Experiencing all of the elements of electronic literature can be quite a frustrating experience. Some pieces are complicated and time consuming to understand while others are easy to read and interact with. The ease of reading varies depending on the number of elements the author chooses to incorporate within the piece. Since there are so many elements exposed to the reader at the same time, it is important to understand how each affect one another. The most obvious of these are sounds, images, interaction, text, and of course the effect the piece has on its reader.
Since electronic poetry is such a young form of artistic expression, many scholars are attempting to define what it actually is and what it constitutes. According to The Electronic Literature Organization, the definition of electronic literature is: “work with an important literary aspect that takes advantage of the capabilities and contexts provided by the stand alone or networked computer” (http://www.eliterature.org/about). However, because it is such a new form of literature, it “tests the boundaries of the literary and challenges us to re-think our assumptions of what literature can do and be” according to Katherine N. Hayles in her article “Electronic Literature: What Is It?.” As a novice reader of electronic literature, I have only been exposed to poetry on the page, so I thought it might be a good idea to start with explaining what electronic poetry is not.
When you first venture to Goldsmith’s “Soliloquy,” you are faced with a screen that allows you to choose which day you would like to explore along with the hour of that day. That page then transforms to blankness, where the only words you see are “Hi” and the day options at the top of the page. Next, the reader must interact with the piece in order to find what else the poem says. If the reader were to run their mouse around the center area of the window, they would find that some words appear underneath the area the mouse is. These sentences of words that appear may not seem to have any sort of meaning. In the case of my interactions with the poem, the line that appears says “yeah but I mean, I want to take her for a walk, you know, I take her up to Washington Square, you know, she’s been pretty cooped up for the last few days.” The reader can infer that the author is speaking either about a dog or a person that he is about to go for a walk with. In order to get the full experience however, the reader must highlight the entire screen so that they can read what the author has said in the correct sequence. Once the reader has read the page, they will understand that all Soliloquy is is a transcript of the author’s spoken words throughout an entire week.
This electronic poem has only a few essential elements that are considered part of e-poetry. The effects Goldsmith used in creating this poem are primarily based on interaction. The user must run their mouse over the words of the poem in order to unveil what it says. Unfortunately, the only way in which this piece provokes thought is that the reader must figure out how to read the rest of the poem. The reader is faced with the choice of running the mouse over each line one by one, or they could utilize their knowledge of computers in that if you highlight the entire page, you can see all of the text. The actual content of this “poem” is simply the spoken word of the author. Spoken word in and of itself is not essentially creative. In fact, a good chunk of this poem is the author saying “okay” or arguing with whomever he is having a conversation with. The author is an artist, and one would suspect that in everyday conversation he may naturally craft his words in a way that is poetic, but my experience with this poem was entirely mundane and non-poetic. Goldsmith’s statement with this piece may have been that simply everyday conversation is beautiful and always thought out, but the words he transcribed did not seem well thought out at all. In fact they seemed jumbled and frantic. Therefore, according to the Electronic Literature Organization’s standards as well as Katherine Hayles’ and Memmott's, Goldsmith’s poetic work is not electronic poetry. The interactions and words on the screen were not sufficient enough to cause thought (Memmott, 303), in my opinion.
After reading the words on the screen, the reader is then faced with a decision: is this a beautifully simplistic poem, or is there something more complicated going on here?
When I interacted with the poem, I decided to copy and paste all of the characters that were illegible. When I pasted these characters into word, I found out that they were word-soup: all of the words were stuck together with no spaces in between. Some of the sentences were cut off in the middle.
As the reader tries to decipher what the author is saying, they will come across random thought-inspiring phrases or ‘sentences’ if you will. For example, if you continue reading, you will come across this sentence “stepfartherandattempttobringtolightthelargelyunconsciousinnerbiograph.” What makes this piece extraordinary is the finding that there are citations inserted throughout the page. This is extremely important for the artist’s statement. Quite simply put, her point is that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The way you choose to interact with “Beauty Fiction” also plays on the idea of beauty. You can either read the words that are clear and in your face and accept them as the most beautiful part of the piece, essentially holding the belief that beauty is simple something that you can see within an instant. Or, you can further examine the piece by taking the time and consideration to read the miniscule font, the details of the piece and find that “Beauty Fiction” is much more profound than you had initially thought. If this poem were simply on a page, I do not think this point would have been nearly as clear is it was in its interactive, electronic format.
It is clear that Nari’s statement with “Beauty Fiction” is that everyone has a different perspective on beauty. She utilizes a vast amount of authors’ perspectives on beauty or beautiful experiences to tell the reader that yes, simple events are beautiful, but the ones that the most exquisite are the those that vary between person to person, whether it be bodies, thoughts, experiences, or the love they share for each other. That is why “Beauty Fiction” can be considered a piece of electronic poetry while Goldman’s “Soliloquy” cannot. You must choose how to navigate the poem, and depending on the way in which you interact with the poem, you will still have a thought-provoking experience, regardless of the lack of other electronic elements such as sound.
The experience of creating a piece of electronic poetry can be just as frustrating as interacting with a published work. As Memmott tells us, “similar to a theater performance, a digital poem is a language that must be read holistically for all the technologies and methods of signification at play” (303). As a student just beginning to learn about the creative powers of Powerpoint, I was and still am overwhelmed at the amount of choice I have when selecting ways in which I can emphasize my words. There are so many elements to the Powerpoint program that can incorporate interaction, sound, images, etc… that I am often stuck trying to figure out which option is best for what I am trying to convey to the reader. However, I truly enjoy being able to use specific effects to emphasize certain words and ideas I find most meaningful to convey to my reader.
Creating my own piece of electronic poetry made me respect electronic poetry artists simply for the fact that they are often creating the programs that they work with themselves. They are always trying to find new, innovative ways to accent their ideas, which must be incredibly difficult to do in this evolving form of artistic expression. It is very easy to critique a piece when you do not understand the inner workings of the poetry and only understand the words that the author is writing you. When I create a piece of poetry, I find that the words flow somewhat easily from my brain to the page, for others it is not as easy. But I think that when an individual really looks through the words and into the inner workings of a piece of electronic poetry, listening to the sounds, examining the images paired with the piece, or exploring the different ways they can interact with it, they can see the true beauty of the work, just like Nari conveys in her poem “Beauty Fiction.” In short, whether you are a novice or expert electronic poetry reader, the best way to understand a piece is to navigate, interact, absorb, and be patient with the work you are looking at.
Works Cited:
Goldsmith, Kenneth. Soliloquy. <http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/goldsmith/soliloquy/>.
Hayles, Katherine N.. Electronic LIterature: What is It?. The Electronic Literature Organization, 2 Jan. 2007. Web. 1 October 2009. <http://eliterature.org/pad/elp.html>.
Larson, Deena. A Quick Buzz Around the Universe of Electronic Poetry. <http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/currents/fall01/buzz.html>.
Memmott, Talan. Beyond Taxonomy: Digital Poetics and the Problem of Reading. <talanmemmott.com/pdf/TALAN_MEMMOTTcv.pdf>.
Nari. Beauty Fiction. <warnell.com/real/beauty.htm>.
Good luck,
Alicia Mangiafico
No comments:
Post a Comment