such as 3.2); it's also possible to link to specific parts of this document by using the links at the top, under the heading "Contents." I am pleased to acknowledge assistance from the Electronic Literature Organization in the preparation and dissemination of this document. I am also indebted to Matthew Kirschenbaum, Marjorie Luesebrink, Alan Liu, Nick Montfort, Stephanie Strickland and Thomas Swiss for their helpful comments and corrections, and to Andrew Pan, who served as my guide through many of the interactive fictions mentioned here. Any errors that remain are of course solely my responsibility. ¶ Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. You may reproduce Electronic Literature: What Is It? noncommercially if you credit the authors and the Electronic Literature Organization. To reprint this work in a commercial publication, contact the ELO.