Extreme TrackingOn Literary Encoded Objects: CFP: ELO AI (6/3-6/6/10)
Ξ November 9th, 2009 | → | by Mark Marino | ∇ conferences, codework |
CCS scholars should send their abstracts and proposals to the Electronic Literature Organizations 2010 conference at brown. ELO AI, June 3-6, 2010 at Brown, will offer an opportunity for readings of software art and code object of the literary kind.
While CCS can speak to any encoded object, these digital-born literary objects in many ways make the interpretive work easy. Or perhaps that goes too far. Literary code objects, such as codework, are written to be read in a way that typical encoded objects are not. The critic might discuss the Bonaventure Hotel or Motel 6, but she has a very different project when she considers Motel Motel Motel.
Literary encoded objects offer easier entry on two grounds. First of all the work has been created by those talented in layering significance and the possibility of meaning-making upon objects. The second way these objects become easier to approach is the significantly larger body of critical works that take up digital literary works — written by many of the people who will attend the ELO AI conference.
This is not to say, of course, that the artistic code project is the only object that can be adequately studied. However, as literary studies are to the study of textual objects, readings of literary code works are to the studies of encoded objects in general.
However, in my experience, the literary encoded objects offer the tools for critiquing the general software objects, their use of code provides the tools and methods of interrogation of code objects. Literary encoded objects help critics read source code in productive ways. But we must make sure we do not remain in the comfortable, soft-lit rooms of the art museum. That is no good for the our growing understanding of the implications of encoded objects in our world, nor is it good for these literary code objects.
on November 9th, 2009 at 9:01 pm
This issue of literary code objects as the subject of analysis is something that’s been bothering me lately as well. It seems similar to the issue of working with texts that deal with their own method of production. I’m often hesitant to buy into theories that find in a text’s content justifications or explanations for its workings; it sometimes just feels like too neat a move.
I really like the idea of critically examining code objects that aren’t literary, but there does seem to be something to the ease that literary objects are put to use in this sort of project, and maybe that ease is worth a look. I’d add to the above list of reasons literary code objects are useful subjects of analysis the following:
1) There’s a tradition of literary texts that digital texts are negotiating with, and it seems that watching a text’s creator rethink how literary texts work in digital format is worthwhile in understanding the nature of other digital objects. In some ways this is true of lots of things: games exist outside the digital; mailboxes are physical objects whose functions are recreated and rethought in applications. But we’re more accustomed to looking at the form of literary objects than of some other types of objects, and it seems like form is a useful starting place for this sort of analysis.
2) These sorts of texts often aren’t created by corporations and teams of programmers, and I think there’s value in being able to assume that a work is the product of a single person. It’s an idea of criticism that we’re more accustomed to, and I think there’s also value in watching individuals work out how to do things.
on November 10th, 2009 at 12:08 am
Great points, Daniel. Yes, *too neat a move* — that’s how I feel, too.
And perhaps we should also add that these are objects with published code. That makes life a bit easier, too.
Actually, my response to point 2 has been to read code written by programmers I know who can share their work. We forget sometimes that there are still coders out there writing code by hand for their own research or other projects.
As I mentioned at DH09, I’m very fond of sitting down with programmers and talking with them about their code and their process. I find it quite illuminating. With literary objects, I sometimes feel such a sit-down threatens to take down that curtain between artist and critic, that seems to be (but doesn’t have to be) part of the convention of interpretation.