(even this, b)
what do I think about when i think about online reading?
- there is the fragment-ization, the recombining and mining and tearing apart to put back together; —— old school stuff like macro images, google search poetry; michael hessel-mial’s work. etc.
then there is the building of layers, the navigation, the clickable. there is the being-surrounded (((opening new files, swimming in files - as easy to delete text as it is to lose it as it is to disseminate it as it is to *it turns out you can put words in any order you want*.
via
destroyed by the ocean… wikipedia (psychologically ultimate seashore)
am I to write a piece of fiction? what do I mean when I say fiction these days
what is the meaning or significance of _narrative_ in an environment where the file keeps reappearing, help?
REPLY - the reply + like + react + share buttons on everything - an approximation of what e-literature, literature produced for the digital medium, does in the cases that it is called ergodic -
http://rvalibrary.org/what-is-ergodic-literature/
i love how in the first few paragraphs of this they trivialize it as an innovation of
sorts? and not like, it’s literature.
-
My History
Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic
Literature
by
Espen J. Aarseth
the mention of the animal in the title of this residency describes to me the unruly at the core of words - the physical dimension that is entirely morphed online and on screens from what it is on paper and in speech.
- Carrie Noland, writing on digital poetry
makes the argument that digital poetry, with the mutability it grants to letters and sentence structures and the resulting altered meaning making processes, makes the reader/ user conscious of the kinetic, corporeal, gestural energy of writing. digital writing can challenge the habitual meaning making processes at the heart of inscription, or the learned ways of forming letters. she points to how gestural force is always displaced and disciplined in any act of inscription.
in many respects, Noland’s work relates to the research and the work I have been invested in; provides arguments for why I have become fascinated with text in the digital sphere.
the aspect of physical tracing interests me in relation to our response to rhythm, in relation to the attempted documentation of lived experience, in relation to transcription and to how gesture and habit form our ways of making meaning from words. repeatedly, Noland points to the potential of subversion of these habitual responses within writing and poetry. the learned response to text is challenged, and thus the skills acquired in literacy are temporarily undone.the viewer responds to the kinetic quality of the radiant words by following their movement--and their arrested patterns--with her eyes -
this is often the movement I am looking at or searching for; it is these tiny movements of attention that I often want to make tangible. these movements come to the forefront in visual poetry and are in the background of any reading experience.
the sound of typing makes me feel good and inversely the quietude of pencil on paper makes me impatient.
being navigated away from a page (open in new tab) - being in multiple places with my attention at any given time; typing this, I can read the names of my desktop folders and files out of the corner of my eye.
(I can make these planes intersect. - in a way that takes no conscious effort almost - it emerges. (this is why i have difficulty telling when I am working and when I am not, cause this sensation of emergence is as often casual as it is significant; and always, light.))
What is internet poetry? I hate doing ‘negative definitions,’ but one thing that I want to avoid is taking the old poetics and just putting them online. The Poetry Foundation had an article a month or so ago celebrating how people were writing ‘poetic’ tweets, with the tone being ‘poetry can redeem twitter’ — and all of the poets they cited were just doing ‘poetic language’ in 140 characters. no mention of weird twitter, horse_ebooks, Steve Roggenbuck – all these *popular* places where poetry is happening on the internet.
[...]
Not interested in that so much, because it assumes both poetry and the internet as fixed things.
and Flarf etc - but we’re so past Flarf, ‘finding poetry in unusual places’ is the modus operandi already; and I still can’t get over the way I read. it’s less about memes based on words but the movement in online reading - where do people go, and where are they led onto from there; (an easy example would be: recommendations — on Youtube, Spotify, and on Buzzfeed type pages - on the first two, how it just goes on without your consent (or protest) (designed derailment)).
and how do I write through it, and how do I use what I know about reading on a screen - not in a way that uses the share and the like and the rage economy /clickbait to gain popularity, but more in a _how is clickbait cute poetry_ and how can I use my reaction to clickbait to make something literary, or create a literary experience.
the giddiness online - when I distract myself, do I need to edit that part out? when I distract you as a reader, is it just recreating, illustrating what is happening for people anyway - not taking it anywhere else?
the conscious concentration ----- versus tangential knowledge. what do the margins and the associations say about the matter at hand? maybe this is why I am reluctant to provide straightforward descriptions of things - because the tangents are richer, also murkier - the expectation of ‘clear communication’ doesn’t apply if I didn’t aim to explain matters to you in the first place.
* how is it that fiction is taken to happen in books when I know I am writing fiction every time I send someone two memes that go together nicely.
making utterances useful to oneself - consumed, and consumable.
(...) so little is needed by the author, when you think about it
* i don't agree with this but anyway rip:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BeTySlsF79-/?hl=en&taken-by=parisreview
try n read that out loud
communicating via screenshots of things - and how the spatial aspects of when/how to screenshot are feeling, but also plain aesthetic choices, intuition based. on instagram: not everyone is an artist or designer with a deep understanding of composition, but this doesn’t mean people don’t put considerable thought into getting the crop just right.
works like Vera Sebert’s - are to be read by stumbling, then realizing, then using - using the tool.
this is how the e-literature realms differ from works like Indispensible Blue by Bryana Fritz - where the text is inserted within standard possible uses and functions of the software, and meaning is generating somewhat on a surface, in a two-dimensional space. Also, the text itself might just as well be published printed - it is merely the shifting of it in space that makes the experience of the text rhythmical.
even though I don’t entirely enjoy the poetic text in Indispensible Blue from a literary standpoint - I appreciate the ability of a dancer to name and locate body parts, as well as the tiny shifts within them; I am excited by bringing that same quality of attention to the way language shifts to different places on screens - the volatile, the ungraspable, comparable to physicality in that way. the way my fingers move and my attention moves.
when I was working with Vera once, I sensed her frustration towards literature and performance, how they are still trying to 'explain' all the time — and build narrative; while her online works, to be navigated, are non-linear. interacting with her works also made me think about how to ‘make’ people click on things - or being okay with the fact that it will not communicate if a reader doesn’t invest.
a buffet, but caged - taming of the animal word on the screen?
