WRITING AND THE MACHINE: PERSPECTIVES FROM CYBERTEXTS 制動文本視角下的數位書寫 D A D H. Tong King Lee University of Hong Kong

Transcription

1 WRITING AND THE MACHINE: PERSPECTIVES FROM CYBERTEXTS 制動文本視角下的數位書寫 Tong King Lee University of Hong Kong

2 AIMS To explore a specific medium-genre that exemplifies the digital humanities at work the literary cybertext To articulate the relationship between technology and writing Texts : (1) John Cayley s morphing series ; (2) Poetry Vending Machine 詩的自動販賣機

3 JOHN CAYLEY John Cayley: sinologist, poet, translator Poetry writing (translation) within the environment of Networked and Programmable Media (NPM): electronic literary artifacts Many of his works set out to practise and theorize a greater integration of the concepts of programming and writing (Cayley 2003: 280)

4 LITERAL MORPHING Literal morphing: visual transitions of letters/characters A mode of inscriptional technology governed by algorithmic programming Effects a dynamic shift in the material surface of the text

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15 RIVERISLAND A transcultural pastoral/lyric poetic exercise A multimedia text-artifact features a spatialized aural poetic environment (Cayley 2007) A complex poetic event (Engberg 2006)

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17 RIVERISLAND The horizontal loop displays Cayley s English adaptations of 16 classical Chinese quatrains by Tang dynasty poet Wang Wei ( ), entitled Wang River Sequence The vertical loop contains 16 translations of the fifth title in the same sequence (English, Spanish, French, Pinyin-Chinese). A series of interlingual and intersemiotic remediations of Wang Wei s poems

18 ROLE OF THE READER The reader assumes an active role in his/her engagement with the technological platform displaying the texts and images. S/he controls the movement of the textual loops by clicking a set of navigational arrows or by maneuvering the QuickTime movies Cayley provides detailed instructions to his readers on how to operate his multimodal artifact.

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20 ROLE OF THE READER The reader is the driver behind the text-machine: each chooses to experience the poetic event according to his/her preference by effecting the above actions at different rates and in different combinations. The reader s navigation of the interface also determines the textual formation that appears in the middle of the screen: the reader s action has an impact on the material outcome of the work

21 MORPHING riverisland is not a static text Through morphing, letters are continuously displaced into other letters as they are displayed on the screen. This creates the visual effect of textual flux, rendering the poems in perpetual/perceptual instability. Combined with interlingual translation, morphing articulates an overall sense of ambivalence in respect to text, form, and semantics.

22 OVERBOARD a dynamic linguistic wall-hanging, an evermoving language painting (Cayley 2004a) Text: William Bradford s Of Plymouth Plantation , in the original English and translated German versions three morphing procedures: sinking (a letter drowns into the void of the screen) floating (an original letter is displaced by another); and surfacing (a letter manifests itself on the screen)

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24 IMPERCEPTIBILITY Imperceptibility is central to the logic of the entire piece, which is to impede rather than facilitate communication. It requires absolute and deliberate attention (effort) on the part of the reader, who so wishes to make sense of the apparently illegible text. the text is always legible to a reader who is prepared to take time and recover its principles. A willing reader is able to preserve or save the text s legibility (Cayley 2004a).

25 TRANSLATION To interrogate certain relationships between the granular or atomic structures of alphabetically transcribed language and the critically or interpretatively discoverable rhetorical and aesthetic effects of literature (Cayley 2004a). Walter Benjamin s essay On language as such and on the language of Man and Proust s In Search of Lost Time; these texts appear in the original language (German in the first case and French in the second) and in translation in the other two languages.

26 TRANSLATION Each run of the text affords the reader a different interface and therefore a different interpretive and sensorial experience. Each trial of the text derives a contingent and transient outcome. The reader has some control over the interface:

27 TRANSLATION Two trials of the text The third stanza: Die Ü bersetzung ist die Ü berführung der einen Sprache in die andere durch ein 2 Kontinuum 0 1 von Verwandlungen 4 D A translation D H is removal from one language into another through a continuum of transformations

28 TRIAL ONE

29 translation, Trial 1(1)

30 translation, Trial 1(2)

31 translation, Trial 1(3)

32 translation, Trial 1(1) translation, Trial 1(4)

33 TRIAL TWO

34 translation, Trial 2(1)

35 translation, Trial 2(2)

36 translation, Trial 2(3)

37 translation, Trial 2(4)

38 translation, Trial 2(5)

39 UNPREDICTABILITY A high degree of unpredictability with respect to the textual interface encountered by the reader, which affords the reading process a degree of uncertainty Although the original text is a fixed form and its identity is made known to readers, its remediation through algorithmic programming ensures that each performance of the text presents a new experience.

40 THE READER S EFFORT A meticulous reader who wishes to trace the visual and linguistic evolution of a particular text segment can do so by observing the morphing procedures closely. In doing so the reader is making a sensory commitment exceeding what is normally required in conventional reading. The reader can control the linguistic interface

41 IMPLICATIONS A text-in-flux, where the visual technique of letter morphing becomes a metaphor for an infinite suspension of form. It backgrounds the agency of Cayley the author while foregrounding the active contribution of the reader, who engages the text in an embodied manner and partakes in its performativity.

42 POETRY VENDING MACHINE

43 POETRY VENDING MACHINE

44 POETRY VENDING MACHINE

45 POETRY VENDING MACHINE

46 POETRY VENDING MACHINE

47 POETRY VENDING MACHINE

48 POETRY VENDING MACHINE

49 POETRY VENDING MACHINE

50 DISCUSSION Cayley s morphing series and Poetry Vending Machine represent different modes of digital writing and, more generally, of the technologyhumanities nexus. The first hinges on the reader s deciphering of morphing letters and interventions of the readertext interface; the second exploits the reader s writerly desire.

51 DISCUSSION A text is more than a mere text; it is a cybertext, that is to say, a textual artifact (and I have indeed used this term on several occasions), in the specific sense that it needs to be engaged with. Cybertext Espen Aarseth (1997) Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature Non-trivial action: action that goes beyond simple page-turning and linear reading (Aarseth 1997: 2)

52 DISCUSSION Cybertexts invite the reader to effectuate a semiotic sequence (Aarseth 1997: 1), which may take the form of a textual input or a choice with regards how a text should proceed or be presented. The examples are cybertexts, not primarily because they run on algorithmic programming, but because they motivate the reader to execute non-trivial actions (navigating text and image movement, inputting texts) with concrete repercussions on the material text itself.

53 DISCUSSION The reader becomes a more than a mere reader; s/he becomes a USER or PLAYER. Digital technology provides the platform on which these complex interactions between reader and text occur. The digital cybertext excels in its capacity to remediate preexisting texts into multimodal performances It also provides an efficient interface that invites the reader s response, which usually leads to some form of material change in the text.

54 THANK YOU

55 ALGORITHMS

56 ALGORITHMS