Writing Electronic Literature : Introduction to E-Lit "genres"

We talked through Hayles classification for Electronic Literature. There are probably lots of systems for classifying these texts. Hayles identifies: hypertext fiction, network fiction, locative narratives, installation pieces, "codework," generative art, and flash poems. If you use these terms to search the table of contents of the Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 1 you can find more examples. Please take a look at the "keywords" list in the ELCv1 to learn more about the world of electronic literature. What we covered in class tonight represents the genres that Hayles decided to foreground, but there are many more aspects of e-lit to discover and the keyword list there is helpful as a discovery tool.

As we talked about the classification, we also began a discussion about reading strategies - and we agreed that if we bring our expectations from print literature to electronic literature - we are going to feel frustrated. Electronic texts often have meaningful elements in the images, sounds or movements; they are not necessarily text or even word-based, and "what electronic texts are about" often connects to the experience of "reading" rather than to what is read. Many electronic texts are interactive - or connected to the network or the physical world - in ways that print texts are not. The reader's interactions may simply determine the organization of the text - or they may operate in some ways to *create* the text by limiting or changing the possibilities for further interactions. Clearly - the participant's choice of reading strategies will influence his/her experience of electronic texts.

For Wednesday - read Navigating Electronic Literature by Jessica Pressman. Though we have covered much of this in class discussion, her essay pulls together some of what we said - and gives you some examples from outside our collection.

I asked you to "journal" some of your initial reactions to these different categories of e-lit, and to consider for the kind of text you might like to create for your final project (whether or not we can cobble together the technical skills to do so). Whatever you choose - we will find a way to create some approximation of your idea using the software we as a class can figure out.

For next week:

1. Set up our own blog for the class on Blogger and send me your link (mzamora@kean.edu). I will place all of your links on our class blog so you can read each other's commentary/work.

2. Read Pressman's article (link above).

3. Spend some more significant time reading/exploring Michael Joyce's Twelve Blue.

4. Blog assignment #1: Describe some of the strategies you used to "read" Twelve Blue. Indicate what you did + what you hoped to achieve - and what you got out of doing whatever you did. I am hoping you will dig around in this text long enough to try out more than one strategy.

In class next Tuesday we are going to talk about both what the text is "about" and what it was like reading it, and how and whether the navigation - and the larger experience of reading this text - work together to create its meaning.

The #elitclass twitterfeed is off to a fantastic start! Let's keep up this commentary throughout the course of the semester together. Remember that every class throughout our semester is an open invitation to tweet reflections about our ever-evolving discovery of e-lit. In addition, you can tweet an #elitclass comment anytime you feel compelled to (outside of our class time together). See you next week!