(where is the spit, the tongue, the sticky hand) (the spit, the tongue, the sticky hand behind glass)
untamed wildlife text version!!!!! jaja
don’t want to make skincare but i want text to feel like lotion like rly stupidly excessively creamy like dove and then i want to ask people how it feels on their skin and if they consider it edible.
And since I primarily use rather fluid, impressionable materials, I am most satisfied when it is difficult to discern where exactly my hand comes into play.
*Sometimes these hands are hanging, pointing, pressing, or grasping. Gravity is strong, as both sensation and element.
factoids; this is also what i think about when i’m thinking animal ---- what’s that quality, of the facts, the sound bites, the little explosive furry thoughts that get recombined, reshared, may be regretted, stand there as document to a moment’s rage. people are so sincere on the internet - it’s addictive to watch.
also the image of the bird recurring; a moment like a bird in hand, and then gone; the birds on the hand from above, balancing (factoids, again).
Intertextuality - is making explicit the presence of more than one voice in any piece of text - is the mumbling underneath of what went into its creation, made audible.
birds murmuring: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zuvfLDBtww
how about ‘empty’ (unproductive) space too (how does that function spatially, choreographically, on web pages) - like this piece, called 17776, at the beginning: the calendars (patience, investment, discovery).
- I’ve found this image ‘so real’ now for over a year without coming closer to being able to explain what I mean when I say it relates to how I think about language (online) - misreadings, misspellings, shortcut lingo, and then the slippery nature of language in general - and the rush of writing/ reading/ communicating online, the giddiness, but in a controlled environment; the gushing, in this case. how I am required to embrace approximation + an always possible mistake - faulty pdfs on iBooks, wikipedia - etc - and automated translation fails -
I’ve discovered that reading impossible books like Ulysses or War and Peace on a mobile device (bit by bit, frame by frame), on a Kindle or iBooks app, works so much better for me- is less perpetually confrontational than the heavy physical copies. and how about the way they tell you ‘9 minute read’ and such on management or advertisement tutorial sites;
I also notice that many of the examples I give or use when talking about reading online are actually related to communication online, and the aesthetics of that - in Instagram DMs, Facebook and Facebook Messenger, Tinder, etc (I kind of only use those actually, I’m really basic).
he knew it was my apple yeah; apple 2k18.
http://warehouse.industries/de/entry/sexting-season-2/
maybe this has to do with the fact that that is most of what I read and write on the internet - but also, I’ve more and more come to regard work as taking place in conversations — blurs the boundaries, doesn’t it. When I think back to communicating via screenshots, I think about all these editing possibilities when you send a picture, on Messenger - or that new highlighting feature on iPhone, which I use so excessively to blank out things on photos. can’t not call that work and investment.
- and it is actually kind of tiring to use, that highlighting feature - swish swish swish, trying
to get the stuff I don't want whitened out to the last corner. - the physical senses, and
touch, play into the digital when I think about adrenaline (re: notifications); eye
movement; hearing; confusion and distraction and being overwhelmed as physical
experiences.
what’s that weird potential feel I am getting about the calligraphy -
is this maybe another reason there are accounts dedicated to slime thriving on instagram - not just because it’s ASMR content, but because its sensation - that smooth oozing - is that close to what fingers on keyboards, and fingers on phones experience?
maybe its only close to mine - because my devices are put on silent mode, and the way I move through them is by opening, closing, opening again in seconds - because why not, checking once is never enough.
revisiting -perpetuity - modification - ‘updating’
- folding back in on itself - ‘things i want to talk about’——— ‘actions to relate to oneself’ - that describes poetry, or literature - the words relate to themselves, traditionally we are in a situation made up only of words. poetry makes images, sound, emotion and movement through the words and their connected meanings - their meanings in connection - alone. but then as we go onwards - in multimedia, and in a plurality of contexts; ‘embedded, inserted’ are my favorite ways to describe this, and what is the difference between embedded and inserted?
the heightened experience of reading online - as things move, notify; make sounds and interrupt. adrenaline pokes and shoves. - notifications make information come at us on different planes, from different directions, not just the linear scroll down or emerge-forward, but also backwards, from below, etc….
if i move up
if i move down
if i move up
if i move down
open in new window; (smashed window)
i got that shit working again
i actually rly like the car window analogy for browser windows (trecartin and the fish)
(this could be more poetic i guess)
(automated responses: how sticky my fingers feel, after hours of putting their tips to the keys, and of putting in my passcode to unlock my phone)
Obstacle Course, by John Wood and Paul Harrison.
opposed to that, the sweetness of the command: ‘hold page’ and the message: ‘page ok’.
