Following the successful e and eye series of 2006, this session will include performance and discussion of work in progress by e-poets John Cayley and Caroline Bergval with Penny Florence and Tim Mathews. A discussion of the proposed new AHRC Digital Writing network will conclude the evening.John Cayley is a Visiting Professor of Literary Arts, Brown University, with a brief to develop writing digital media.
Writing on Complex Surfaces
John Cayley will introduce some of his recent work, 'writing digital media,' especially the ambient poetic piece, translation, including the latter's recent rendition as imposition, 'the networked performance of an evolving collaborative work engaged with ambient, time-based poetics and harmonically organized, language-driven sound' (sound design by Giles Perring).
Besides placing this work in the context of literary studies and what is sometimes called code studies, he will also touch on related and subsequent research he and his students have been doing with writing for immersive VR at Brown University's CAVE facility where he now also teaches a workshop course in CAVE writing.
Further information can be found at http://programmatology.shadoof.net/ and at Brown University's new wiki.
'CAVE writing'? 'immersive 3D environments'? - when we address ourselves to digitally mediated writings practices, it is clear that the properties and methods of the surface of inscription are at issue. The inscriptional surfaces of digital media are complex, even when manifest as relatively passive 'screens' that emulate paper-like media. At the very least, these surfaces bear properties that reinforce the necessity for 'media-specific analyses,' as Katherine Hayles puts it.
Related and corresponding complexities are demonstrable in what we may describe as the 'atoms' of inscriptional practice in digital media, the programmable différance-engines that leave their traces on just such complex surfaces. These features are, literally, 'spectacularly' in evidence when applied to writing for 3D immersive environments such as the three-wall Cave at Brown University, where new engagements with writing have been practiced experimentally and pedagogically since 2002.
Caroline Bergvall is a poet and a conceptual writer. She has collaborated on audiotexts, installations, performances and most recently presented her work at MoMA, New York, and Literaturhaus, Copenhagen. She is currently working on a sound-text installation, Mukha.
