N. Katherine Hayles, Nick Montfort, Scott Rettberg, Stephanie Strickland – Electronic Literature Collection, Volume One

Electronic Literature Collection, Volume One

cd-rom – Electronic Literature Organization – ISSN 19322011
Even if (unfortunately) mostly celebrated in the native English, electronic literature is a huge, and often underestimated field of research in terms of computer art aesthetic. It’s a field where the brain processes as usual the language, while the works show up an added ‘machinic’ calculation causing a constant shift in the understanding, from the ‘natural’ to the apparently ‘artificial’. The many facets of the text / software relationship (code similarities, conceptual approach, concrete / visual patterns, hypertext as a changing agent, amongst the others) are explored even if ‘interaction’ is not mandatory at all. The recombinatory possibilities of the software code are extending also the spacial dimension of text, not anymore locked in the printed bi-dimensional borders, but generated by calculation of positions, colors and pixels’ forms. The signs are then completely liberated from their own fixed nature and can finally copulate with codes, levels and other languages, without losing their leading role. In the ‘old’ format of a cd-rom (and freely downloadable from the net), all the works are protected under another strategic text: the Creative Common license.