Upcoming Conference: "Beyond the Screen: Transformations of Literary? Structures, Interfaces and Genres"

Using electronic and networked media has resulted in such serious changes in the relationship between "author," "work," and "reader" that it seems necessary tomake revisions in the traditional models analyzing literary communication. The Siegen conference on "The Aesthetics of Net Literature: Writing, Reading and Playing in Programmable Media" (Nov 25-27, 2004; book available at Transcript Publishers) had already made clear that this triad has to be extended into thetechnical aspects of media: Literary processes emerge from techno-socialnetworks, i.e. they materialize in the interplay between human and electronic"actants."

If in the past discussions centered mostly on those projects that were perceivedby looking at the computer screen or that were controlled via keyboard and mouse, now man-machine interactions are organized by considerably more complex interfaces. The specific attention of this follow-up conference therefore will be focusing on the aesthetic processes of AI-controlled environments that occur in thephysical realm between the interfaces of technical sensors or effectors and the human body. Electronic media take "body language" to a new level as well sincemore and more the whole body is involved in the media activity. Increasingly complex sensors (integrated into vehicles, clothes and environments) "realize"-hear, see, feel, in other words: measure-the movements of the body,its mimics and gestures. This "multimodal" body itself then also exchanges information with the "products" of this kind of technology. Such medial couplings andframings enable the co-operation of non-symbolic activities, symbolic languageactivities and algorithmic processes of computer systems.

If it is true that semantics is always the result ofintermedial transcriptions between media then this development affects allhuman behavior concerning linguistic signs and therefore also the aesthetic processes ofperception and self-perception. In this context the contributions to this conferencewill refer to literary communication and strategies thereby interrogatinghow literary structures, interfaces and genres change regarding:

-Locative Narratives, i.e. environmental, neighborhood and city projects with GPS-based media following literary patterns (e.g. travel- and adventure-narratives or detective stories like Jean-Pierre Balpe's "Fictions d' Issy"; Stefan Schemat's Augmented Reality Fictions; "Inter Urban" by 34 North 118 West or Susanne Berkenheger/Gisela Müller's "Worldwatchers").

-Immersive Environments (Cave or interactive camera-projection systems) inwhich reception does not only take place through the eyes alone but rather in which the whole body is "reading" and thereby recomposing already saved meanings or those that still have to be constructed (e.g. Noah Wardrip-Fruin's"Screen"; John Cayley's "Lens"; Camille Utterback's "Text Rain").

- Stagings of inner realms andenvironments in which real characters (from simple users to trained actors) and artificial ones (from avatars, software agents etc. to complex AI-programs) following quite classical dramatic patterns of activity are involved in dialogues (e.g. Michael Mateas/Andrew Stern et.al.: "AR Façade").

Regarding the aesthetics of net literature therefore the question has to be asked whetherwe can continue talking of a specific migration of traditional literary formsinto computer-based and networked media. Can we continue analyzing suchexamples as "literature"? In what way can the semantics of literary terminology, concepts and systems be retained or does it have to be revised? Can we still correlate the examples mentioned above with the three traditional genres? 

Apart from this the performative projects mentioned above intensify the alreadydifficult problem of the documentation/archiving of as well as the access toprocesses of electronic literature. Lastly, the conference also will addressthe problem of archiving and editing the rather transitory electronicliterature, thereby attempting to advance the cooperation of current andplanned databases, archives and editions.

Program

Thursday,November 20, 2008

9.30-10.00:Peter Gendolla & Jörgen Schäfer (Siegen): Welcoming Notes and Introduction

Panel I: Performance and the Emergence of Meaning

10.00-10.50:Roberto Simanowski (Providence, USA): Event and Meaning: Reading Interactive Installations in the Light of Art History

11.10-12.00:N. Katherine Hayles (Los Angeles, USA): Behind the Screen:Implications of Database Construction

12.00-12.50:Ludwig Jäger (Aachen, Germany): Epistemology of Disruptions: Thoughts on Some Principles of Cultural Semantics

Panel II: Literature between Virtual, Physical and Symbolic Space

14.30-15.20:John Cayley (Providence, USA): Surface Text: Text as Surface in Immersive 3D Environments

15.20-16.10:Noah Wardrip-Fruin (Santa Cruz, USA): What is Behind the Complex Surface?

16.30-17.20:Rita Raley (Los Angeles, USA): Locative Narrative: Figuring Urban Space in the Network Society

17.20-18.10:Anna Gibbs/Maria Angel (Sydney, Australia): Memory and Motion: The Body in Electronic Writing

Friday, November 21, 2008

Panel III: Beyond Genre: Transformations of Narrative, Poetic and Dramatic Structures

9.30-10.20:Francisco J. Ricardo (Boston, USA): Framing Locative Consciousness

10.20-11.10:Jochen Venus (Siegen, Germany): Beyond Game and Narration: A Morphological Approach to Computer Game Analysis

11.30-12.20:Friedrich Block (Kassel, Germany): How to Construct the Genre of DigitalPoetry: A User Manual

PanelIV: Preservation, Archiving and Editing

14.30-15.20:Joseph Tabbi (Chicago, USA): On Reading 300 Works of Electronic Literature: Is There a Literary Mainstream in New Media?

15.20-16.10:Fotis Jannidis (Darmstadt, Germany): Scholarly Editing and the Net

16.30-17.20:Ravi Shankar (New Britain, CT, USA): Retrospective and Barometer: A Decade of "Drunken Boat"

For more information please visit the conference website: www.litnet.uni-siegen.de